Ornette Coleman on Writing + B/W Films on B/W = Sweet(forgive)ness
Ornette has been writing a book on harmolodics but it’s yet to be published.
Someone should really turn the tables on that one.
A Dementedly Long Interview with Ben Greenman by Jaime Karnes
(Editor’s Note: A while back Roxane Gay reviewed Ben Greenman’s really fine short story collection, What He’s Poised to Do. Ben has another book coming out in early October, Celebrity Chekhov.)
“As an artist you have to have the confidence that it will be original once it passes through you.”
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker and author of numerous books of fiction, including Superbad, Superworse, A Circle is A Balloon and A Compass Both: Stories about Human Love, Correspondences, and Please Step Back. He also writes satirical musicals about the likes of Britney Spears and Sarah Palin; pens a political column by an earth ball; and maintains a website called Letters with Character that invites readers to write their favorite (or, in some cases, least favorite) fictional person.
This summer, Greenman’s What He’s Poised To Do was released by Harper Perennial; the Los Angeles Times called it “astonishing” and publications ranging from the Miami Herald to Bookslut agreed. His new collection, Celebrity Chekhov, publishes later this month. I met Ben in midtown and we wandered over to Bryant Park, where we discussed everything from a story collection’s “Albumness” to the potentially one-fingered Seth Rogen, whom Ben is famous for writing a comic letter to after the movie Superbad (same title as his book) was released.
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October 1st, 2010 / 9:00 am
October 1st, 2010 / 9:00 am
A Few Tidbits on That Whole Over/Under 40 Fancy Writer Genius Thing
Find the Story: A Contest
I am cleaning my office. This sucks. Right now, I am taking a break. Yet, I do find all sorts of fun stuff when I “organize” my life. I found this torn out page from a New Yorker. The date is December 25, 2006-January 1, 2007. Otherwise, all I have is the last page of a story that clearly moved me, in particular the ending (good job, mystery author) and I remember these lines filled a carved spot inside me at the time:
Existence in the here and now only made me realize how much attraction the past exerts.
George Saunders and his enormous, throbbing heart: a homily
Is George Saunders the most radical fiction writer writing in the mainstream today? Or to put it a possibly better way, is Saunders the most mainstream of today’s radical fiction writers? I don’t mean “radical” in terms of style or form–though Saunders has certainly done his share of innovating–but I invoke the term rather in its classic political connotation. I’ve read most of Saunders’s books, and worked with him when I edited Come Back, Donald Barthelme, but something clicked for me yesterday when I read “Al Roosten,” his new story in the current issue of The New Yorker, and after the jump I’m going to talk about it for about 3000 words, and at some point there will be some spoilers, and it’s not really a “spoiler alert” kind of story, but anyway maybe you want to read the story before you read this.
