Author: Matthew Westphal

The Sound’s The Thing: A Writing Lesson From Ursula K. LeGuin

“The sound of the language is where it all begins. The test of a sentence is, Does it sound right? The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make, the sounds and silences that make the rhythms marking their relationships. … This is just as true of prose as it is of poetry, though the sound effects of prose are usually subtle and always irregular.”

Israel’s Favorite Palestinian – He’s Given Up And Emigrated

“In the past decade, he has become the kind of writer whose column, in the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, ‘people hang on their fridge,’ as a colleague put it. In 2007, a sitcom he wrote, titled Arab Labor (a Sabra idiom for second-rate work), had its début, introducing an Arab family to Israeli audiences for the first time. It made him a celebrity not just on the comfortable left,” but even among taxi drivers and soccer hooligans.

Garrison Keillor Explains Why He’s Leaving His Radio Show (He’s Not A Radio Guy)

“No, no, I’m just a writer. I’m just a writer who looked to slip into radio as a way of supporting myself. … I’m at the end of a very long and pretty happy detour. … You invent a town with all these characters in it and story lines, and it’s been interesting, until you realize that you have created [wry laugh] an obligation to keep it going, for the listener. And it’s at that point that your inventiveness wanes. And you feel restless.”

Since No One Can Talk To Elena Ferrante, They’re Talking To Her Translator Instead

“Translated books, Goldstein says, ‘hardly ever get this much attention.’ And when they do, it’s unusual for much of that attention to be directed at the translator. But Ferrante, by insisting on preserving her own anonymity despite her international audience’s growing curiosity, has (perhaps unintentionally) managed to create an unlikely spotlight for her American translator.”

Dean Jones, The Go-To Leading Man Of Disney’s Golden Age, Dead At 84

“Precocious and multitalented as a youth, the boyishly handsome Mr. Jones began his career as a teenage radio host and performer in amateur musical revues. He became a stage actor, and he and Jane Fonda made their Broadway debuts together. But it was not until the mid-1960s that he found his niche, as the affable, hapless, clean-cut Everyman in a series of genial family comedies produced by the Walt Disney Company, beginning in 1965 with That Darn Cat!“