“This doesn’t really tell you what he was like. I say what we did together, that he helped me, what I think he liked. I don’t know how to say what he was like. I loved him.” For The Los Angeles Review of Books, an interview with Lynne Tillman on her relationship with art historian, critic, and theorist Craig Owens, who died 29 years ago at the age of 39. Tillman discusses Owens’s idea of writing “alongside,” not “about,” art, adding, “I don’t expect answers from art. It doesn’t speak as people or other animals do…I’m speaking and looking ‘at’ or ‘to’ an artwork; I am not explaining it, not talking ‘about’ it, but addressing myself ‘to’ it.”
Lynne Tillman Doesn’t Write About Art
The Graveyard Movie
Neil Gaiman’s 2009 Newbery medal winner, The Graveyard Book, was originally supposed to be adapted into an animated film. Now, however, it looks like Ron Howard might take the project’s reins and shoot it in live action.
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The Novel vs. The Net
Sven Birkerts, still working through arguments begun in The Gutenberg Elegies, suggests in The American Scholar that “the novel and the Internet are opposites.” (via)
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Bill Morris at the Half King
Live in NYC? Want to hear our own Bill Morris read from his latest novel? Then stop by the Half King this Monday at 7 p.m. Bill won’t just be reading — he’ll also be spinning songs by James Brown, Smokey Robinson and more.
Engage, Don’t Just Talk
“Perhaps no part of the First Novel Experience is as confusing and overwhelming as figuring out how to balance the demands of social media with the demands of writing more fiction.” Martha Woodroof talks with Lydia Netzer about social media in the world of publishing and book promotion. Their advice? “Try to be funny as much as you can. Try to participate in conversations, not just start your own. Try to engage, not just talk.”
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On Reviewers, and Paying Them
LA Review of Books editor in chief Tom Lutz has written about the future of book reviews and “a missing generation of journalists.”
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