George Dobbs explores the history of some common cliches for The Airship and makes an elegant argument for being aware of overused phrasing: “The worst fiction might never go beyond widely used tropes, but the best fiction starts with an awareness of them.” We agree, and also hope never to read “It was a dark and stormy night…” again.
Before “Once Upon A Time”
Book Club Blunder
What would happen if you anonymously attended a book club about your own novel? Kevin Baker discovered the embarrassing consequences when a meeting on his novel Dreamland turned negative.
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Judge It By This
Year in Reading alum Chang-Rae Lee has a new book out this week, and its cover is making headlines. Readers who buy the limited edition of On Such A Full Sea will get the first 3D printed book cover in publishing history. According to the printers, each cover took fifteen hours to make.
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Edwidge Danticat on Gabriel García Márquez
“I had always felt that [Gabriel] García Márquez’s short stories often took a back seat to his longer works, and that his deadpan dark humor was not discussed often enough,” writes Edwidge Danticat.
Jill Abramson on Rejection and Resilience
Jill Abramson, fired last week from her post as New York Times executive editor, broke her silence today with her commencement address at Wake Forest. “I’m talking to anyone who has been dumped,” she said. “Not gotten the job you really wanted or received those horrible rejection letters from grad school. You know, the sting of losing, or not getting something you badly want. When that happens, show what you are made of.” Video here.
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Publishing’s Gender Gap
At Guardian, Lionel Shriver (America’s best writer?) shares her frustrations in publishing as a female novelist: “A female novelist would never enjoy a Franzen-scale frenzy of adulation in America…”
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