Features & Reviews
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WHY I MUST GIVE UP WRITING
First let me say I’ve been a dedicated writer for half a century. I’ve published twenty-five books, and I’ve even won some prizes. I know a real writer is supposed to write for the art itself, yearning only toward self-expression
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Anti-war Poetry and the Oxymoron of Liberal Fathers
Robert Hass, Bush’s War, and the death of a father
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Chuck and Charles’ Beautiful Children
Charles Bock’s “Beautiful Children” comes out in paperback today with a new cover by rock and roll poster legend Chuck Sperry. Bock and Sperry have also created their own adult comic book that they will be giving out at Bock’s…
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Someone is Trying to Tell You Something
Two years ago Axel Albin and Josh Kamler began photographing graffiti messages in cities around the world. At their website viewers can read, comment and submit their own message graffiti photos. Their first book, Written on the City, was published…
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Save the Book World
The National Book Critics Circle has started an online petition to save The Washington Post’s Book World.
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Subway Map of Publishing Trends
Concerned about the direction of print media? Soybits, a Spanish blog about “digital publishing and its peculiarities,” created an intricate Subway-style map based on 2008 publishing trends and projecting out. Here’s the most obvious trend: books or bookstores or writers…
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Write What You Know: Random Book Links by Elissa Bassist
James Wolcott’s review of Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick summed up in one piece of advice: skip the first third of the book. Unlike Hemingway, Plath, Wolfe, et al., Updike refuses to put the pen down, and now “younger novelists…
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The Rumpus Interview with Van Jones
Van Jones is an award-winning activist, bestselling author, orator, and political advisor. I helped him birth his first book, The Green Collar Economy (Harper One, 2008).
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Faint Praise for “Praise Song”
As a poet, I appreciate the gesture made toward the arts when the President-elect asks a poet to present a work at his or her inauguration.