Writing and Education

A writer mustn't know things in depth. If he speaks of something, he shouldn't know everything about it, only the things that go with his temperament. He should not be objective. One can go into depth with a subject, but in a certain direction, not trying to cover the whole thing. For a writer the university is death.

--E. M. Cioran 

Choi Jae-hoon interview

Religion is a gym for the soul, comfort for humans who don’t have anything else to turn to. 

Neel Mukherjee on Man Booker Prize 2014 longlist

I've not yet read Neel Mukherjee who is on longlist this year.  His novel The Lives of Others is about a Naxalite and covers the late sixties of West Bengal. As a Bengali living in Kolkata, who has had a taste of the turbulent period, I find it amazing that Naxalism, which once attracted the youths of Bengal en masse, can be the subject of a novel in these times by a writer who lives in London. More amazing is the fact that the novel dealing with such a subject has captured the attention of Booker judges. Whether it would win is, of course,  a different matter. 

The 2014 Man Booker Prize longlist  

Remembering Hemingway on his 115th birthday

"Write drunk, edit sober"

How serious a writer is Karl Ove Knausgaard?

Oh, I could cut off my head with the bitterness and shame that I have allowed myself to be lured, not just once but time after time. If I have learned one thing over these years that seems to be immensely important, particularly in an era such as ours, overflowing with mediocrity, it is the following:

Don't believe you are anybody.
Don't fucking believe you are somebody.
Because you are not. You're just a smug, mediocre little shit.
Do not believe you are anything special. Do not believe that you're worth anything, because you aren't. You're just a little shit.
So keep your head down and work, you little shit. Then, at least, you'll get something out of it. Shut your mouth, keep your head down, work, and know that you're not worth a shit.
This, more or less, was what I had learned.
This was the sum of all my experience.
This was the only worthwhile thought I'd ever had.

Above is an excerpt from Karl Ove Knausgaard's MY STRUGGLE BOOK 2, which I've been reading over the past week: a novel, indeed, of high quality, apparently a simple and unpretentious narrative, with thoughts and insights, lived-out feelings and experiences, actions and analyses, touching the essence and truth of human life as it should be lived. I have not only loved the book. The reading experience is going to stay with me, and I feel it will have a long-term impact on my life as well as on my writing.

Zia Haider Rahman interview

Writing is indeed essential to me. And I am working on the next book. But the two questions are not inherently related. I have been writing for a long time but not for publication. I’m sure there are many, many people who do the same. The rewards of writing are in the process and not the product—not just for me but for others I have met.

José Manuel Prieto interview

I can't conceive of writing a novel for which I wouldn't develop a narrative device conceived specifically to tell the story I have up my sleeve. There's no doubt, it's an extreme strategy, but it is what I always do. I'm astounded by those writers who borrow another's form and then fit more or less what they want to say within it. Whatever it is I want to tell is inextricably linked to how I tell it. The thing that I call a narrative device is as much a part of the narration as the story itself, and, consequently, it is also a personal creation—I see it as something that I have to create, to look for.

Nadine Gordimer, 1991 Nobel laureate, passes away at 90

“What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.”

Happy 80th birthday to Wole Soyinka

Nigerian Wole Soyinka - the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature - is turning 80. A recurring theme in his work is opposition to dictatorship and to the use of force, in his homeland and elsewhere.

Intizar Husain interview

"The first Partition was in the Mahabharata, and then it was me when I was exiled. Only the Pandavas and I knew the pain of leaving one’s land. The Mahabharata is such a powerful narrative of that pain.”

Translating literature in India

 Madhavankutty Pillai  has an interesting article News from Babel in the Open Magazine.

There are a very small number of translators in India. You can’t make a profession out of it yet. It doesn’t pay enough. Most writers can’t make a living out of writing, translators come even lower down the pecking order.

Rebecca Makkai interview

I wrote a short story once called “Gate House,” which consisted of some of the plot of the 1999 story. And it didn’t work as a short story at all; it was terrible. But when I revisited it, years later, I suddenly thought of turning it into a novel, and that’s when I started to consider what I would have to do to move backwards in time. At that point the whole thing was coming to me as I went about my day, as I was brushing my teeth – I would have these ideas of the way the plot would be layered. Soon I realized it would be stupid to start writing without seriously outlining, so that was the next thing I did. I ended up with a sixty-page outline. I had calendars, I had timelines, I had historical events. And of course it changed a ton as I was actually writing it. I knew I wanted to write it in reverse chronological order, as it appears in the book, but I had to outline first. Because I couldn’t write 1955 until I knew what happened in 1929.

via The Millions

World Cup of Literature: Second round (Brazil vs Chile)

What I’m trying to say is Chile over Brazil, 3-1. Buarque’s Budapest is a book to love. I feel as though it has been written for me, but By Night in Chile was written for the ages.To quote the last line in Bolaño’s book: “And then the storm of shit begins.”

George Orwell's house in Bihar (India) being renovated

Renovation work on legendary British author George Orwell's house in a Bihar town where he was born has begun, officials said Thursday.

The Truth about Publishing

As someone who worked at a literary agency for years, I already knew how random publication tended to be and how difficult it was to sell a book. Most books never sold and those that did rarely earned out their advances. The contract terms were absurdly tilted toward the publishers and authors didn’t have much say in presentation or marketing. Most authors never got agents, and it had little to do with quality. Usually, it was just luck. Still I continued to have some faith in the industry even as I left it, became a professional librarian, received a MFA, wrote and rewrote my works. And while I received initial interest from several agents, I never got one. Even the independent publishers rejected it. All their stated reasons were different.

Read an excerpt from Nabokov's screenplay LOLITA

Several people scramble for shelter, and the first big drops of rain strike the zinc of a lunchbox. As the poor lady in white runs toward the pavilion of a lookout, a blast of livid light fells her. Her graceful specter floats up above the black cliffs holding a parasol and blowing kisses to her husband and child who stand below, looking up, hand in hand.

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Greatest Indian novels

This is claimed to be a list of the greatest Indian novels ever written. It actually comprises only books written in English or translations of works in Hindi and other regional languages.

Have a look anyway.

2014 Pen/Pinter Prize goes to Salman Rushdie

“This prize is English PEN’s way of thanking Salman Rushdie not just for his books and his many years of speaking out for freedom of expression, but also for his countless private acts of kindness.  When he sees writers unjustly vilified, prosecuted, or forced into exile, he takes a personal interest. I think he would be the first to say that it was Harold Pinter who set the example in this regard: the engaged writer never sleeps.”

"My Struggle" is a non-fiction novel

 It isn´t fiction, though, it´s non-fiction, but it isn't a documentary or a memoir either: it's a non fiction novel.

Why you should read it?

What's climate fiction or cli-fi? | World Cup of Literature first round

Cli-fi
..it signals novels that explore the most likely future awaiting us. And that – the sense of reality, that some have called “social realism” – is what makes it so different from science fiction.

World Cup of Literature - First Round
Japan 1 – 0 Colombia