Better Yet, DO Write that Novel

Just three days into NaNoWriMo — and, as my stats show, I’ve kept up so far — and the very act of amateur novel writing is under attack from Salon’s Laura Miller. In a column yesterday she argued that National Novel Writing Month amounts to “a lot of crap.” It’s not apt to produce many [...]

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The ACG Blog Takes on National Novel Writing Month

Dear ACG Blog readers, Today is November 1, and this year I’ve pledged to complete NaNoWriMo. If you haven’t heard of it, NaNoWriMo — short for National Novel Writing Month, aka November — is a massive worldwide creative writing project sponsored and promoted by a non-profit organization, the Office of Letters and Lights. 2010 is [...]

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Lit Crit: “Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man” by Bill Clegg

Writing a good addiction memoir is difficult — or maybe it’s reading an addiction memoir that’s difficult, at least for non-addicts. The line between drug-induced hallucination and psychotic episode is blurry, and sympathizing with the addict in question, while of course eschewed in public, is surprisingly difficult in private, where one is certain that could [...]

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Lit Crit: “Room” by Emma Donoghue

The Forbidden Experiment has long tantalized linguists, anthropologists and psychologists for the possible insights into the human mind and sociality it could uncover. The experiment involves raising a child in isolation to study how his or her mind develops in the absence of other people; it is forbidden, of course, because of the moral and [...]

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Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa Wins Literature Nobel

After all the speculation and betting, the Nobel Committee once again did not choose from the top of the popular pack, instead announcing this morning that Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, teaching at Princeton this semester, has won 2010’s Nobel Prize for Literature. The 74-year-old author of more than 30 novels, plays and essays said, [...]

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Betting on Books: Nobel Literature Prize Odds

The Nobel Prize in Literature is set to be announced tomorrow (medicine, physics and chemistry having been announced already this week) and speculation is running rampant about who will take the medal this year. As of this writing, betting website Ladbrokes has American Cormac McCarthy (“No Country For Old Men,” “The Road”) leading the pack [...]

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Lit Crit: “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater,” by Frank Bruni

These days more and more people are overweight, but most of us don’t like to talk about it. Former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, however, is eager recount being “born round,” a favorite saying of his immigrant Italian grandmother, in his delicious memoir “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.” Bruni [...]

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Lit Crit: “Never Let Me Go,” by Kazuo Ishiguro

The film version of “Never Let Me Go” is set to premiere soon, and in anticipation I dusted off my hardcover copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel for a reread, reminding me of this book’s provoking conceptuality and striking prose. I have to warn you: “Never Let Me Go” reveals its quietly horrifying secret agonizingly [...]

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Lit Crit: “The Emperor’s Children,” by Claire Messud

In this age of national insecurity and economic malaise, remembering the pre-9/11 days can be a daunting challenge. It’s a delicate mood to recreate, considering the hindsight provided by those terrorist attacks, but certainly there were feelings of overly confident institutionalization and intellectual pretentiousness. Could 9/11 have originated in such superiority, the fated effect to [...]

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Step Away From the Book, Sir

There’s disturbing news out of The New York Times. No, I’m not talking about the fact that an apparently popular Barnes & Noble across from Lincoln Center in Manhattan is closing due to escalating rent. No, I’m talking about the fact that it’s upsetting the people who spend time there reading without paying for the [...]

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