Search Results for: fiction

David Foster Wallace and the Nature of Fact

Longreads Pick

On David Foster Wallace, storytelling and the slippery line between fact and fiction:

Before he sat down with the best tennis player on the planet for a noonday interview in the middle of the 2006 Wimbledon fortnight, David Foster Wallace prepared a script. Atop a notebook page he wrote, “R.Federer Interview Qs.” and below he jotted in very fine print 13 questions. After three innocuous ice breakers, Wallace turned his attention to perhaps the most prominent theme in all his writing: consciousness. Acknowledging the abnormal interview approach, Wallace prefaced these next nine inquires with a printed subhead: “Non-Journalist Questions.” Each interrogation is a paragraph long, filled with digressions, asides, and qualifications; several contain superscripted addendums. In short, they read like they’re written by David Foster Wallace. He asks Roger Federer if he’s aware of his own greatness, aware of the unceasing media microscope he operates under, aware of his uncommon elevation of athletics to the level of aesthetics, aware of how great his great shots really are. Wallace even wrote, “How aware are you of the ballboys?” before crossing the question out.

Published: Sep 1, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,690 words)

Will You Love Me Forever?

I left that place still believing in pleasure, but where love was concerned, I had become as atheistic as a mathematician. Two months later, I was sitting alongside that exquisite woman, in her boudoir, on her divan. I held one of her hands clasped in my own, and such lovely hands they were; we were scaling the Alps of emotion, picking the prettiest flowers, pulling the petals from daisies (one always ends up pulling the petals from daisies, even in a drawing room, without a daisy in sight). At the peak of tenderness, when one is most in love, love is so aware of its fleetingness that each lover feels an imperious need to ask, ‘Do you love me? Will you love me forever?’ I seized that elegiac moment, so warm, so florid, so radiant, to make her tell her most wonderful lies, in that glittering language of exquisite poetry and purple prose peculiar to love.

—From The Human Comedy by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Jordan Stump. Read more fiction.

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Photo: 63794459@N07, Flickr

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Memories of an Affair

Our love affair was chic from beginning to end; the rumpled intellectual and the skilled maîtresse. It was a done thing—the done thing.

Beginning to end. Was it the end? She kept things lively, he thought. I counted on that. I used to look forward to work, knowing I’d see her.

He pictured himself twined in the arms of various time-consuming professional women over the years. As long as Alice was content at home with the boys, it didn’t seem to matter if he had these little intrigues at work. They were never part of my real life, he reflected. They were part of work, part of the New York world I left behind when I boarded this train.

He had gotten in the habit of feeling fine about it, spotting a girl at party and deciding he would miss his train, lunching with an author and agreeing to meet again for drinks in the evening. Surely it made no difference to Alice? She never knew about any of it.

But Alice’s death made Richard feel ashamed of Laetitia. And of all the others, too. I always meant to spend more time at home. Work was so demanding, so all-absorbing.

Work and women. Where was the line between them? The compartments in Richard’s complicated life were collapsing into one another. The distinctions seemed fake, made-up. I devised them to suit myself, he thought.

But work is important to me. His discomfort increased. Work should have remained clear of emotional tangles. The integrity of the intellect, the rigor, the years of conviction and seeking after truth now seemed soiled.

He silently argued the case for the defense. I’m good at publishing, and I’m successful. It’s an exacting profession. No amount of time spent on any book is ever enough. Especially with non-fiction where you have the responsibility to be accurate. To be right.

He had been saying such things for years, to everyone at home when he left, and again when he was late returning. No amount of time spent on any book is ever enough.

He tried to see the dark landscape rushing by outside the glass. But his own reflection stared back at him. There was no penetrating it. And the past was the same. He couldn’t reach it now; he couldn’t change it.

—From the book +1 by Katherine BucknellRead more fiction.

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Photo: 25141069@N02, Flickr

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There Are Three Types of People Who Can Afford to Write Books

Several editors, agents, and authors told me that the money for serious fiction and nonfiction has eroded dramatically in recent years; advances on mid-list titles—books that are expected to sell modestly but whose quality gives them a strong chance of enduring—have declined by a quarter. These are the kinds of book that particularly benefit from the attention of editors and marketers, and that attract gifted people to publishing, despite the pitiful salaries. Without sufficient advances, many writers will not be able to undertake long, difficult, risky projects. Those who do so anyway will have to expend a lot of effort mastering the art of blowing their own horn. “Writing is being outsourced, because the only people who can afford to write books make money elsewhere—academics, rich people, celebrities,” Colin Robinson, a veteran publisher, said. “The real talent, the people who are writers because they happen to be really good at writing—they aren’t going to be able to afford to do it.”

Seven-figure bidding wars still break out over potential blockbusters, even though these battles often turn out to be follies. The quest for publishing profits in an economy of scarcity drives the money toward a few big books. So does the gradual disappearance of book reviewers and knowledgeable booksellers, whose enthusiasm might have rescued a book from drowning in obscurity. When consumers are overwhelmed with choices, some experts argue, they all tend to buy the same well-known thing.

George Packer, in The New Yorker, on Amazon and the book business. Read more from Packer.

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Photo: chasblackman, Flickr

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Charlie Chaplin's Lost Novel

“What happened?”

“A nervous breakdown. I almost died.”

“And you’re still drinking?”

“Occasionally, when I think of things.” He smiled, “The wrong things, I suppose. However, I’ve talked enough about myself. What would you like for breakfast?”

“What a sad business, being funny,” she said thoughtfully.

The table was laid and now he was ready to cook breakfast. He stood a moment, deep in thought. “But it has its compensations … It’s a great thrill to hear an audience laugh. Now let me see,” he said, opening the door of the larder, “We have eggs, salmon, sardines … ” He snapped his fingers. “That’s broken my dream! I dreamt we were doing an act together! That’s the trouble, I get wonderful ideas in my dreams, but when I awake, I forget them. This morning I found myself shaking with laughter. Then I got up and rushed to the desk and wrote five pages of screams. Then I awoke and found I hadn’t written a line.”

From Charlie Chaplin’s novel, Footlights, excerpted in the Guardian. At just over 30,000 words, it’s the only work of fiction ever written by Chaplin, and it traces the same narrative as his film Limelight. The work was in Chaplin’s archives for decades, and is now being published by the Cineteca di Bologna and will be available on both Amazon and the publisher’s website. Read more about Chaplin in the Longreads Archive.

The Bohemians: The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature

Ben Tarnoff | The Bohemians, Penguin Press | March 2014 | 46 minutes (11,380 words)

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For our Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the opening chapter of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, the book by Ben Tarnoff, published by The Penguin Press. Read more…

Julian Barnes on Confidence and Calling Yourself a Writer

INTERVIEWER

So you chose novel writing as a profession.

BARNES

Oh, I didn’t choose it as a profession—I didn’t have the vanity to choose it. I can perhaps now state that I am at last a novelist, and think of myself as a novelist, and can afford to do journalism when it pleases me. But I was never one of those insufferable children who at the age of seven is writing stories under the bedclothes or one of those cocky young wordsmiths who imagine the world awaits their prose. I spent a long time acquiring enough confidence to imagine that I could be some sort of novelist.

Julian Barnes, on early career aspirations, in The Paris Review.

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Photo: anniemole, Flickr

Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta: Our Longreads Member Pick

Longreads Pick

For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share “On the Far Side of the Fire,” an essay by Jessica Wilbanks, which first appeared in Ninth Letter and was awarded the journal’s annual creative nonfiction award. This is the first time it has been published online.

Source: Ninth Letter
Published: Jan 23, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,860 words)

Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta: Our Longreads Member Pick

Jessica Wilbanks | Ninth Letter | Fall/Winter 2013 | 27 minutes (6,860 words)

For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share “On the Far Side of the Fire,” an essay by Jessica Wilbanks, which first appeared in Ninth Letter and was awarded the journal’s annual creative nonfiction award. This is the first time it has been published online.

Become a Longreads Member to receive the full story and support our service. You can also buy Longreads Gift Memberships to send this and other great stories to friends, family or colleagues. 

A brief excerpt is below. Longreads Members, login here to get the full story and ebookRead more…

On the Far Side of the Fire: Life, Death and Witchcraft in the Niger Delta

Child Rights and Rehabilitation Center, Eket, Nigeria

Jessica Wilbanks | Ninth Letter | Fall/Winter 2013 | 27 minutes (6,860 words)

 

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One of our previous Longreads Member Picks, an essay by Jessica Wilbanks, is now free for everyone. “On The Far Side of the Fire” first appeared in Ninth Letter and was awarded the  journal’s annual creative nonfiction award. This is the first time it has been published online.

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