Recommended reading: Catherine Lacey writes for Granta about “The Question of Fate” and fiction writing.
Fate and Fiction
Writerly Relations
In an interview with Big Think back in 2008, David Remnick said of Philip Roth that the writer “would have been my father had Philip Roth not been a literary intellectual but rather an orthodontist in North Jersey.” At The New Yorker’s website, Remnick eulogizes Roth's work upon his retirement. (Keith Meatto did the same thing for us.)
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History Lesson – Part II
Who would have predicted, when an unassuming history of post-punk called Our Band Could Be Your Life was published in 2001, that we'd be celebrating its tenth anniversary with concert blowouts and Paris Review Daily interviews? Most anyone who read it, that's who.
I’m With the Ogres
There’s a tiff going on between Ursula le Guin and Kazuo Ishiguro. After le Guin accused Ishiguro of “despising” the fantasy genre, following an interview with the Times in which he wondered aloud if his readers would be prejudiced against his latest book, Ishiguro defended himself, claiming that he is “firmly on the side of the ogres and the pixies.” You can read a full rundown in The Guardian.