Writer James Salter died on Friday. We interviewed him in 2012 and he reflected on memory and on his long life as a writer. He said, “Everything you know, nobody else knows, and everything you imagine or see belongs to you alone. What you write comes out of that, both in the trivial and deepest sense.” Prior to that, in 2010, Sonya Chung wrote about Salter’s legacy and how he finally seemed to be getting his due as more than just “a writer’s writer.”
James Salter (1925-2015)
Well That Was Dramatic
Author Terry Pratchett‘s archives have been destroyed by steamroller, according to The New York Times. The hard drive containing all of his unpublished work was, per his wishes, run over by a close friend. We ran this remembrance on the occasion of his passing two years ago.
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Zombified
Recommended Reading: Michael Christie on Aleksandar Hemon’s The Making of Zombie Wars. You could also read Hemon’s Year in Reading entry.
Poetry!
At the recently re-launched Poems Out Loud site, you can see Stanley Kunitz talk about Gerard Manley Hopkins, and hear contemporary poets like Kim Addonizio read their own work.
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What Is Camp?
You may have watched the Met Gala this week with a mix of horror, fascination, and one nudging complaint: That's not camp!
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Gives a Whole New Meaning to “Posting Up with a Book”
For those awkward outdoor situations in which you can’t overtly clutch a book to passively inform onlookers “hey, I read,” Fieldcandy has designed a tent that looks like a book.
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Now Is Not the Time for Realism
Recommended Listening: Margaret Atwood on her new novel – one of the most anticipated books of 2015, and the fall of realistic fiction. As she explains it, “when there’s perceived instability that’s happening you can’t write [a so-called realistic] novel and have people believe it.”
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Are Instagram Poets Actually Poets?
For the Poetry Foundation, Timothy Yu considers in greater depth the significance of Instagram poets in the larger world of contemporary poetry.
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