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Though it’s less travel writing and more personal memoir, Laurence Sterne’s A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY contains one of the most authentic, challenging descriptions of why one might journey from their home in the first place.
The US owns the road novel—for good reason. There’s Lolita, The Grapes of Wrath, and On the Road—to name just a few.
It seems a pretty commonplace thing to say that great art results from heartbreak. There are countless examples in painting, music, and literature. Sometimes it’s a series of hardships that inspired an artist. Sometimes a direct line can be drawn back to a single event that brought about a sudden surge in artistic activity.
Popular opinion says that during the holiday season, people either fall in love or reflect on their past year of life. Sometimes they do both, but it’s hard to manage these conflicting actions at the same time. One is active, expressive, and outward moving. The other is passive, observational, and focused inward.
In the age of the Internet, fiction writing is changing yet again. As readers and writers, should we fear the use of technology in books? History says “no.”
From the moment he steps onscreen in director Michael Grandage’s Genius Thomas Wolfe (played by Jude Law) is an aberration. At 6’5, the writer was literally larger than life. He often worked hovering over a refrigerator-cum-writing desk.
In a 2001 Penguin introduction to the novel, Colm Tóibín writes: “In Another Country, Baldwin created the essential American drama of the century.” Baldwin’s novel is rife with symbols of life in the USA: jazz, cocktails, the movies, and the idea of “making it.” It’s a story of searching and striving for a better life, more fulfilling work, and purer relationships.
It’s hard not to notice the word girl writ large on book covers and film posters everywhere. It’s also tough to ignore the flurry of opinions on whether titular appropriation of the word is sexist and offensive or just smart marketing. Turns out the word is surprisingly flexible.
Last year, at 28, I attended my first writer’s conference in Virginia and a fiction workshop. I felt like a wallflower who’d only just realized all the other flowers had long ago left the wall in pursuit of something deemed extremely useful in the American literary community—the MFA.
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