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Greg Bellow recounts the life of his father, the towering literary figure Saul Bellow, while Janna Malamud, the daughter of author Bernard Malamud, recalls her father at a recent event at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In a profile of Natasha Trethewey in the September/October 2012 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, contributing editor Kevin Nance quotes the poet laureate (who was elected to a second term on Monday) about her use of poetic form. "I never set out to write in a particular form, but usually something in the early drafting process suggests to me the possibility of a form I might follow that might help take the poem in a better direction than I might have sent it without following that impulse,” Trethewey says. “I find that it helps me with poems that have seemed unruly for some reason—maybe the story is too big, or the emotion of it is overwhelming for me, and the form helps bring shape to it." Choose a poem that has been giving you trouble—an unruly poem of your own—and try to rewrite it as a sonnet, a villanelle, a pantoum, or another form. (Consult the Academy of American Poets website for help with poetic forms.)
Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer examines how technology is shaping our humanity; the first photos have surfaced of Paul Thomas Anderson's screen adaptation of Pynchon's Inherent Vice; Amazon made its Kindles available in China; and other news.
"Irony just brushes past a question and leaves you with a thought about it," says Martin Amis. "Satire is meant to be much more vigorous and vehement, the suggestion being that you actually want to change reality—you're agitating for change." A paperback edition of the British novelist's satiric novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England, was published by Vintage last month.
Do you like it when a writer draws a parallel between the writer’s manuscript and other books that have been published?
I love it. These comparisons give me insight into the writer’s influences and what kind of novel the writer has crafted. In some cases, particularly when a writer compares the book to a novel I loved, it can be pretty enticing—“Oh, you love The Stone Diaries? I love it too!” It’s smart, effective marketing, which is essentially what a writer needs to do to get an agent excited about reading the book. I also appreciate when writers mention relevant books I’ve represented. It indicates that they have done their homework.
Amazon executives have testified in the Department of Justice e-book pricing lawsuit; In Norway, the Bible is selling more copies than E. L. James; Justin Alvarez examines the state of the modern library; and other news.
Watch some of the creative professionals inside Random House, including Chip Kidd, who designed the magazine's January/February 2010 issue, explain how they approach new cover designs and tell some stories behind a few memorable covers, including those for the Stieg Larsson books.
Shelf Awareness reports Amazon has made Kindle sales pitches to independent bookstores; swimwear maker Orlebar Brown has partnered with the Paris Review; a secret poet is posting positive words all over the town of Lynn, Massachusetts; and other news.
"We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature," says the New York Times bestselling author (who has more than 1.5 million Twitter followers, a fantastically popular Tumblr page, and more than a million YouTube subscribers) in his acceptance speech for the Indie Champion Award from the American Booksellers Association.
In A Chance Meeting: The Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, nonfiction author Rachel Cohen investigates the relationships and interactions between various writers—Henry James and William Dean Howells; Carl Van Vechten and Gertrude Stein; Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore—and while the book relays actual encounters, many of the unknown details (what clothes were worn, what the subjects were thinking) are imagined. Write a letter to one of your favorite writers, living or dead, telling him or her about your work, your life, and how their writing has influenced you. Then write an imagined response, from the writer to you.
