Entries from June 2010
Jun. 30, 2010
Man Out of Time: “The Disenchanted” by Budd Schulberg
In *The Disenchanted,* Budd Schulberg wrote the final act in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragedy.
Tags: Budd Schulberg · F. Scott Fitzgerald · featured posts · The Disenchanted
Jun. 28, 2010
West End Memories (continued)
Reader “Leonard in Florida” writes with another memory triggered by reading The Strangler: My father played the numbers with a guy by the name of Brownie in the West End for years. He naturally had a formula for figuring the number. One night he came home with a paper bag with $4,000. He had hit [...]
Tags: The Strangler · West End
Jun. 21, 2010
Work, work, work
No blogging this week. I’m off to finish writing my book. See you on the other side. Image: Frank Chimero, “10 Principles That May Make Your Work Better Or May Make It Worse”
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Jun. 16, 2010
A Face Behind the Page
“When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page.” — George Orwell, “Charles Dickens”
Tags: Charles Dickens · George Orwell · quotes for writers
Jun. 16, 2010
West End Memories
A reader, Leonard in Florida, emails a memory of Boston’s old West End, which figures so prominently in The Strangler. When I was a kid in the 1940′s, my grandfather and father had an egg store at 203 Chambers Street in the West End. It was a landing spot for refugees. There were all types [...]
Tags: The Strangler · West End
Jun. 14, 2010
The MFA Generation
D. G. Myers on the shrinking world of the American novelist and, consequently, the shrinking relevance of the American novel.
Tags: D. G. Myers · quotes for writers
Jun. 10, 2010
Browning: “a few I value more”
“I can have little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a [...]
Tags: quotes for writers · Robert Browning
Jun. 8, 2010
You never completely relax again
Budd Schulberg in his novel *The Disenchanted,* parroting Fitzgerald, says being a writer in awful curse.
Tags: Budd Schulberg · F. Scott Fitzgerald · The Disenchanted
Jun. 5, 2010
Writers Unplugged
Myself, I’ve set up a second computer, devoid of internet, for my fiction-writing. That’s to say, I took an expensive Mac and turned it back into a typewriter. (You should imagine my computer set-up guy’s consternation when I insisted he drag the internet function out of the thing entirely. “I can just hide it from [...]
Tags: Jonathan Lethem · quotes for writers
Jun. 4, 2010
Inventing Laurie Barber
Last Friday I turned in a second version of the manuscript of my novel-in-progress, and this week I got back notes from my editor and agent. The changes they suggest are mostly minor — an off-key note here and there, a few details to clarify. The book is in good shape, for the most part. [...]
Tags: Defending Jacob
