Despite recently winning the Booker Prize, Howard Jacobson writes a list of his favorite novels about failure for the WSJ: “This category is, of necessity, a crowded one. Novelists are drawn to failure. Those who prosper, or expect to prosper, in the world as it is have no need to re-imagine it.”
Fiction About Failure
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Spalding Gray’s Secrets
Nell Casay, editor of The Journals of Spalding Gray, takes readers through the tortured life of the famous actor, playwright, and monologuist.
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Contemporary Fiction and the Internet
“The internet has altered our lives in ways television never did or could, but mainstream literary novelists – by which I mean writers who specialize in realistic, character-based narratives – have mostly shied away from writing about this, perhaps hoping that, like TV, it could be safely ignored.” Laura Miller examines how contemporary novels are coming to terms with the internet.
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Love-Love
Why not follow in the footsteps of writers such as David Foster Wallace and play some tennis?
Dickinson Family Artifacts
You don’t need to visit Houghton Library in Cambridge, MA to check out Emily Dickinson’s family artifacts. You can catch a glimpse from the comfort of your own home.