Before there was John D’Agata, there was Truman Capote. Jack Shafer writes: “Both love ‘real’ facts, but when blocked by journalistic convention from the literary effects they desire, they willingly leapt that fence to create whatever rules they needed to enhance their work.” The difference between them, however, is that while Capote steadfastly resisted suggestions that some of his journalism was fictionalized (despite ample evidence to the contrary), D’Agata is up front about blurring genres, and gets around the problem of fact-bending by calling himself an “essayist.”
Amazon has renewed its $25,000 grant to the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, which will be held this summer in Lost Angeles.
The striking similarities between Marilynne Robinson and Terrence Malick.
Writer and psychic Amie Barrodale offers some hilarious, tarot-tinged advice to writer and philosopher Clancy Martin.
An Italian human-rights group is protesting Dante’s Divine Comedy for being “racist, antisemetic, and Islamophobic,” and demanding that it be removed from classrooms.
Ever wondered what’s in New York Times reporter (and Night of the Smoking Gun author) David Carr’s backpack?
Here’s a list of seventeen books that Ernest Hemingway said he would rather read again for the first time than have a yearly income of a million dollars.
