“if I am going to set a novel in a real place, in a real time, I must get all the details right. I should not put a wall around Washington Square, start the Iraq War in 2005, or claim that maple trees bear acorns. This matters because it has to do with keeping faith with your readers. If you get something verifiable wrong, why should they believe you when you really are making things up?” Helen Benedict for Amazon Author Insights on finding the balance between research and imagination when writing fiction. (Full disclosure, Amazon helps us pay the bills around here!)
Fact and Fiction
If we explain this any more the joke will be lost
"The Time I Spent On A Commercial Whaling Ship Totally Changed My Perspective On The World," a blogger named Ishmael writes, on the sister blog to The Onion. (But I like these titles better.)
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Lineup Announced for 2013 PEN World Voices Festival
The lineup for the 2013 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature has been announced. The festival will commence on April 29th with a reading “about the notion of bravery” from three writers – including Millions contributor A. Igoni Barrett.
The Contrived
It’s a common saying among actors that the script does most of the work. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible for a great writer to make art out of a bad story? At The Kenyon Review’s blog, Amit Majmudar says it is, using Shakespeare as proof. Related: five experts on the Bard’s greatest plays.
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Tuesday New Release Day
Already on shelves ahead of its "official" release date is Mark Twain's long embargoed Autobiography. Also new this week are The Petting Zoo, a posthumously published novel by punk poet Jim Carroll; a new collection of Selected Stories from master of the form William Trevor; Cynthia Ozick's "retelling" of of Henry James’ The Ambassadors, Foreign Bodies; and, in time for election day today, Matt Taibbi's collection of biting political journalism, Griftopia.
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The Book Detective
"When I ask him why he likes something, it’s a perverse exercise less to gain new insight than to trick him into admitting to his personality." For Longreads, Dead Girls writer Alice Bolin tries to understand her father through the (sometimes misogynistic) mystery novels he reads and loves. (Read our own Janet Potter on Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy.)
Final Thoughts
"If this was our own son and daughter, would we stop loving them simply because they had dreams of making it big on the stage, or in a career that few people actually respect? No way." Jerry Springer on making art.
J.G. Ballard Geocoded
The comprehensive list of locations in J.G. Ballard's fiction has been geocoded. Click on a location to view the relevant text, such as Memories of the Space Age in Vancouver or Rushing to Paradise in Malawi.
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Carrying on García Márquez’s Torch
After the passing of Gabriel García Márquez, the team of Reed Johnson, Juan Forero, and Sara Munoz had cause to opine within the pages of the Wall Street Journal, who are the other “post-boom Spanish-language fiction writers whose works continue to redraw the map of Latin literature?” They list six suggestions, but I think one of the names on that list would've disagreed with the comparison. (Bonus: An unpublished Márquez manuscript may be on the way as well.)
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