" A SPRING DAY in Charlottesville: William Faulkner, dressed in Harris Tweed, leaning casually on a lectern in Cabell Hall to take questions from survey students at the University of Virginia. Or graduate students in American fiction or the undergraduate English Club or even Electrical Engineering majors. Faulkner held three-dozen classroom conferences during his two-year tenure as writer in residence at UVA in 1957 and 1958. His body language and affable expression were captured in a widely reprinted photograph."
Author Mike Duran takes on conventional wisdom for indie publishing success: "write faster and publish often." He says writers should consider the quality of their craft and how fewer, better books will make a stronger career than many adequate books. In another post, Mike suggests we not discount near-death experiences entirely, but take a cautious approach to them, believing the jury is still out on their validity
Industry insiders could probably make several lists of twenty-four secrets or misunderstood facts or contentious minutiae about publishing, but here's a good list on the writing life from Curtis Sittenfeld. I like this one most:
10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.
Industry insiders could probably make several lists of twenty-four secrets or misunderstood facts or contentious minutiae about publishing, but here's a good list on the writing life from Curtis Sittenfeld. I like this one most:
10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.
Tyranny of the smart take. On the Internet, book critics feel pressure to stand apart and perform. They should merely inform... simple as ...
Even for hard-core secular rationalists, luck is a deity deserving some level of credence. Fortune may be fickle, but it ain’t dumb
The practice of ridiculing – even killing – cowards has a long history. But sometimes they are not craven but courageous. Cowardice keeps the peace… Keeping storytelling bloodless
Aquinas, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Diderot, Rousseau: Esotericism – disguising real meaning through surface contradiction – was an art that is all but lost... East of Latitudes
How a wealthy, wild-bearded philosopher-poet and a shy, homeless runaway determined how the mind knows what it knows... How to Read your mind
Michael Pollan’s piece on psychedelics should win one of those David Brooks magazine awards (“Sidneys”), as it will prove one of the best and most important long reads of the year. Among its other virtues, it confirms my view that the “psychedelic theorists” of the 1960s and 70s (and sometimes earlier, as with Huxley) remain underrated thinkers
