To write an essay about Heart of Darkness, Geoff Dyer spent a night on a riverboat inspired by the Roi de Belges, the Congo-bound ship of Conrad's novella.
In her very first blog post for the New York Times, Margaret Sullivan defends the paper’s practice of fact-checking the news.
Writing at the Paris Review Daily, Caleb Crain makes an elegant contribution to the ongoing debate about if and when critics should pull their punches. "How rude should a critic be?" he asks. Crain wonders if we can reframe the question: "How free should a critic be?”
With the launch of Granta’s Chinese edition next month, the 123-year-old literary magazine will “have a presence in four of the five most widely spoken languages.”
Have you heard the term “sock-puppeting” yet? It refers to when authors pretend to be someone else and write glowing reviews of their own books on the internet (or, conversely, lambasting their enemies). Last week, crime fiction writer RJ Ellory was caught praising his own books on Amazon—and disparaging his literary competitors. Not long before that, writer Stephen Leather confessed to posing as a fan and having conversations with himself to drum up buzz for his books. In light of all this, the Guardian wonders: What are the ethics of authors posing as their readers?
Aleksandar Hemon profiles the Wachowski brothers, whose adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas will hit theaters this fall.
