This excellent cradle-to-grave biography of a much loved novelist who goes in and out of fashion captures her alarming habits and tormented love affairsIn 1971 the author Barbara Pym was at her day job at the International African Institute when she noticed “Mr C” laboriously attacking his lunchtime sandwich with a knife and fork. Pym made a mental note of the detail before asking herself ruefully, “Oh why can’t I write about things like that any more – why is this kind of thing no longer acceptable?” Ten years earlier, Jonathan Cape had dumped her after her sixth book on the grounds that her brand of anthropological observation of English social manners was old lady-ish, dull and didn’t sell. As an extra humiliation, no other publishing house had been interested in picking up Miss Pym: books built on “the daily round of trivial things” could hardly compete with Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal or, if you were feeling fancy, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Jonathan Cape had even published John Lennon (Pym liked the Beatles, but still). Clearly there was no place in contemporary literature for Mr C and his oddly formal way with a sandwich.There is nothing unusual about major minor novelists having a disappointing and disproportionate decline, followed by a posthumous flowering in reputation and sales. What’s unusual about Pym is that her phoenix moment came while she was still alive. In 1977 the Times Literary Supplement asked well-known... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-04-08 06:30:07 UTC ]
Filmmakers, novelists and photographers, among others, also shape our collective memory, Richard Cohen writes. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-04-22 12:00:50 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Interviews Eloghosa Osunde and Okwiri Oduor. Photo of Oduor by Chelsea Bieker. It’s hard to argue with Booker Prize–winning author Damon Galgut’s assertion that 2021 was “a great year for African writing.” And as WLT’s “New African Voices” issue... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-04-21 13:41:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this
L.A.'s authors, from 19th century novelists to Wanda Coleman to Steph Cha, have always pushed genre boundaries and dissected California myths. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-04-14 13:00:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The theatre is a perennially popular setting for novelists and no wonder. The tawdry glamour and sense of spectacle make it a rich gift for any author, but it’s what happens behind the scenes that I find the most interesting. This is particularly true for those novels set on the 19th-century... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-04-14 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Guardian photographer who captured most of the main events and notable people from the early 1960s to the late 90sThe photographer Frank Martin, who has died aged 89, was on the staff of the Guardian from 1964 to 1997, creating an extensive body of work that covered news, arts, fashion, politics... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-04-13 16:01:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Three authors joined author/moderator Emma Straub in a thought-provoking keynote panel, “Storytelling in the Cultural Moment,” to begin the third day of ABA's Snow Days online conference. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-03-11 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Book Reviews Statue of renowned Kurdish historian, author, and poet Mastoureh Ardalan (1805–1848) in Erbil / Photo by Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash Even though they appear to have a lot to say about the historical, political, cultural, and literary... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-23 21:05:41 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Literary novelists are struggling with whether, and how, to incorporate Covid into their fiction. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-02-20 22:17:31 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” –Arthur Ashe * Years ago, when I was still a budding fiction writer, I published an essay about how hard skateboarding is to write about. I focused on a few novelists who had skater characters in their books but who clearly didn’t skate […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-09 09:55:45 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The Booker prize-winning author’s new novel Lessons is ‘a powerful meditation on history and humanity told through the prism of one man’s lifetime’Ian McEwan’s “most epic book to date”, moving from the end of the second world war to the current pandemic and exploring the impact of childhood... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-01-19 12:00:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Ian McEwan’s “ambitious and mesmerising” new novel Lessons will be published by Jonathan Cape in September. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-19 02:10:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Who is Elena Ferrante? One of the most widely-acclaimed and beloved contemporary novelists is also the most unknown. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-12-29 11:33:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
When it comes to great novels, this year felt like an embarrassment of riches. The books collected here are ambitious—in intellect, in scope, in subject matter, and in size. Some are perfect encapsulations of the unique problems of our time, while others illuminate the human threads that connect... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-12-16 12:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
It’s safe to say that in general, 2021 was an improvement on 2020—but that doesn’t mean it was a big one. Among the many disappointments of this year was the fact that we lost far too many members of the literary community, from poets to novelists to editors to critics to publishers. To them, we […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-12-15 09:49:46 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Are there certain books with topics you avoid? That you fear may leave you a little worse for wear? Here's what may happen if you read them. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-12-07 11:38:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Novelists and short-story writers have created some classic narratives about man’s best friend, the dog. But what are the very best stories and novels about dogs? Where should we begin in assessing the classic, canonical literature that features dogs? From Homer’s Odyssey onwards – where the... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-12-03 15:00:29 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The following first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. * While writing my first novel, I was hungry for advice, like many young writers, and soaked up tenets like write every day or wake up before work to go to your desk or hit 1000 words every session. But these... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-11-12 09:55:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this
News and Events (c) Rama, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr NORMAN, OKLA. – World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, announced late Tuesday evening that Boubacar Boris Diop is the 27th... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-10-26 21:56:54 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Fiction that lazily predicts a dystopian, ecologically decimated world is doomed to fail; instead novelists must engage on a new level with the climate crisis Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-18 12:54:39 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Granta Magazine has opened submissions for the fifth edition of its Best of Young British Novelists list, to be released in spring 2023. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-13 08:19:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this