John Banville
Booker Prize-winner John Banville discusses writing crime novels under a pseudonym, hanging around with authors who own multiple homes, and why literature takes longer to produce than pulp.
literature
A collection of 229 issues
Poetry for the Age of American Decline
Poetry can provide solace. It can also remind people to quit freaking out. Poems selected for Congress, nervous shoppers, Maureen Dowd, and the President of the United States.
The List Maker
Some people keep notebooks. Others keep lists. One type wants to remember; the other wants to forget. What’s not clear is who’s happier for all the scribbling. Confessions of a list-aholic.
Jim Shepard
Our man in Boston and Jim Shepard, the author most recently of You Think That's Bad, discuss whacko projects, researching short stories by jet, and how much gold it takes for a writer to dump Knopf's Gary Fisketjon.
The Man Behind the Window
Allan Seager was a student at Oxford when he contracted tuberculosis. What happened next made him one of America's greatest writers—declared the heir to Anderson and Hemingway—ever to be forgotten. Yet one of Seager's short stories endures in ways that none of Hemingway's can match.
Philip Kerr
Our man in Boston sits down with the author of the "Berlin Noir" trilogy and other books, to talk about detectives, Nazis, and Impressionist writing.
Caught Telling Fiction
The gap between literary and historical fiction is mostly a marketing ploy--at least until a novelist meets a survivor of her story's plot.
Travels With Nathan
To our knowledge, Ezra Pound never saw a donkey show. Here's updated cantos for drunk backpackers in Madrid and jerks on the Dead Sea.
The Biblioracle Strikes Again
While the Tournament of Books hangs on a thread until Monday, the Biblioracle steps in to ease the pain. At 3 p.m. Eastern, list the last five books you read, and he'll tell you what to read next.
The Greatest Book Review Ever
Not everyone can be a judge in the Tournament of Books. Not every novel deserves a rave. But what if the world’s best books were reviewed all at once? The ultimate Frankenstein of reviews.