A couple weeks back, the New York Times published a piece by Joel Stein, arguing that adults should not read books aimed at youth. There have been plenty of cogent, scornful, and indignant responses, but for my money C.S. Lewis, speaking from the grave, says everything that needs to be said: Critics who treat ‘adult’ [...]
Archive for the ‘Tangents’ Category
C.S. Lewis to Joel Stein: Grow Up.
Posted in Tangents, tagged C.S. Lewis, Joel Stein, Reading on April 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
More From Chris Jones: On Writing, Fear and Disappointment
Posted in Tangents, tagged Chris Jones, Esquire, National Magazine Awards, Scott Raab, Writing on March 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Awhile back I added Esquire’s Chris Jones to my collection of writers and their origin stories. I got the story of Jones’ big break from his blog, which turns out to be kind of a gold mine for people – like me – who like to geek out on other writers talking about their writing. [...]
How Bruce Chatwin ‘Saved Travel Writing’
Posted in Tangents, tagged Bruce Chatwin, Harpers, Travel Writing, Writing on March 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
I was catching up on some back issues of Harper’s a few weeks back, and this quotation about the author of In Patagonia and The Songlines caught my eye: He saved travel writing by changing its mandate: After Chatwin, the challenge was to find not originality of destination but originality of form. Among those who [...]
The Rumpus Talks Truth in Memoir
Posted in Tangents, tagged Memoir, Nonfiction, The Rumpus, Writing on January 25, 2012 | 1 Comment »
This is a favorite, much-kicked-around topic of mine, and earlier this week the good folks at The Rumpus added a fresh contribution to the debate. Messing With Memoir is an essay about the author’s efforts to revise her out-of-print memoir, years after she’d written it, and the ethical issues she grappled with in doing so. [...]
Writer Richard Van Camp on ‘the Magic of the North’
Posted in Tangents, tagged Richard Van Camp, Writing on November 25, 2011 | 2 Comments »
NWT writer Richard Van Camp talks writing and the North in this article from the Camrose Canadian: I’m going to give you the only possible advice any writer can give you: if you want to be a writer, write something you would like to read. Growing up in Fort Smith, my grandparents were medicine people [...]
Graham Greene on the Victorian ‘Death Wish’
Posted in Tangents, tagged Cold War, Friday Night Nerditude, Graham Greene, Victorian England on July 15, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I’m going through some old notes and came across an interesting tidbit about Graham Greene and the Victorians. The context, briefly: A 1966 review in the Times Literary Supplement tackled a new biography of a Victorian general, and the reviewer questioned the biography author’s belief in the general’s “death wish.” Graham Greene wrote a Letter [...]
Freelance Writing and Editing Rates
Posted in Tangents, tagged Editing, Freelancing, Rates, Writing on May 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
In the course of some googling, I came across a few useful links regarding editorial and writing rates. First, from the Professional Writers Association of Canada: What to Pay a Writer. Next up, the Editorial Freelancers Association lists these Editorial Rates. And finally, the Editors’ Association of Canada has an explanation of the various types [...]
Two Takes on “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace
Posted in Tangents, tagged David Foster Wallace, Literary Criticism, The Pale King on April 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
David Foster Wallace’s “posthumous unfinished novel,” The Pale King, has arrived — let the commentating begin. Over at Slate, Tom Scocca tears down Michiko Kakutani’s review of the new book, and of the whole notion, more generally, that a deceased author should be evaluated based on work that he never completed. Scocca, in blistering form:
Wallace Stegner: ‘On the Teaching of Creative Writing’
Posted in Tangents, tagged Teaching Writing, Wallace Stegner, Writing, Writing Classes on March 20, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I picked up this little booklet on a whim at the public library last week. It’s the transcript of a Q&A with Stegner, Pulitzer-winning novelist and the founder of Stanford’s creative writing program, and in the same way that fiction writing advice often crosses genre boundaries and offers help to nonfiction writers, this book — [...]
