“I loved that remoteness…I enjoyed no telephone, no contact, no bosses breathing over my shoulder. I loved that life.” Continue reading
Category Archives: In Their Own Words
IN HIS OWN WORDS: W.M. Spackman
Heyday is among other things an elegy upon the immemorial loneliness of man; a statement too about its causes (varied) and customary cure (someone charming to hold one’s hand). Continue reading
IN HIS OWN WORDS: Kiran Nagarkar
While [other writers] went back to learn Tamil, Hindi or Gujarati, I never felt the need. I had a child’s grasp of Marathi from my first 4 years of education but also I was not in the least unhappy with my divided state. I was born on the cusp of independence, so there was no point denying my colonial legacy as well as the new India. The only thing to do was to accept it and to make the most or the worst of it. Continue reading
IN HER OWN WORDS: Virginia Hamilton Adair
“I was the spirit’s wastrel and fool,
and I have taken fifty years to cool.” Continue reading
IN HIS OWN WORDS: Paolo Sorrentino
“The most important thing I discovered a few days after turning 65 is that I can’t waste any more time doing things I don’t want to do.” -Jep Gambardella, THE GREAT BEAUTY Continue reading
IN HER OWN WORDS: Jo Ann Beard
“The first story I wrote was set in a post-apocalyptic Iowa City, about having to put your dogs to sleep because you don’t want them to be left roaming the smoking ruins after you have succumbed to radiation sickness. (It was the ’80s.) It had King Tut in it, and cavemen.” Continue reading
IN HIS OWN WORDS: Sergei Dovlatov
In Monday’s profile Sonya Chung identified Sergei Dovlatov as a writer whose healthy, playful, even wicked humor didn’t at all diminish the “earnestness and regret” that often underlied his work. As we see from the quotes below, it put those traits and others—Dovlatov’s clear-sightedness, political awareness and clear love of literature—in an even brighter light. Continue reading
