Author Archive

In the old days we called them comic books, and they were a guilty pleasure, bought for a few nickels at the corner drugstore, toted back home where we flopped on our stomachs on the floor of our rooms or lay in the hammock in the summer backyard to read them.  Nowadays they’ve made their way into the classroom where they’re called Graphic Novels, and teachers use them as a means of enticing reluctant students to enjoy reading.  Wonder Woman was always a favorite–a lone fist-fighting Amazon in a pack of male super heroes.  She’s still going strong, as her new slightly punk, slightly Goth look shows.  Remember bullets and bracelets?  It’s how a hardworking supergal kept the bad guys at bay.

The John Updike archives won’t be open for several more years, but you can get a peek at them here.  He was a brilliant letter writer, among other things, who once confessed, “Whatever the many failings of my work, let it stand as a manifesto of my love for the time in which I was born.”  A true modernist at that.  What’s your favorite Updike moment?

Fifty years ago, the manager of Bell System decided his executives needed to be not just good followers but leaders, too: the kind of people who knew not just how to answer questions but how to know what questions are worth asking.  The solution?  Give the executives (some of whom didn’t have college degrees) a crash course in the liberal arts–including seminars on Joyce’s Ulysses.  The result?  The executives reported that the book had enriched their lives in many ways.  They were more curious about the world around them and, during the ravages of the McCarthy era, were able to see things not in black and white but in shades of grey.

The educational institute was deemed a success—and also ultimately discontinued.  Bell discovered that its executives were more dynamic intellectually, but also less likely to put the company’s bottom line ahead of their families and communities.  Read more. . .

Readers, is literature a solution for the modern-day corporate problems that plague us?  Maybe we should all send our favorite executives a copy of Ulysses.  Who knows?  It just might change the world.

There has been some controversy recently about bloggers accepting free merchandise in exchange for posting about products.  Readers–what do you think?  Does the practice need to be monitored?  Should bloggers always reveal their relationship to a commercial company?  Or are the products fair reimbursement for work that is–in most cases–unpaid? Read more. . .

Congratulations to Nina Romano on a wonderful review of her new poetry collection, Coffeehouse Meditations, in the New York Journal of Books.  Here’s the link.   For more information on this enchanting collection, or to order your own copy, click here.

It might seem hard to believe but apparently Pippi Longstocking was a model for Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander–the girl with the dragon tattoo.  Pippi, for those of you who remember the character from the children’s book, was an unusual girl, independent, outrageous, a loner with a strong sense of justice–not unlike Lisbeth.  Lisbeth’s new apartment even is called “V. Kulla”–certainly a nod to Villa Villekulla, where Pippi lived.  Some characters, it seems, do grow up.  Read more. . .

The last typewriter has just been banned from The Writers Room, that haven in Greenwich Village where New Yorkers, perennially short on space, can rent a cubicle to work in.  Noise, it appears, is the issue.  For writers who are famously superstitious about how–and where–they write, this is certainly a loss.  Maybe returning to pencil on paper would be a solution?  Readers, how do you write?    Read more. . .

Congratulations to Preston Allen for a wonderful review this past Sunday in the New York Times Book Review.  Screw Iowa fans know that he is one of our very own–published in our masters series.  Check it out!

On May 15th we observed the anniversary of the death of Emily Dickinson, who died in 1886 at the age of 1886 in the home she was born in.  But who was Emily Dickinson?  And why did she live such a reclusive life?  The scant evidence we have about her has led to much speculation–and little conclusion.  Is it truly so important to solve the mystery of her life?  Or are her poems answer enough? Read more. . .

Miguel Syjuco couldn’t even get an agent for his novel Ilustrado, and so he submitted it as an unpublished manuscript to the Man Asian Literary Prize.  The novel won.  ”I got rejected left and right,” he said.  ”I wallpapered my wall with rejection slips, the way F. Scott Fitzgerald was said to have done.”   Is it any wonder the publishing industry is in dire straits?  Would any other business survive if it were so consistently incapable of recognizing quality?  Where do writers fit into all this?  The answer is simply not to give up, to keep working to bring your writing to an audience, even if you have to do it by yourself.  Congratulations Miguel Syjuco, for your success, and for inspiring us all.  Read more. . .