It’s better to burn out than to fade away
The Trap Of Being Over-Informed
50 Years of Making Nonfiction Creative - Creative Nonfiction
Fifty years ago, on Valentine’s Day of 1972, New York magazine published “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe,” a proclamation that, it is clear from this vantage point, provided a standard and direction and a way of unifying nonfiction writers—essayists, journalists, memoirists—into one cohesive, albeit loosely determined, category that we now call creative nonfiction
The New York Times names new Books editor
It took quite a few months, but The New York Times has finally filled the position vacated by Pamela Paul, naming a new Books editor, now announcing: Gilbert Cruz Is Our Next Books Editor.
Apparently:Now he’ll move to Books to focus his energies on three important pillars of coverage. The first is to reimagine The New York Times Book Review, the nation’s last stand-alone newspaper book-review section, for the digital age. The second is to increase and embolden our reporting on and criticism of ideas and intellectual life, the publishing world and all that lives within it. And the third is to build new muscles in service journalism that will help our readers choose their next books with ease and joy.Not sure about some of this language -- "build new muscles in service journalism" ? really ? -- and, of course, I am always concerned when I hear about reïmagining-efforts (of any sort ...), but I guess we will see .....
Do We Overrate Human Intelligence?
How do you organize your books? 9 authors share their favorite shelves.
Washington Post – “I asked nine writers to share a photo of a favorite bookshelf (or what social media might refer to as a “shelfie”), explain the organizing principle (if there is one) and tell me a bit about what’s on that shelf. Here’s what they said. Shelfies by Elin Hilderbrand, Diana Gabaldon, Garrett Graff, Vanessa Riley, Emma Straub, Hernan Diaz, Jennifer Weiner, Chris Bohjalian and Christopher Buckley.”
Yuri Andrukhovych Q & A
At the Los Angeles Review of Books Kate Tsurkan has a Q & A with the Perverzion-author, in “Writers Are the Middlemen Between the Human Race and Immortality”: A Conversation with Yuri Andrukhovych.
They mainly talk about Radio Nights -- not yet available in English, but see, for example, the Suhrkamp foreign rights page.
Gerald Murnane profile
In The New Yorker Merve Emre profiles The Reclusive Giant of Australian Fiction -- Gerald Murnane.
Several Murnane titles are under review at the complete review:
I also have several more, and expect to get to some of them soon.
Meanwhile: read Barley Patch !
Literary estates
At The Bookseller Rod Smith writes on one of my favorite subjects -- literary estates and executors --, in Whose legacy is it anyway ?
Not sure I agree that:
The candidate for the role of literary executor must understand your wishes in the form of the guidelines. They should positively challenge you on them where necessary. Most of all they need to be alive to the opportunities and be prepared where necessary to interpret your wishes in the light of the prevailing circumstances, circumstances which might not have been in your contemplation at the time of setting down the guidelines.
I worry a great deal when executors (or pretty much anyone ...) start 'interpreting' -- but, certainly, authors should make as clear as possible how they want their (literary) legacies handled.
(See also me on Weighing Words Over Last Wishes, from way back when.)
Abdulrazak Gurnah's 'The books of my life'
The latest in The Guardian's 'The books of my life'-series is Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah's contribution.
Always a fun exercise.
