In ‘The Flaubert Apocrypha’ (from: Flaubert’s Parrot, Vintage International, New York, 1990, pp. 115-116), Julian Barnes writes: If the sweetest moment in life is a visit to a brothel which doesn’t come off, perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, whichContinue reading “The Pleasures Of Books Never To Be Written”
Tag Archives: the art of writing
Hermione Lee On Wasting Nothing
The Art of Biography series of interviews at The Paris Review includes the following exchange between Hermione Lee and Louisa Thomas in No. 4: INTERVIEWER This is something you consistently look at—the ways in which a period that is commonly considered a dead period in a writer’s life feeds into their work. I’m thinking especially of Cather and herContinue reading “Hermione Lee On Wasting Nothing”
Writing And The Hundred Book Summer
Shortly after I have returned my student’s writing assignments to them, I start setting up appointments with those students who want to talk about their grades. In these consultations, as I go over the importance of returning to the reading assignments, preparing an early draft, meeting the writing tutor, revising often, having a friend readContinue reading “Writing And The Hundred Book Summer”
‘Write As If Your Parents Were Dead’
Phillip Roth is said to have tendered the following advice–on the art of writing–to Ian McEwan : ‘Write as if your parents were dead.’ By this, I take it that Roth meant for McEwan to write with a distinctive fearlessness, one not courting parental approval, not apprehensive of parental disapproval of writerly indulgence, of libertiesContinue reading “‘Write As If Your Parents Were Dead’”
Samir Chopra 