Category: Authors

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The Essential Philip K. Dick

Perhaps you’ve nurtured a suspicion that you have the makings of a Dick fan. The writer’s influence is everywhere, though mainstream acknowledgment of his talents arrived belatedly. (His obituary in this newspaper is under 200 words and lists his age of death incorrectly. He was 53, not 54.) The question is where to start. Dick’s published output — at least 35 novels and countless short stories — ranges from sublime to inscrutable, which is partly a result of volume. His book advances were skimpy and there was a family to support, so he wrote quickly, often fueled by amphetamine tablets. (Dick’s typing speed: 120 words per minute.) If you’re a stickler for prose style and hold a zero-tolerance policy toward the word “boobies,” this is not your fellow. Read more

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‘A Very Old Man’ by Italo Svevo

A Very Old Man collects five linked stories, parts of an unfinished novel that the great Triestine Italo Svevo wrote at the end of his life, after the international success of Zeno’s Conscience in 1923. Here Svevo revisits with new vigor and agility themes that fascinated him from the start—aging, deceit, and self-deception, as well as the fragility, fecklessness, and plain foolishness of the bourgeois paterfamilias—even as memories of the recent, terrible slaughter of World War I and the contemporary rise of Italian fascism also cast a shadow over the book’s pages. Read more

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Denzel Washington Honors August Wilson’s Legacy at House Opening

The August Wilson House is not a museum. Instead, the restored space is a community center that will offer artist residencies, gathering spaces, fellowships and other programming for up-and-coming artists and scholars. There is also an outdoor stage behind the home, which is currently showcasing the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company’s production of Wilson’s play “Jitney” through Sept. 18. Read more

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Who is Colleen Hoover and Why Are Her Books So Popular?

Fifteen of Hoover’s novels are on this week’s list, with “It Ends With Us” topping them all at No. 2. The novel, which has reached No. 1 before, has been on the list for a total of 76 weeks. Her latest novel “Reminders of Him,” currently on the list, debuted at No. 1 in January. Read more

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Author’s Therapeutic Writing Program Aims to Help You Move Past Your Trauma

At Five Foxes, a wellness retreat that opened this July in woodsy, bucolic Connecticut and is run by the established private rehab company Privé-Swiss, Augusten Burroughs will coax clients to dig deep and then to find a way to accept what has happened and put the lessons learned to good use … “I’m very good at being useful to people,” he says. “I could not care less about being an author now.” From $50,000 for one week. Read more

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Why is the ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ author wanted for questioning in a murder?

It’s all resurfaced just before the movie’s release thanks to a recent article in the Atlantic by its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, which updates and doubles down on a piece he wrote for the New Yorker in 2010. Back when Owens was known as the co-writer of a couple works of nonfiction, Goldberg published an 18,000-word exposé on Owens and her now-ex-husband, Mark, revealing that the couple — along with Mark’s son Christopher — were suspected by Zambian authorities of being involved in the killing of an alleged poacher (a homicide caught on camera) along with possible other criminal activities. Read more

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An Introduction to Stanislaw Lem, the Great Polish Sci-Fi Writer, by Jonathan Lethem

Who was Stanislaw Lem? The Polish science fiction writer, novelist, essayist, and polymath may best be known for his 1961 novel Solaris (adapted for the screen by Andrei Tarkosvky in 1972 and again by Steven Soderbergh in 2014). Lem’s science fiction appealed broadly outside of SF fandom, attracting the likes of John Updike, who called his stories “marvelous” and Lem a poet of “scientific terminology” for readers “whose hearts beat faster when the Scientific American arrives each month.” Updike’s characterization is but one version of Lem. There are several more, writes Jonathan Lethem in an essay for the London Review of Books, penned for Lem’s 100th anniversary – at least five different Lems with five different literary personalities. Read more

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