Saturday, August 24, 2019

Does Fiction Reveal Writers?


Do you agree with Naipaul? We say that "never" and "totally" are hyperbolic, but we generally agree with Naipaul. And Naipaul's quote is interesting in light of Henry Miller's and Vladimir Nabokov's oeuvres. 

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Best Books About Writers


This excerpt from Katy Waldman's New Yorker review of Andrew Martin's Early Work confirmed one of my concerns about white people who listen to hardcore rap:

"Yeah, I'm pretty into monotonous drug rap right now," she said. "I mean, like everybody. I guess it's the usual racist thing, where white people like it because it takes their worst suspicions about minorities and confirms them in lurid and entertaining ways?"

However, while reading the novel, I found the references to writing, novelists, poets, books, and publishing intriguing, which reminded me that the best books and films about writers/artists are the ones that depicts the writers writing. (Interestingly, Early Work's narrator opined that Balthus' perverted paintings of girls and cats are "wonderful".)


Unlike Olivier Assayas' Something in the Air (2012) and Personal Shopper (2016), I was disappointed with Non-Fiction (2018) [French: Doubles vies] because, although the dialogue about writing and publishing was extremely interesting, the writer wasn't shown honing his craft - not one time.

For the record, our top three books and films about writers/artists are:

Books
The Tenants Bernard Malamud
Transparent Things Vladimir Nabokov
Look at the Harlequins Vladimir Nabokov

Films
The Tenants (2005)
Something in the Air (2012) 
Personal Shopper (2016)