F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor Max Perkins discuss revisions to an early version of The Great Gatsby: “One is that among a set of characters marvelously palpable and vital—I would know Tom Buchanan if I met him on the street and would avoid him—Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim. Now everything about Gatsby is more or less a mystery i.e. more or less vague, and this may be somewhat of an artistic intention, but I think it is mistaken.”
Patrick Somerville on what happens when a NYT reviewer misreads your novel: “I realized that Janet Maslin, who is not only one of the most accomplished critics in the world, but who is also the person who lifted my first novel, “The Cradle,” out of obscurity with a rave review three years before, had made a simple reading error within the first five pages of my novel. She‘d mixed up two characters. It was really important to not mix up those characters.”
On the Top Ten Books Lost to Time by Megan Gambino: “Cardenio has been called the Holy Grail of Shakespeare enthusiasts. There is evidence that Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, performed the play for King James I in May 1613—and that Shakespeare and John Fletcher, his collaborator for Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen, wrote it. But the play itself is nowhere to be found.”
Maria Popova on Where the Heart Beats, the spiritual biography of Cage written by art critic and practicing Buddhist Kay Larson: “Where to begin? Perhaps at the core — the core of what Cage has come to be known for, that expansive negative space, isn’t nihilistic, isn’t an absence, but, rather, it’s life-affirming, a presence. Cage himself reflects: ‘Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.’”
Remembrances of Marie A., a poem by Bertolt Brecht
