Interviews Photo by Diane Picchiottino / Unsplash That Famous Abyss (Wunderkammer, 2020) is a book of exclusive interviews with Enrique Vila-Matas by cultural journalist Anna María Iglesia, covering such themes as why write, the places of literature, the art of disappearing, and the poetics of failure. The result is a text that is equally reflective as it is biographical and intimate, filled with the great names of literature and art alongside personal anecdotes and memories of the author. The following exchange appears in chapter 1, “Why Write?” Anna María Iglesia: Why do you write? Enrique Vila-Matas: Do I need to tell the truth? Iglesia: Of course not. In fact, this is not a biography. Vila-Matas: Much better, then. Iglesia: A few years ago, when asked this same question by a journalist, you answered: “In some remote time, some ancestor made that first loop. We are nothing but their imitators, a link in the uninterrupted chain of tradition. So the one who needs to be asked as to why I write is that ancestor; ask him why he wanted to move beyond that knot.”[i] Vila-Matas: Well, I imagine that finding that ancestor will prove impossible for you. I see it like someone who spoke in the name of God. As far as I can go, I think, is to try to speak in the language of poetry, that language without name. Look, in reality, I’ve spent my whole life unaware of why I write, to the degree that, when my parents died, I discovered in... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-11-29 21:46:44 UTC ]
OpenAI’s ChatGPT’s AI chatbot is so good, too many people are using it, crushing its servers. So the company is debuting a paid ChatGPT Plus service, which will launch in the coming weeks. ChatGPT will cost $20 per month, but don’t despair. OpenAI says that it still plans to offer a... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2023-02-01 21:57:26 UTC ]
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‘Fish Cheeks’ is a short autobiographical narrative by the American writer Amy Tan (born 1952). Tan is probably best-known for The Joy Luck Club, her 1989 novel containing a series of interwoven short stories told by a number of Chinese-American women who are members of the titular club; but... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-01-29 15:00:27 UTC ]
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The following first appeared in Lit Hub’s The Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. William Trevor famously described the short story as “the art of the glimpse,” and compression is generally a virtue. But the most engaging and compelling short stories and novels are not necessarily the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-01-27 09:52:28 UTC ]
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Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award;... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-01-24 09:53:24 UTC ]
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‘Everyday Use’ is one of the most popular and widely studied short stories by Alice Walker. It was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1973 before being collected in Walker’s short-story collection In Love and Trouble. Walker uses ‘Everyday Use’ to explore different attitudes towards Black... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-01-23 15:00:18 UTC ]
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‘Cathedral’ is perhaps the most widely studied of all the short stories of Raymond Carver (1938-88). The story is narrated by a man whose wife has invited her friend, a blind man named Robert, to come and stay with them. Although he is initially uncomfortable and even scathing about their […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-01-22 15:00:57 UTC ]
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Having written and taught short stories for many years, I’ve become increasingly interested in writers who are pushing the edge of how “story” is defined. While “flash fiction” and “micro fiction” are buzzy terms, writing extremely short pieces is nothing new—as I tell my students, Poe did it,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-01-20 09:53:22 UTC ]
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‘Raymond’s Run’ is a 1971 short story by Toni Cade Bambara (1939-95) which originally appeared in the anthology Tales and Short Stories for Black Folks. In the story, a young girl named Hazel Parker prepares for a race; Bambara uses this plot to explore the challenges young black women face […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2023-01-09 15:00:24 UTC ]
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Don’t miss these short stories featuring firefighting drones, lab-grown mammals, long-buried fan fiction, and much more. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2022-12-30 10:50:00 UTC ]
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The short stories of the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904) are important precursors to twentieth-century modernism, and can be viewed as forerunners to the short fiction of Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and other high modernists. Where other nineteenth-century writers tended to... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-12-28 15:00:24 UTC ]
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Naira Kuzmich died in 2017, at age 29 from lung cancer, but her posthumous short story collection, In Everything I See Your Hand, was only recently brought to fruition by University of New Orleans Press (June 2022). The included stories were widely published in literary journals and one was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-22 09:53:38 UTC ]
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The list of novels that began their lives as short stories is long and well known. Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, Eudory Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (which began as a short story titled “Gogol”), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (expanded from her 1923... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-15 09:52:44 UTC ]
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Challenging myths about heterosexual white South African men, Prinsloo published four books of short stories in 12 years. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2022-11-28 05:37:53 UTC ]
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‘Salvador Late or Early’ is a short story in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, a 1991 collection of short stories by the American writer Sandra Cisneros (born 1954). The story – which lacks a conventional plot and is more of a character study – briefly describes the life of […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-11-25 15:00:30 UTC ]
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Emily Temple rounds up the 60 greatest academic satires, campus novels, and boarding school bildungsromans of the last 100 years. | Lit Hub Reading Lists Lynn Caponera considers the wild and wonderful legacy of Maurice Sendak’s creations (and his rigorous work routine). | Lit Hub Art &... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-05 10:30:11 UTC ]
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It’s possible to love a video game. To be devoted to it, to value what it does for you, and how it makes you feel. To want the best for it. Not in the same way you love a person — or at least, I hope not. But take a look at any major fan convention for video games, movies, TV, or almost... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-11-01 15:51:22 UTC ]
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It’s possible to love a video game. To be devoted to it, to value what it does for you and how it makes you feel, and to want the best for it. Not in the same way you love a person — or at least, I hope not. But take a look at any major fan convention for video games, movies, TV, or almost... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-10-28 10:45:00 UTC ]
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Combat veteran Bill Glose’s short stories in “All the Ruined Men” crack open the challenges faced by Gulf War soldiers and their families. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2022-10-19 15:00:11 UTC ]
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‘The Man I Killed’ is a story from The Things They Carried, a 1990 collection of linked short stories by the American writer Tim O’Brien. The collection focuses on a platoon of American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. As the title of this short story suggests, ‘The Man I […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-10-17 14:00:42 UTC ]
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There's no better time to read horror short stories than October. With Halloween fast approaching, dive into these 20 spooky tales. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-10-17 10:31:00 UTC ]
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