The Boston Review on Steve Moore’s must-read history of the novel.
We tend to think of the novel as a more-or-less modern invention; the expression “Ancient Egyptian novel,” for example, seems a contradiction in terms. For this, we have etymology to thank. The word “novel” is a transliteration of the Italian novella (piece of news, chit-chat, tale), meaning a structured, realistic story, along the lines of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
Desmond Hogan has an essay on Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in the current issue of the London Library Magazine.
The current Quarterly Conversation is (mostly) a symposium on Lydia Davis, and includes Scott Esposito on innovation, Lynne Tillman on ‘A Mown Lawn,’ David Winters on The End of the Story.
Bookslut interview Chloe Aridjis.
Certainly an inspiration for the first novel was a book of Joseph Roth’s brilliant essays on Berlin, written in the 1920s and the deepening shadows of the early ’30s; although he was writing about what he observed around him, they of course reveal a great deal of the author himself. The same could be said of Robert Walser’s and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin. The more infused a city’s portrait is with the author’s own spirit, the better.
In The White Review, Heathcote Williams on William Burroughs’ London years.
I think Bill found London bleak. He once said with cold sarcasm at UK Customs on being asked for his reason for visiting Britain: ‘Number one: the food. Number two: the weather.’