Upon publication of his first novel, Balls, author Julian Tepper received pointed advice from one Philip Roth: quit. What the elder statesman, on the verge of his own retirement, was…
How does it feel to be in charge of writing about the deaths of outstanding people? Over at the Paris Review, Margalit Fox tells us about her twenty years (and…
Over at The Hairpin, Isabelle Fraser interviews Ann Wroe, obituary writer for The Economist. Wroe has written obituaries for J.D. Salinger, Aaron Swartz, and the 25-year old carp that was “England’s best-loved fish”.…
It can be a harrowing experience, Whitman knows, requiring that the writer become an instant historian, assessing in a few hours the dead man’s life with lucidity, accuracy, and objectivity.…
A.J. Liebling once remarked that the authors of newspaper obituaries are “a frustrated and usually anonymous tribe.” That’s certainly true of Gabriel Collins, narrator of Stacey D’Erasmo’s unusual new novel,…