MetaFilter posts tagged with authors

Yukio Mishima 14 January 1925 - 25 November 1970

eccnineten — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:59:33 -0800

"There's something very shabby about a noble grave... Political power and the power of wealth result in splendid graves. Really impressive graves, you know. Such creatures never had any imagination while they lived, and quite naturally their graves don't leave any room for imagination either. But noble people live only on the imaginations of themselves and others, and so they leave graves like this one which inevitably stir one's imagination. And this I find even more wretched. Such people, you see, are obliged even after they are dead to continue begging people to use their power of imagination." - Yukio Mishima via Kashiwagi in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. On this, the anniversary of Mishima's transformation into a headless god, a collection of video links. The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima. A speech with English subtitles. Yukio Mishima vs. Tokyo University Zenkyoutou on 13 May 1969. BBC production titled The Case of Yukio Mishima. Mishima on bodybuilding. ... and a single essay: "I Cut Off the Head of Yukio Mishima" by John-Ivan Palmer.

In case you were wondering

kliuless — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:38:37 -0800

Joyce explained. (via)

Interviews with Venturous Writers

Iridic — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 11:46:37 -0800

Dalkey Archive conversations with William Burroughs, Angela Carter, Robert Creeley, William Gaddis, William H. Gass, Danilo Kis, Harry Mathews, Richard Powers, Raymond Queneau, Hubert Selby, William T. Vollman, David Foster Wallace, and many other writers.

Moby Dick? Middlemarch? Jane Eyre?

fiercecupcake — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:28:19 -0800

Humiliation: Which book are you most embarrassed to admit that you have never read? Several "respectable" authors answer the question at the Ways With Words festival. (single-link Telegraph post)

An hour with "the happiest man alive"

madamjujujive — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:24:11 -0800

Henry Miller Bathroom Monologues, part 2, part 3, and follow on - Miller takes us on a tour of the art in his bathroom. And a few years later, we have Dinner with Henry, 1979 . "I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. " Henry Miller Personal Collection Here's to Henry Miller Links to Henry Miller

No more posts until Matt starts paying up

Horace Rumpole — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:47:10 -0800

Home ~~taping~~ downloading is killing ~~music~~ authorship. The Society of Authors warns that authors will simply stop writing if they aren't compensated for piracy of their work (as unlikely as that seems). Perhaps they should follow the example of Jim Griffin, newly hired at Warner Music to persuade broadband providers to attach a $5 per month surcharge for the benefit of the major labels, in exchange for halting the lawsuits that have thus far been their mainstay weapon against piracy.

Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia

ed — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:52:16 -0800

Nicholson Baker, who in his book, Double Fold, argued for saving newspaper collections, explores "The Charms of Wikipedia" with insightful and hilarious results. He also has a new book, Human Smoke, coming out (excerpt)

Ideas in the Air

Miko — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:13:46 -0800

To The Best Of Our Knowledge is one of the most wide-ranging and literate public radio shows in the US, a two-hour "radio salon" featuring leisurely exploration of weekly themes like No Smoking, Identity Crisis, Weekend, and The Mind, Music, and Math. Host Jim Fleming approaches these big ideas through the works of authors - journalists of all stripes, memoirists, poets, fiction writers, essayists. Five years' worth of shows are available on audio archives; you can also search the impressive list of authors by name, or subscribe to the podcast. To the best of my knowledge, episodes from the show have been linked in relevant post topics, and the show has been mentioned in comments, but has not yet been the subject of its own post. Of course I could be wrong; I often am.

Photographs of Authors

Kattullus — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:17:44 -0800

Pictures of writers in a thread on I Love Music. Lots and lots of pictures of lots of writers. Another thread from the same board with more pictures (some duplicates). Author photos are most often seen on dust jackets or in the back of books, a practice Frances Wilson wishes to see abolished. One famous connoisseur of pictures of writers is Javier Marías who wrote a whole book on the subject, Written Lives. Here are a few excerpts from the book: William Faulkner, Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen) and an edited extract covering a whole lot of authors. Bonus: Julia Lipman riffs on a pair of photos of Jonathan Franzen in Flak Magazine.

"turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book."

amberglow — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:17:56 -0800

The Page 69 Test --inspired by Marshall McLuhan's suggestion to readers for choosing a novel, a new blog, inviting authors to describe what's on page 69. One says: Not the best, but not the worst. If my pages were presidents, I’d put page 69 somewhere in the James K. Polk range.