Emma Goldman on Maxim Gorky, 1914:
We in America are conversant with tramp literature. A number of writers of considerable note have described what is commonly called the underworld, among them Josiah Flynt and Jack London, who have ably interpreted the life and psychology of the outcast. But with all due respect for their ability, it must be said that, after all, they wrote only as onlookers, as observers. They were not tramps themselves, in the real sense of the word. In "The Children of the Abyss" Jack London relates that when he stood in the breadline, he had money, a room in a good hotel, and a change of linen at hand. He was therefore not an integral part of the underworld, of the homeless and hopeless.
New York Times, October 23, 1994:
These days you can walk into the St. Marks Bookshop and find his second novel, "The Ice Storm," on the same shelf as James Michener and Cormac McCarthy, thanks to alphabetical order.... [H]e makes nearly all of his income from writing. And lives in a state of at least intermittent dread. "This minute I'm sitting here being interviewed," he mused, "and in five years I won't be able to get published."
Novelist (and former "Jeopardy" champion?) Arthur Phillips talks to Robert Birnbaum:
RB: I haven't managed to read writers who I now see as cultish-Proust and Wodehouse.
AP: I have enjoyed him enormously. I don't know that I'd read all 95 or 150 or 300 books or whatever it is-
RB: There's an example of productivity or hypergraphia.
AP: There is a famous story-I'm going to get the details wrong, but he was in New York for a while and someone asked if he was hanging out at the Algonquin and he said, "I don't know how those guys get any work done." That's the problem with Brooklyn-you have to really try not to meet other writers.
Winners of the 2005 Faux Faulker Contest. Winner: "The Administration and the Fury: If William Faulkner were writing on the Bush White House".
Why children love Roald Dahl's stories -- and many adults don't. Danny, The Champion of the World is my favorite Dahl book and I've read most of the others as well.
