“I lost the first good novel I ever wrote to a computer disaster. It happened at a crucial time in my life. I was working nights, living in a mouse-infested tenement in Giuliani-era Harlem and still figuring out if I could even do this thing — become a writer for real.” Mat Johnson on NPR’s All Tech Considered blog about the ultimate authorial nightmare, and how he recovered from it. Pair with our review of Johnson’s latest novel, Loving Day.
Lost and Found
Kindle’s “Public Notes”
Amazon’s “Public Notes” feature kindle.amazon.com isn’t as new as some are saying, but it might be creepier than you think. In other Kindle news, GalleyCat‘s put together a “how-to” guide to copy and pasting text selections from one device to another.
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Branching Out
I’ve written before about Wolf in White Van, the new novel by Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle. But there’s another book out by a prominent artist in a field other than writing: Consumed by David Cronenberg, the director of A History of Violence. Sam Costello reviews the new book over at Full-Stop.
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The Housewife Novel
Recommended Reading: On the history of literature about housewives, from Madame Bovary to Dept. of Speculation.
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Nikky Finney on the Poet’s Responsibility
Nikky Finney and Walter Mosley discuss her responsibility as a poet to share her different perspective with the wider world.
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“YA fiction has blossomed outside the literary world’s prestige economy.”
In response to an article in the Atlantic observing that women dominate the world of YA fiction, Laura Miller wonders whether men avoid and women embrace YA fiction for the same reason: it offers little prestige.
Can a Song Stop a War?
“What I’ve found is that a lot of soldiers are surprisingly apolitical. Their reality is, ‘Today I’m going to leave the gate for twelve hours, and I’m going to make it back to the dining facility by sundown with the arms and legs of me and my buddies intact.’ So you say, ‘Well, what about the Project for the New American Century and the preexisting agenda blah blah blah?’ They go, ‘Yeah, that’s cool, but I have to get through today.’ So their reality is not a political reality as much as it’s, ‘If I’m driving by this piece of garbage, will it blow up?'” Revisit this old interview with Henry Rollins over at Guernica Magazine, which manages the nearly impossible: to be both level-headed and political.
John Banville on Pen Names and Pretension
Irish novelist John Banville discusses his latest mystery, Snow, and his decision to do away with his longtime pseudonym.
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