“To get me through a 550-page collection, the stories must be very good indeed. These are.” When Lionel Shriver participated in our Year in Reading ritual several years back, she dedicated her reading diary to William Trevor, who just passed away. “Trevor’s writing is so perfect that you don’t even notice it’s perfect,” she wrote. “He mainlines pure narrative directly into your veins. The words never get in the way; the words, like their author, disappear.”
In Memoriam William Trevor
Translate This Book!
The Quarterly Conversation has commissioned short essays from a panel of luminaries, including Juan Goytisolo and Enrique Vila-Matas, for a feature on untranslated masterworks called “Translate This Book!” Highly recommended.
Talking with Norman Rush
“For me, authenticity of setting is a kind of sine qua non for the feeling that a scene has been correctly done. I become unnerved if I haven’t got a ground plan, don’t know where my characters are. It’s a matter of personal psychology, I guess. I’ve always collected notes on settings. Most, of course, I’ll never use.” At the Tin House blog, Tim Horvath talks shop with Norman Rush.
Supine and Blind
At The Rumpus, Greg Hunter talks with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, whose debut novel, Wolf in White Van, came out last month. In the past few weeks, I’ve recommended former Millions-er Emily M. Keeler’s review of the book, as well as a video interview with Darnielle.
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Tayari Jones on Toni Morrison and Homer
Tayari Jones lists the most influential books of her life, ranging from Jesmyn Ward and Homer to Ann Petry and David Chariandy.
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Weather Permitting
What can you do with all the snow? Shelley Jackson is making stories out of it. The artist is writing a story entirely in snow. You can read the first 200 words of her tale on her Flickr. It begins, “To approach snow too closely is to forget what it is…”
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Greater and Greater
The passing of Muhammad Ali was sad for fans of both sports and greatness alike. One little known Ali fact is that he once composed a line-for-line sonnet with another one of “the greatest,” the poet Marianne Moore. Let none other than George Plimpton explain it to you.
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Fire It Up
Michael B. Jordan was tapped to play Montag in HBO’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The project, which will also star Michael Shannon as Beatty, is currently under development. (Bonus: Tanjil Rashid on “Bradbury’s Middle East Connection“)