Barry Lopez in Granta. The first quote is so often the writer’s dilemma. “As much as I believed I was fully present in the physical worlds I was traveling through, I understood over time that I was not. More often I was only thinking about the place I was in. Initially awed by an event, …
Tag: Writing
Beebe
Will Beebe, naturalist, writer, inventor, New York socialite, jungle and ocean explorer, is a man whose like it would be hard to have today. But without his example, I don’t know if I would be the person I am. Tom McGuane also cites him as a childhood inspiration, not for writing (I think he slights …
Oliver Sacks– 1933 – 2015; RIP
Tom McIntyre just let me know that Oliver Sacks has died at 82, from a recurrence of his melanoma. I wrote back, instantly: “A great man; a Martian, as he characterized his friend Temple Grandin, but a GREAT Martian, and great writer- scientist. I have read nearly all his books, picking up the autobiography when …
Quote
Via Jim Spencer: “”Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?” (James Joyce)
Cover
Book is more than half done but not done; cover is. Vadim of course.
James Salter, RIP
James Salter, novelist, is dead at ninety. The BBC report, which Reid sent, said that he “never converted critical acclaim into commercial success.” Really? He was a “writer’s writer”, and a maker of perfect sentences and some small perfect books, as well as a big one– in that sense, and because of the slightly icy …
Plans & Changes
I have signed a contract to do the so- called “Silk Road Dog Book”, The Hounds of Heaven, by September, and have a verbal agreement to continue on immediately with the contrarian Passenger pigeon book, A Feathered Tempest, on September second– see two articles online in Living Bird, “Superdoves” and “A Feathered Tempest”– and maybe …
McGuane at the Strand
As promised. These have generated a lot of email (personal, off blog, though I would encourage them here) enough that I might start looking for such interviews. I will put some thoughts in reaction below (above?), probably tomorrow… OK, in-stream commentary to friends edited only for a minimum of sense and coherence: “Living in the …
Tom McGuane on writing and reading
The always intelligent McGuane on what made him a writer. “I read like a son- of- a – bitch” was an early statement of his that helped confirm my vocation– in my youth I wrote at best in spasms, but read everything. That includes books he mentions he read but alludes to as as “non- …
Rueful truth
Reid attended Tom McGuane’s signing for his new book of short stories, Crow Fair, at the Tattered Cover, where they talked of Helen’s meteoric rise, gun nuts, and the blog– I was pleased to know he sometimes checks in. He was kind enough to send down an inscribed copy via Reid– thanks to both. I …