His new novel, Sunset Park, finds Paul Auster leaving behind the metafictional gamesmanship of his recent work for a look at our new Age of Austerity. This week, he talks to The L Magazine about the neighborhood from which it takes its title and inspiration…
Brooklyn Boys I
Reading Through Trauma
“My whole life, I had used stories, both my own and other people’s, to check out of grocery store lines and long bus trips, stints in doctors’ waiting rooms, heartache, my own depression, and finally of the tedious exhaustion of new motherhood. Now, here I was in this 15-by-20 room, where monitors and alarms were constantly beeping, and there was no way out, except the unimaginable.” Alyson Foster, author of Heart Attack Watch, writes about her son’s illness and her love of reading.
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Based on a True Story
Jon Methven (of This Is Your Captain Speaking) has a problem: one of his characters trashed his novel on Amazon.
Last words
Japanese director Satoshi Kon died last Tuesday at the age of 46. His last words, a rambling text that his family uploaded to the Internet following his death, have just been translated to English: "Everyone, thank you for all the truly great memories. I loved the world I lived in."
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Timely Books?
"In publishing, we see this play out in a number of ways. Marginalized writers are told by white editors, we need your stories now more than ever, as if we have not always needed them urgently. We are told our experiences are timely, exotic, and trendy. We are told our stories are not authentic if our characters do not suffer, as if the only way to prove that we are human is to bleed." Natalia Sylvester on the erasure that comes when marginalized writers are constantly being told by the publishing industry and others that your book about your marginalized identity is 'timely'.
Who Wore It Best?
Who wore it best: Edith Wharton or Lil' Kim? (via @ElectricLit)
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Book of Lies
Year in Reading alumnus Alexander Chee writes about the impulse to write fiction, his first novel, and unpublished manuscripts in an essay for the Center For Fiction's Why Fiction Matters series. "The first story I ever invented for public consumption was in a book report back in grade school. I had made a vow to read every book in my grade school library, and at some point, as I made my way through them, I remember very clearly understanding that there was simply no way my teacher would know about every book ever published—this was before the Internet—and so I decided I would make one up and see if she noticed." Pair with this Millions piece, featuring six writers looking back on their first novels.
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Babysitting SEALs
"Write a short story from the point-of-view of a babysitter who one summer night witnesses something she never expected to see in her life, and then do a 'find and replace' in your Word doc until each instance of 'babysitter' becomes 'Navy SEAL.'" Leigh Stein shares some "Writing Prompts for Girls and Women" with The Rumpus. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel's review of Leigh Stein's The Fallback Plan.