Richard Cohen writes about plagiarizing real people’s identities and the dirty side of writing. As Milan Kundera writes in The Art of the Novel, “The novelist destroys the house of his life and uses its stones to build the house of his novel.”
The Art of Stealing
Fiction Changing History
In an article for Vanity Fair, Meredith Turtis argues that “perhaps fiction… can change the place women have in history,” by giving forgotten figures new lives as characters with fascinating stories to tell. She cites Paula McClain‘s just-released Circling the Sun, about a trailblazing female aviator, and Megan Mayhew Bergman‘s Almost Famous Women, which could have been included based on the title alone. Her argument pairs well with our own Hannah Gersen‘s review of Jami Attenberg‘s Saint Mazie, a novel that fictionalizes the life and voice of a very real “Bowery celebrity.”
●
●
A New Native American Epic
There There by Tommy Orange is one of our most anticipated books of the year. It debuts next week and this week Orange receives the New York Times treatment along with a few other rising star indigenous writers in an excellent profile. “Mr. Orange is part of a new generation of acclaimed indigenous writers from the United States and Canada who are publishing groundbreaking, formally innovative poetry, fiction and prose, shattering old tropes and stereotypes about Native American literature, experience and identity. Their ranks include poets like Layli Long Soldier, Natalie Diaz, Joshua Whitehead and Tommy Pico, and the essayists and memoirists Elissa Washuta and Terese Marie Mailhot.
Do You Even Want to Know How?
Did the phrase “screw the pooch” originate in 1950 in a Yale dormitory?
“Inspiration and Obsession”
Recommended reading: Joyce Carol Oates writes about “Inspiration and Obsession in Life and Literature” for the New York Review of Books.
Short Stories for Sale
●
●