A famous writer told us recently that he plays a certain piece of music by Igor Stravinsky every time he sits down to work. We guess the music signals to his brain that it is time to go to the writing place. The remark got us wondering about the conditions in which writers write. Below, […]

Try to conceive of Charles Dickens writing not about Victorian England but about suburban New Jersey in the fifties ala Philip Roth. Then picture Alexander Portnoy in Dickensian London. Take William Faulkner’s LIGHT IN AUGUST out of Mississippi and put it, say, in Kansas. Imagine Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade on the mean streets of Mayberry. […]

If you want to sell a non-fiction book, you have to hand publishers a thirty to fifty-page document which, if done right, provides an overview of the book, summaries of every chapter, a sample chapter, author bio and a section that explains exactly what the market for the book is. The book proposal is painstaking […]

In the May 12th issue of the “New York Review of Books,” memoir reviewer and memoirist Ian Frazier predicts an onslaught of personal stories: “Seventy-six million baby boomers are reaching retirement age. Many of us own computers, and we find ourselves fascinating.” Oh, goody. In the same issue of the NYR, short story writer Lorrie […]

In the movie, “The Social Network” when Eduardo flies to California to see Mark, he arrives soaking wet from standing outside in the rain, his hair in disarray with his bangs down on his forehead. He and Mark then go speak privately, and in a camera cut, Eduardo’s hair is suddenly styled, the bangs being […]