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From Stephen Elliott
Anyone who aspires to write will find the story of Ben Fountain—and the story of how his first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, came to be —both inspiring and heart-rending. Fountain began writing fiction at the age of thirty. He did not begin by dabbling, dangling pretty sentences together in the mornings before work or the hours after.
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The new Canteen magazine is available. It includes a dynamite essay by Eric Puchner, annotated by Katharine Noel, about marrying another writer. There are four short-short stories by Ben Fountain (whose book, Brief Encounters With Che Guevara, I reviewed in the early days of The Rumpus).
...moreIt could be said there are two types of stories. The first are those told by people inside the conflict, ie. children raised in group homes writing about state welfare, soldiers writing about war, Palestinians writing about demolished homes. These insider narratives, fiction or non-fiction, are told from the perspective of someone who knows one side of a situation intimately but is often unaware of the trials and tribulations of the other side.
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We asked for the best books people read this year NOT published in 2008. We did this because even writers rarely read more than a handful of books actually published that year. Usually the best books are recommended from people we trust, and that can take a while.
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