Jennifer Egan: ‘Twitter doesn’t make me feel optimistic about human nature’

The Pulitzer prize-winning author discusses her follow up to A Visit from the Goon Squad and how imagining a new technology set her writing freeWhen Jennifer Egan bought her house in Brooklyn 20 years ago, it had been on the market for eight months. The owners were an elderly couple, and the place was distressed. “There were holes in the floor and the walls were drab,” says Egan, sitting in the kitchen of what is now a beautifully renovated property, full of lovely art and restored period details. Remembering how it was fills the 59-year-old novelist with a peculiar and very specific dread. “What really made it gloomy – and I’m very conscious of this – was that the family who’d lived here, the child had grown up, the parents had gotten old, and I think they’d stopped seeing it. There are moments when I think: is that happening now?”It’s the condition in which most of us live – after a while, we stop seeing our surroundings – and one against which Egan’s skill as a novelist is set. She is highly attuned to the falsifying effects of nostalgia, complacency, solipsism and ignorance of history, and to the delusions of uniqueness that dog every age. She is obsessed, for example, with the 1870s, “an amazing decade, because, except for the telegraph, almost none of the inventions we take for granted now – electricity, say – existed yet. And yet, 20 or 30 years later, there were cars. I think we underestimate the degree to which the change we experience is what it’s always been... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2022-04-16 08:00:03 UTC ]

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Colm Toibin’s ‘The Magician’ Intimately Recaptures a Literary Giant

In his latest novel, Toibin imagines the life of Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning author of “The Magic Mountain” and “Death in Venice.” Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-08-31 18:09:36 UTC ]
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No, Cormac McCarthy Isn’t on Twitter. Don’t Be Fooled by the Check Mark.

An account posing as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Road,” “No Country for Old Men” and “All the Pretty Horses” was mistakenly verified by Twitter. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-08-02 21:48:56 UTC ]
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Corsair scoops 'dazzling' Goon Squad 'sibling novel' by Egan

Publisher Corsair has scooped a "dazzling" new novel from Jennifer Egan, described as a "sibling novel" to her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad (Corsair). Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-07-01 10:30:59 UTC ]
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Scribner Buys New Jennifer Egan Book

'The Candy House,' set for April 5, 2022, is being dubbed by Scribner as a "sibling novel" to Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2010 book, 'A Visit from the Goon Squad,' and is set over the course of decades in and around both New York City and San Francisco. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-07-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Ishiguro warns of 'online lynch mob' stifling young writers' creativity

Nobel Prize-winning author Sir Kazuo Ishiguro has revealed concerns that young writers are “self-censoring” to avoid an “anonymous lynch mob that turns up online and makes their lives a misery”.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-03-01 15:01:44 UTC ]
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Android morality tale ‘Klara and the Sun’ is not the usual dystopian saga

Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro explores the effects of technology on humans through the eyes of an ever-sunny, ever-likable cyborg. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2021-03-01 14:06:50 UTC ]
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‘Klara and the Sun’: Do androids dream of human emotions?

A likable android studies human behavior in Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun,” which explores the effects of AI. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2021-03-01 14:06:00 UTC ]
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Why Baseball Is Obsessed With the Book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'

A psychology book by a Nobel Prize-winning author has become a must-read in front offices. It is changing the sport. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-02-24 12:00:07 UTC ]
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to publish memoir about her father's death

Notes on Grief will recount the life of ‘a remarkable man of kindness and charm’ and the author’s struggle to absorb his loss during lockdown last yearChimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a memoir about the sudden death of her father in lockdown last year. Notes on Grief, by the Orange... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2021-02-11 14:18:53 UTC ]
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Elizabeth Kolbert on the Nature of the Future

Subscribe on Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Hosts Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher are joined by New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert. In her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, Kolbert explores the many ways in which humans intervene in... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-01-29 20:19:58 UTC ]
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The Roar of the Wronged: Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, by Yahia Lababidi

Culture A still image from the film White Tiger (Netflix, 2021). After watching White Tiger, a writer contemplates the film alongside revolution in Egypt, Black Lives Matter protests, the film Parasite, and literary “complicated works of... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2021-01-27 20:33:27 UTC ]
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For Sale: Toni Morrison’s Apartment and Personal Library

The Nobel Prize-winning author edited as she read and alphabetized her 1,200-plus book collection by last name. The post For Sale: Toni Morrison’s Apartment and Personal Library appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2020-11-04 21:30:53 UTC ]
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Sunday Reading: Summer Fiction

From The New Yorker’s archive: short stories by Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Stephen King. Continue reading at New Yorker

[ New Yorker | 2020-08-30 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Sunday Reading: Summer Fiction

From The New Yorker’s archive: short stories by Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Stephen King. Continue reading at New Yorker

[ New Yorker | 2020-08-16 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Hamish Hamilton takes second helping from Supper Club writer Williams

Hamish Hamilton has landed a second novel by Lara Williams, the 2019 Not the Booker Prize-winning author of Supper Club (Hamish Hamilton). Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-07-20 01:42:46 UTC ]
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A Summary and Analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’

‘Young Goodman Brown’ (1835) is one of the most famous stories by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Inspired in part by the Salem witch craze of 1692, the story is a powerful exploration of the dark side of human nature. How Hawthorne loads his story with such power is worthy […] The post... Continue reading at Interesting Literature

[ Interesting Literature | 2020-06-24 14:00:49 UTC ]
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‘Black and Asian people not seen as readers’: Bernardine Evaristo condemns books industry

In foreword to report into diversity in publishing, Booker prize-winning author rails against ‘ridiculous’ beliefsBernardine Evaristo, the first black woman to win the Booker prize, has hit out at “ridiculous” and “misguided” beliefs in the publishing industry, where “black and Asian people are... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-06-23 11:06:09 UTC ]
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Lawrence Wright’s New Pandemic Novel Wasn’t Supposed to Be Prophetic

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author reflects on what it’s like to see his fiction become reality. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2020-03-12 21:13:57 UTC ]
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Review: Anna Burns' second novel on the Irish Troubles ... and our own

A pitch-dark comedy on the wages of violence from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of "Milkman" Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-15 15:00:16 UTC ]
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