“I’m drawn to books that deal in fragments and digressions, authors that patch together something larger from these pieces while also letting them stand on their own.” Sam Stephenson writes about “reimagining what a biography can look like” and reading Tennessee Williams: Notebooks, edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton, in a piece for The Paris Review. He also mentions Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, which Tyler Gillespie recently reviewed for The Millions.
Reimagining Biography
Jack Gilbert Dies at the Age of 87
Jack Gilbert died yesterday at the age of 87. Gilbert was the author of five standalone poetry collections—as well as additional collected volumes such as last March’s Collected Poems—and he was also a past winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award. For The LA Times, John Penner reviews the poet’s legacy. Or, perhaps as fitting tribute to Gilbert’s life and work, better to hear his own final lines to the poem “Failing and Flying”: “I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, / but just coming to the end of his triumph.”
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I Worry That I Don’t Have a Title Yet
“I worry that people in the city where the novel is based will take issue, all kinds of issue, with it. I worry that readers will be like who cares.” Here are all the things you should be worried about while working on a novel, helpfully brought to light by Susannah Felts at The Literary Hub.
The Primetime Magicians
Jonathan Franzen and Chad Harbach aren’t the only two authors adapting their works for television. Lev Grossman is working on an hour-long Fox series based on his novel The Magicians.
Lost and Found and Lost
Recommended Reading: On translation and Máirtín Ó Cadhain, author of Cré na Cille, which is widely believed to be the greatest Irish-language novel of the twentieth century.
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A Seminal Work
Over at The Literary Hub, real-life writer Anthony Marra has conducted a hilarious interview with Dana Schwartz, the creative mind behind everyone’s favorite–if uncomfortably familiar–Twitter account, @GuyInYourMFA. Here’s the New York Times review of Marra’s latest novel, The Tsar of Love and Techno.
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The 2010 Booker Longlist Odds
With the Booker longlist out, that means betting is underway. Bookies are calling David Mitchell, Tom McCarthy, and Andrea Levy the favorites right now, with Damon Galgut the longest shot to win the prize.