Books by Pulitzer Prize-winning authors like Jeffrey Eugenides, Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, Annie Proulx, Philip Roth, Art Spiegelman, Wallace Stegner, John Updike, Robert Penn Warren, and Alice Walker were deemed unfit.
Many artists exaggerate the need for self-absorption without understanding what is here expressed: that the silence and meditation of artistic “self-absorption” require an unsexy innocence…
Always fond of travel and changes of locale, Tennessee Williams writes to James Laughlin from Rome, about his admiration for Van Gogh and his inability to write anywhere near Broadway, where so many of his plays were performed. 45 Via … Continued
In the letter below, Henry James writes to Violet Paget, apologizing fervently for not having written sooner, before offering acerbic feedback on Paget’s novel, Miss Brown—by then already published. St. Alban’s CliffBournemouth My dear Miss Paget. I take up my pen, … Continued
Enclosed the bludy grand. Listen this G is off the record. Uncle Gus gave me some stock to use to make the African trip…
When I listen to the small talk of the local men of letters, I am astonished at how decent they can be in print and how stupid in conversation. Confess: Is that the way it is with me?
Because we touch we want to speak, to name. Because we speak we’ve learned to build beyond instinct and toward the imagination, in a refined collaboration…
The day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined—the ceremony—including the masqued priests—the half-naked executioners—the bandaged criminals—the black Christ & his banner—the scaffold—the soldiery—the slow procession—& the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe—the splash of blood—& the ghastliness of the exposed heads…
Greenwald has been among the most dogged and committed chroniclers of the protracted, preventable, ongoing, and utterly tragic erosion of our basic civil liberties in the name of homeland “security”…
Alterations never do any good. Either persevere and force it on the public as it is, or else scrap it promptly. You cannot really alter a thing of that size enough to make the difference between success and failure.
