Category: words

“So here is a caveat lector: if you see an announcement of a ‘new’ work by Scott Fitzgerald, or any other classic author with a ready-made audience, check their archive catalogue first (most of them are digitised). It is probably just unpublished, and many will argue that it should stay that way.”

Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Remains of the Day: “I’ve been in the habit of keeping a large cardboard box under my desk into which I throw, more or less indiscriminately, all papers produced during my writing that I don’t want to file neatly and take into the next stage of composition: earlier drafts of chapters, rejected pages, scraps of paper with scribbled thoughts, repeated attempts at the same paragraph. etc.”

“The more we talk about Wallace without talking about his work—which, of course, is the whole reason we’re here, talking about him—the more we aid in this false image of him as bro-lord. His fiction is thoughtful and daring and adventurous and sad and fun and difficult and complex.”

“Who’s your favourite villain in literature, and why?”
“Frankenstein’s monster, because he’s right: Victor Frankenstein is an entitled dick who doesn’t care about the humanity of his creation.”

“I may be one of the last people to be burdened by the self-imposed obligation to read certain books during the golden months of vacation. These days, the summer-reading list seems to have gone the way of the perfect tan.”

“Described as an ‘open slush pile’ by Cory Doctorow when it launched in 2008, Authonomy allowed users to submit their manuscripts for discussion, critique and ranking by fellow site members. The top five each month were read by HarperCollins editors, with 47 going on to be picked up for publication, including works by Miranda Dickinson, Steven Dunne and Kat French.”

“While their politics may be unappealing, you’re missing out on some expert storytelling and brilliant characterisation if you ignore these books.”

“Spanish writer Andres Trapiello spent nearly 14 years adapting Cervantes’s masterpiece for contemporary readers. According to Trapiello, it is impossible to understand Don Quixote without reading the footnotes. The new edition includes a comprehensive set of changes to make it more comprehensible.”

“All translators create their own reality, which may or may not reflect the intentions of the writer. After all, if you make the decision to cut out six cantos in a 12-canto series (as my edition did), to what extent are you even trying to keep faith with with the original work? I found some sort of an answer in Neruda’s own argument for’ an impure poetry’.”

“For me, there’s no competition between pleasure and analysis. And there never was. That might be the self-selecting answer as to why I became a critic. At exactly the moment that I wanted really to write, and started writing poems and then trying to write bad fiction, I was reading with a view to learning stuff.”