The age old debate: experience versus aesthetics, the real world versus the MFA world.
Write What You Experience
It Was Nothing, Really
W.H. Auden lived a secret life, not as a man with a second family or an illicit habit but as, weirdly enough, a genuinely kind human being. He paid for a friend’s costly operation and camped outside the apartment of a woman who suffered from night terrors until she felt safe enough to sleep on her own again. So why did the poet want to hide his good deeds? He claimed he didn’t want to be admired for basic decency.
Tuesday New Release Day
Out this week: Larry McMurtry’s third memoir, Hollywood, about his time in showbiz. Also newly released, the debut effort from Rosecrans Baldwin, You Lost me There.
“Let me allude, before the spell is broken, / to Pushkin”
Listen to Pnin author Vladimir Nabokov read “An Evening of Russian Poetry” in the style—nay, as “an impersonation, in iambic pentameter, with fancy rhymes”—of that book’s titular professor.
Greenwell’s Debut
“What Belongs to You is a haunting, gorgeous, and fierce debut, capturing desire in every sentence—holding the space of what we long for and what can never truly be ours.” The Rumpus reviews Garth Greenwell’s debut novel. To compare and contrast, pair with our review of the novel.
The State of Book Reviews
At Poets & Writers, National Book Critics Circle board member Jane Ciabattari offers a 4,000-word look at where the dust has settled as newspaper book reviews have shrunk and online book sites have proliferated.