[contextly_auto_sidebar id="g3odon0mIwRtjJWQanUkJ6akwgtLE0cd"] IS "literary fiction" just another genre? Over the years I've engaged in numerous discussions with writers, fans, and fellow journalists on the matter. Generally I've been sympathetic to the side that says that demeaned genres -- science fiction and hardboiled detective fiction especially -- can be as smart, well-written and … [Read more...]
Housing for Artists, Upcoming Doc and What Twain Tells Us
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hLRQi16APGHGAa7vr6agsGJdgdO8X6ef"] IT’S taken a while, but as rents and real estate prices have surged over the last few years, the issue of living space for artists has started to get the attention it deserves; David Byrne and Patti Smith have helped shine a light on the plight of creative folk in New York. A new story by fiction writer Catherine Lacey highlights … [Read more...]
Where Are Steinbeck’s Heirs? Literature and the Recession
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="7Ob2euleB2pS7V1InChacTlQDk4kH4s8"] ONE of the things that's most baffled and frustrated me over the last few years has been our collective inability or unwillingness to grapple with the recession and the growing crisis on inequality in a meaningful, imaginative way. Journalism has not done a great job, on the whole, and the movies have almost completely whiffed on … [Read more...]
Dave Eggers on Artists in the Digital Age
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Sgct1PtiO3Y0LbD66DOqZ5sXTeAmgc4p"] FOR reasons I half understand, Dave Eggers's recent novel The Circle was dismissed and ignored in some circles. The book's not perfect, but works beautifully as a fable about what we're willing to give up to live in a digital utopia. The book's protagonist, Mae, lucks into a job at a Google-like campus in Northern California and … [Read more...]
Making it as a Writer: MFA vs NYC
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6RDST6owlrC0x8P60LIwnB5J7Z8Ftt9Q"] HOW does an aspiring novelist, poet, or essayist break into the business? What kind of ecosystem does he or she inhabit after getting established? Does grad school help? Among the best answers to those questions came from novelist Chad Harbach in his essay "MFA vs NYC," and he's expanded it into a provocative anthology that … [Read more...]
Novelists in the New Economy, and a National-ist Goes Classical
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hPd2FVtPIrH02PAHBYXfxFyuIQJdbTd3"] HOW are novelists doing in the post-recession, Internet-besotted world? In Britain, apparently, even purportedly successful and well-reputed writers are hanging on by their fingernails. That's the conclusion of a nuanced and well-reported piece by Robert McCrum in the Observer. The story starts by describing Rupert Thomson, an … [Read more...]
Snubbing Sarah Polley, and Musicians Souring on Facebook
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="C9J6uLN8DJGJrhAieA8jJpyWE47Vp38G"] IT’s always healthy going into Oscar weekend angry about something, usually a good film that you feel has been ripped off by not being nominated. For me, that’s Sarah Polley’s ingenious and deeply felt documentary, Stories We Tell. The movie follows the Canadian actress/director into some odd family history; saying any more will … [Read more...]
Richard Rodriguez on Religion, Atheism and Politics
SOMETIMES I wonder why the words -- especially the personal essays -- of Richard Rodriguez hit me so directly. He is a gay Latino born in the '40s, a devout if conflicted Catholic, and on many issues a political or social conservative. My origins and allegiances are very different and coincide with none of those categories (I have long thought of myself, for instance, as a Protestant agnostic on … [Read more...]
Cheering George Packer’s "The Unwinding"
LORD know this book does not need any more praise, but I want to wave the tattered American flag for George Packer's The Unwinding, which just won the National Book Award. The book is not perfect -- more on that in a minute -- but it is lyrical, powerfully reported, passionately written, and lives up to its subtitle: "An Inner History of the New America." As research for my own Creative … [Read more...]
Digging the New Dean Wareham
DESPITE our well-documented bias for things West Coast, the Misread City gang has a deep and abiding love for the work of Dean Wareham going back to the Galaxie 500 and Luna eras. The day after seeing Luna on its first US tour (opening for the Sundays, if memory serves, and before the first LP), we walked to the local record store in Chapel Hill to pick up the band's Slide EP. (It was what we … [Read more...]