Fiction
I first met Paul Scott at Firpo’s bar on Chowringhee in Calcutta in 1944. READ MORE >>
On Screen, 'Gatsby' is Beautiful—and Damned Boring
Five films later, Hollywood still doesn't get Fitzgerald's novel
F Scott Fitzgerald’s last royalty check was for $13.13. He died in Hollywood in 1940, a has-been at the age of 44. His young secretary at the time, Frances Kroll, writes in her memoir that when that final royalty statement came through from Scribner’s, “the handful of sales proved that the author, himself, was the only purchaser. He told me about it, laughing bitterly.” READ MORE >>
Like a late victorian clergyman sweating in the dark over his Doubts, I have moments when my faith in fiction falters and then comes to the edge of collapse. I find myself asking, “Am I really a believer?” And then, “Was I ever?” First to go are the disjointed, upended narratives of experimental fiction. Oh well ... Next, the virgin birth miracle of magical realism. But I was always Low Church on that one. It’s when the icy waters of skepticism start to rise round the skirts of realism herself that I know my long night has begun. READ MORE >>
Since my fiction is usually about people, and I consider sex one of the more important and emotionally fascinating activities people undertake, sometimes I must run the gauntlet of writing a sex scene. The results vary, though I try to make a habit of not publishing the many occasions when things don't work. "Don't worry," I console myself, stroking my arm. "It happens." READ MORE >>
American fiction has a work problem. Blame it on an MFA system that shunts wannabe writers into the academy before they have time to scuff their sneakers in a break room or callous their hands on a broom handle. Blame it on an overwhelming literary consensus that there’s something sullying about implicating oneself in capitalism, even if it’s to document it. Or blame it on a conviction, among readers and writers alike, that the workaday world is plain old boring. READ MORE >>
Disturbia—Will Self’s Experiment
INCREASINGLY, ARTISTS OF all stripes are expected not only to create original work but also to provide some explanation of their intentions. Consumers, especially of art that is not straightforward, want proof that it hasn’t been created merely to confound or bamboozle them. Artists want to stave off accusations of obscurity, pointlessness, and technical incompetence (“My kid could do that!”) by situating their work within a larger context. READ MORE >>
