MetaFilter posts tagged with books and writers

Infinite Summer

mattbucher — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:46:49 -0800

Infinite Summer - "The Challenge: Read Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009" "You've been meaning to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bibliophiles from around the web as we tackle and comment upon David Foster Wallace's masterwork, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 93 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat." There is also a Twitter account, hashtag (#infsum), and a Facebook group.

What are you reading, charming writer?

mattbucher — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:13:48 -0800

What are writers reading? An eclectic mix of authors answer the perennial question. A sampling of responses: George Packer Anne Fadiman Cass Sunstein Jane Smiley Lydia Millet Steven Zipperstein Abraham Verghese John Dunning Stephen Burt Tim Harford

In case you were wondering

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

Joyce explained. (via)

The Texture of Time

mattbucher — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:33:15 -0800

Nabokov and the Moment of Truth. VN talks about metaphors of time, great books, and reads the first line of Lolita. “I’ve been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called Great Books. That, for instance, Mann’s asinine Death in Venice, or Pasternak’s melodramatic, vilely written Doctor Zhivago, or Faulkner’s corncobby chronicles can be considered masterpieces, or at least what journalists term Great Books, is to me the same sort of absurd delusion as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair.”

Literary Voyeurism

NotMyselfRightNow — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:16:14 -0800

Writer's Rooms, portraits of the spaces where authors create: Martin Amis. Simon Armitage. Diana Athill. Jane Austen. Berly Bainbridge. JG Ballard. John Banville. Nicola Barker. Ronan Bennett. Alain de Botton. William Boyd. Raymond Briggs. Charlotte Bronte. Carmen Callil. Jung Chang. Roald Dahl. Charles Darwin. Margaret Drabble. Geoff Dyer. Anne Enright. Joshua Ferris. Jonathan Safran Foer. Margaret Forster. Antonia Fraser. Michael Frayn. Esther Freud. Simon Gray. Mark Haddon. David Hare. David Harsent. Seamus Heaney. Russell Hoban. Eric Hobsbawm. Michael Holroyd. Siri Hustvedt. AL Kennedy. Judith Kerr. Rudyard Kipling. Hanif Kureishi. Penelope Lively. David Lodge. Michael Longley. Hilary Mantel. Eamonn McCabe. Charlotte Mendelson. John Mortimer. Kate Mosse. Andrew Motion. Julie Myerson. Edna O'Brien. Andrew O'Hagan. Adam Phillips. Caryl Phillips. Craig Raine. Ian Rankin. John Richardson. Michael Rosen. Will Self. George Bernard Shaw. Alan Sillitow. Posy Simmonds. Helen Simpson. Ahdaf Soueif. Graham Swift. Adam Thirlwell. Colm Toibin. Claire Tomalin. Sue Townsend. Barbara Trapido. Rose Tremain. Sarah Waters. Jacqueline Wilson. Virginia Woolf. (Step into the reading room for a wee bit more...) ...or perhaps you're more interested in how they write: JG Ballard. Walter Benjamin. Ray Bradbury. Anthony Burgess. Truman Capote. Ethan Canan. David Chase. Bruce Chatwin. Tracy Chevalier. Don DeLillo. Cory Doctorow. Arthur Conan Doyle. Umberto Eco. Warren Ellis. Ralph Ellison. James Ellroy. Jeffrey Eugenides. Michel Faber. Jonathan Safran Foer. Gustave Flaubert. Stephen Fry. Neil Gaiman. Malcolm Gladwell. William Gibson. Dashiell Hammett. Gustav Hasford. John Irving. Henry James. Elmore Leonard. Sven Lindqvist. David Mitchell. Joseph Mitchell. Grant Morrison. Haruki Murakami. Philip Pullman. Ian Rankin. Arthur Rimbaud. Philip Roth. Raymond Roussel. Will Self. Robert Louis Stevenson. David Thomson. Anthony Trollope. Paul valery. Virginia Woolf. ...or maybe you just were wondering, "What books sat on the bookshelves of famous people?" John Adams. Susan B. Anthony. Marie Antoinette. W.H. Auden. Karen Blixen*. Daniel Garrison Brinton*. Willa Cather*. William Congreve*. e.e. cummings*. Leonardo da Vinci*. Charles Darwin*. Alfrer Deakin. John Dee*. Theodore Dreiser*. William Faulkner*. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Benjamin Franklin*. Isabella Stewart Gardner. Gerald Gardner*. Ernest Hemingway. Robert E. Howard*. Thomas Jefferson. Samuel Johnson. James Joyce*. Franz Kafka*. John F. Kennedy*. Danilo Kis. Charles Lamb*. Rose Wilder Lane*. T.E. Lawrence*. Basil Henry Liddell-Hart*. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis*. Eeva-Liisa Manner*. Mary, Queen of Scots*. Mather Family. Wolfgang Mozart. John Muir. Flannery O'Connor*. Walker Percy. Sylvia Plath. Ezra Pound. Joseph Priestley*. Rembrandt*. Samuel Roth. Carl Sandburg*. Sir Walter Scott*. Tupac Shakur. Joseph Smith. Adam Smith*. James Smithson. William Wilberforce*. W.B. Yeats*. (* denotes a library in progress) A nice post on the early days of "I See Dead People('s Books)" can be found here. Same for the very early days of "How We Work."

Autobiography of Read

zoomorphic — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:27:18 -0800

Happy Birthday, Anne Carson! The iconoclastic modern poet who published the arresting, compulsively readable Autobiography of Red turned 57 this weekend. The Canadian writer has been called “a philosopher of heartbreak” and “unclassifiable” due to her genre-bending novel in prose poetry, though in her own words she is measured and cerebral. Professor of the Classics, recognized as one of the definitive translators of Sappho, Carson’s appealing mastery of ancient literature and contemporary prose has garnered her more mainstream attention than many of her contemporaries, as well as peer accusations of shilling pretentious, anti-bourgeois pastiche, fomenting an intra-critics debate. So where do you stand? Read her poetry for yourself. Enjoy.

'Roid Writer

fearfulsymmetry — Mon, 19 May 2008 06:05:19 -0800

Canadian writer Craig Davidson is pretty intense (read mad) when it comes to research and promoting his work, entering into an officially sanctioned boxing match to promote The Fighter. But even he thinks he went a bit too far when he went on a full 'steroid cycle'.

Dianetics is one of them, ho ho.

Artw — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:17:01 -0800

50 best cult books from The Telegraph.

Users of Covers and Cozies, Ready-Made Souls in Platic Bags, Negligible Generalities

mattbucher — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:03:07 -0800

Vladimir Nabokov discusses Lolita with Lionel Trilling. The moderator is Pierre Berton of the CBC.

The new It-boy?

mattbucher — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:13:25 -0800

Who's the new darling of the literary world? Charles Bock. Although, some are asking, how the hell did a guy like him get all this high-profile coverage? [Bock previously on MeFi]

Post-War Brit Lit

fearfulsymmetry — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:49:56 -0800

The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. A few interesting choices here... the 'novelist's poet' at #1 seems fair enough, but this one, this one and this one?

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.

Interviews with the Writer

mattbucher — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:56:41 -0800

Writers on Writing: Interviews with Paul Bowles, David Markson, and Harry Mathews.

Cultural diversity

semmi — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 09:20:52 -0800

Riyadh International Book Fair. "Last night I went to a panel on cultural diversity, and I have enjoyed a very good discussion. The panel was done the Saudi style, with the only female speaker Dr. Khairia Al-Saggaf talking from another room, where we could not see her but only listen to her voice." "Shiites were the subject of a hot debate at the end of the panel, when Dr. Khaled Al-Dakheel said that Shiites are part of us. This was the point where the panel went out of control. Before Al-Dakheel was able to complete that sentence, a Sheikh from the first row interrupted and told Dr. Al-Dakheel that Shiites are not Muslims, and that he has to say this."

American Prophet

spock — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:59:57 -0800

PICTURE THIS: A folksy, self-consciously plainspoken Southern politician rises to power during a period of profound unrest in America. The nation is facing one of the half-dozen or so of its worst existential crises to date, and the people, once sunny, confident, and striving, are now scared, angry, and disillusioned. Through a combination of factors -his easy bearing chief among them (along with massive cash donations from Big Business; disorganization in the liberal opposition; a stuffy, aloof opponent; and support from religious fanatics who feel they've been unfairly marginalized)-he wins the presidential election. Ripped from today's headlines? Nope. Sinclair Lewis, Circa 1935: "It Can't Happen Here" has been recently reissued. But you can read it here (with free registration) at American Buddha (possibly NSFW). first link via Arts & Letters Daily

Orhan Pamuk

johnny novak — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:09:09 -0800

On December 16th the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk goes on trial charged with insulting the Turkish nation, after stating that the killing of 30,000 Armenians and Kurds by the Ottoman Empire was genocide (as discussed before). The trial is being seen by some as a key test for Turkey as it starts on the road to EU accession. Listen to him talk about his work and read extracts.

The MacDowell Colony

matteo — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:44:34 -0800

"The spiritual, physical, intellectual, social or economic well-being of the general public".
Within the MacDowell Colony's rustic stone and clapboard cottages, Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town, Aaron Copland composed Appalachian Spring and Dubose and Dorothy Heyward wrote Porgy and Bess. Jonathan Franzen finished writing The Corrections and Alice Sebold worked on The Lovely Bones. For decades, the town considered the colony a tax-exempt charitable organization. Not anymore.

After Life, by Joan Didion

matteo — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 07:07:26 -0800

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
After Life, by Joan Didion. (bugmenot for NYTimes)

Italo Calvino, 1923-1985

matteo — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 15:45:40 -0800

"If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant," Mr. Palomar thinks, "and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen." He decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies.
In memoriam of Italo Calvino, who died exactly 20 years ago.
"Calvino's novels" by his friend Gore Vidal. Calvino's obituary by Vidal, il maestro William Weaver's essay on Calvino's cities, Jeanette Winterson on Calvino's dream of being invisible, and Stefano Franchi's philosophical study on Palomar's doctrine of the void. More inside.

Flaubert on Structural Unity

matteo — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 19:56:23 -0800

Flaubert on Structural Unity. "I’ve just read 'Pickwick' by Dickens. Do you know it? Some bits are magnificent; but what a defective structure! All English writers are like that. Walter Scott apart, they lack composition. This is intolerable for us Latins". Extracts from the letters of Flaubert (via the very awesome book coolie)

Frank Conroy Dies at 69

lilboo — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 07:15:15 -0800

Frank Conroy Dies at 69 The author of "Stop-Time," jazz pianist, scallop fisherman, and Iowa writers workshop guru disappears into the divine...

3 young writers achieve acclaim years after their deaths from cancer

escorter — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 07:19:32 -0800

Although cancer got these three young writers before their books were published, their now-acclaimed work -- from children's inspirational to humorous fantasy to coming of age (book and movie) -- was brought to life by the efforts of parents or a brother or friends.

Gulp, type, gulp, type

braun_richard — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 11:35:31 -0800

Two Writers Drinking, Sitting Around, Talking About Stuff. That about says it! Two online veterans get drunk and exchange e-mails. (An ongoing series. The above link is part one. Part two is here, and part three can be found right here). (Via Maud)

Hubert Selby, Jr (1928-2004)

matteo — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 17:21:54 -0800

"Hubert Selby died often. But he always came back, smiling that beautiful smile of his, and those blue eyes of his... This time he will not be back. My saints have always come from hell, and now, with his passing, there are no more saints". Selby is the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, (tried for obscenity in England and supported by, among many others, Samuel Beckett and Anthony Burgess), Requiem For a Dream, Song of the Silent Snow. He is being eulogized in the USA and UK, but also, massively (I've just watched a fantastic TV special) in France, where he is much more popular than in his native land (Selby's death was the cover story -- plus pages 2, 3 and 4 -- in the daily Libération today -- .pdf file): Dernière sortie vers la rédemption, L'extase de la dévastation. What makes all this kind of ironic -- in a very Selbyesque way -- is that Selby himself used to say, "I started to die 36 hours before I was born..." (more inside)

jonathanbell — Mon, 30 Sep 2002 09:16:27 -0800

Are you writing a novel? An article in the NY Times urging would-be authors to pack it in. Given the quoted stat (that 81% of Americans 'feel they have a book in them'), and extrapolating it for the rest of the world, that still means that there are roughly 12,887 unwritten books out there in me-fi land. Is this true? And has anyone actually written theirs down?