syllabi and student assignments

"There’s something confusing about the consensus around [Cyrus Duffleman]. It has to do with the way [his] critics begin by asserting [his] goodness, [his] greatness, [his] majorness or [his] bestness, and then quickly adopt a defensive tone, instructing us in ways of seeing as virtues the many things about [his] writing that might be considered shortcomings. So [he] writes only [syllabi and student assignments], but [these] are [weirder] than most novels."

~~ from "Poor Rose" by Christian Lorentzen

Wagner in Africa

In Granta's "Wagner in Africa," James Pogue writes from Central African Republic.

Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn

"On the radio on the way home, [Rabbit Angstrom] hears that Mike Schmidt, who exactly two years ago, on April 18, 1987, slugged his five hundredth home run, against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Three Rivers Stadium, is closing in on Richie Ashburn's total of 2,217 hits to become the hittingest Phillie ever. Rabbit remembers Ashburn. One of the Whiz Kids who beat the Dodgers for the pennant the fall Rabbit became a high-school senior. Curt Simmons, Del Ennis, Dick Sisler in center, Stan Lopata behind the plate. Beat the Dodgers the last game of the season, then lost to the Yankees four straight. In 1950 he was seventeen and had led the county B league with 817 points his junior season."

~~ from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

Teju Cole on John Updike

"Had John Updike been African, he would have won the Nobel prize twenty years ago."

Alice Munro

John Barth, Paul Auster, Alice Munro--who's next?

And who did we forget so soon?

". . . one of the most talented and interesting young writers . . ."

It's hard to beat James Alan McPherson's high praise of Rick Harsch.

 

the inner life

"To focus on the inner life today—to read books, to imagine with no ulterior agenda, to reflect on painful or confusing experiences—is to defy the clamoring edicts of our age, the buy messages, the endless pleas for followers and likes.

"Writers have to find a different way of being in the world. The making of literature is the manner by which we come to understand our inner lives, by which we travel in difficult truth toward elusive mercy, and thereby reaffirm the bonds of human kindness."

~~ from Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond

throw money at me

"Back in 2003, for instance, I fell into a sustained depression. As is often the case, the trigger was a major creative disappointment. Two years earlier, I'd published my first book, a collection of short stories. I naturally expected this triumph would banish all the doubt I had ever felt, vanquish my rivals, and compel old girlfriends to drunk-dial me in the middle of the night. People would probably also throw money at me as I walked down the sidewalk. Instead, the book sold a few hundred copies and my agent told me to write a novel."

~~ from Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond

another human being in pain

"[As writers,] we always turn away from unbearable feeling. We want to feel sure of ourselves. We want to skip the part of the story where the hero falls apart. It's an instinct. But that's the story that the reader wants to hear, the one only another human being in pain can tell them."

~~ from Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond

Paul Auster at Kelly Writers House

Paul Auster played Kelly Writers House in February, 2018.

Paul Auster

A nation mourns; DeLillo weeps.