Arm on the Armrest
“Still full of ideas”
“Although comfortable with solitude, he admits: ‘I couldn’t write all the time. As a writer, you have to come out into the world. I don’t have a Salinger or a Pynchon impulse. There are so many things to do that are interesting.’” Talking with Ian McEwan.
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Fictitious Abstractions
Recommended Reading: On educating teenagers’ emotions through literature.
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Desire and Freedom
Recommended Reading: Can desire thrive without freedom? On the works of Margaret Atwood and Michel Houellebecq in The Atlantic. Our essay on Atwood’s vision of the future and review of Ben Jeffery’s Anti-Matter: Michel Houellebecq and Depressive Realism pair nicely.
New Experimental Fiction
Angela Stubbs at The Nervous Breakdown examines current experimental fiction and the New Narrative movement through the work of Dodie Bellamy, Kirsten Kaschock, Julie P. Enzser and Aimee Bender.
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The Open Destiny of Life
“How can you write a complete story without a conventional plot? We often hear that in short stories, the main character must change. But in some stories, including some by Grace Paley, the characters don’t change. Instead, her stories change the reader. You’re different by the time you reach the end.” We’ve told you about The Atlantic’s “By Heart” series plenty of times before. This week, it’s Alice Mattison, who touches on everything from character development to the strange stories of Grace Paley.
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