2025: Articles on writers & publishing

We'll start off this year's thread with a piece on Martin Amis:

https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/747-martin-amis-and-the-changing-of-the...

A new exhibition of Kafka's postcards and manuscripts:

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/02/13/urgent-messages-from-eternity-franz-...

Mavis Gallant, redux:

https://lithub.com/chasing-mystery-through-fiction-on-the-life-and-literary-care...

Dwight Garner on Paul Fussell:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/books/review/paul-fussell-great-war-and-moder...

James Joyce in Croatia:

https://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/james-joyce-and-the-golden-gate-of-pul...

Is it a lost manuscript...or a brilliant fraud?

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-spiritual-hunt-searching-for-rimbauds-los...

William Burroughs' visual art:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/mar/11/william-s-burroughs-exhibit...

There's a new edition of Shirley Jackson's stories being released by the Folio Society. I'll bet it's gorgeous (and very expensive):

https://lithub.com/how-shirley-jackson-exposed-the-darker-uncanny-side-of-everyd...

8: Not very expensive, just expensive. Not particularly gorgeous, either - it is a bog standard FS edition housed in a fancy box. I did get myself a copy, but that was only because I had previously bought The Haunting of Hill House LE in the same style. The limited edition sold out very quickly (about a month ago, actually) but in all likelihood FS will publish a more moderately priced standard edition with the same text block later this year.

Anthony Doerr on Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES:

https://lithub.com/the-timeless-magic-of-italo-calvinos-invisible-cities-at-50/?...

Sam Weller on Bradbury's MARTIAN CHRONICLES:

https://lithub.com/75-years-ago-the-martian-chronicles-legitimized-science-ficti...

...and here's one on Elon Musk's fascination--and wrongheadedness--when it comes to Iain Banks' "Culture" novels:

https://lithub.com/elon-musk-just-doesnt-understand-the-sci-fi-visions-of-iain-m...

Already pre-ordered Pynchon's next novel, due out in October:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/dont-fear-thomas-pynchon/

Love this interview with "Blindboy".

Dude is really, really smart.

https://novaramedia.com/2025/07/06/masculinity-modern-love-and-mental-health/

Rebecca Solnit is my favorite public intellectual:

https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/podcasts-video/podcasts/rebecca-solnit-ca...

Interview with that crazy and great writer, Vladimir Sorokin:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/07/21/the-guts-of-the-russian-brontosau...

Excellent review of John Burnside's last collection:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/22/the-empire-of-forgetting-by-john-b...

Pynchon has a new book coming out in October--maybe it's time to re-examine his other work, including the much maligned VINELAND:

https://lithub.com/why-thomas-pynchons-vineland-a-disappointment-when-it-was-pub...

A peek at Cormac McCarthy's personal library:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/two-years-cormac-mccarthys-death-rar...

Love Sam Leith's dismissal of the latest Dan Brown abomination in THE GUARDIAN:

"At this stage, everything that needs to be said about Brown’s sentence-by-sentence ineptitude as a prose writer has been said. Fear not: he’s still hopeless. It may be counted as a metafictional joke that in a novel where a favoured adjective like “elegant” can appear in two consecutive sentences, where bells are said to “blare”, and where we’re asked to parse “The elevator doors rumbled open, and Langdon felt an instantaneous surge of relief to see open air, but that emotion was instantly dampened by disappointment”, both the dedicatee and a minor protagonist are editors at Penguin Random House."

...and the review's closing lines:

"This is, in other words, a Dan Brown novel. It’s weapons-grade bollocks from beginning to end, none of it makes a lick of sense, and you’ll roar through it with entire enjoyment if you like this sort of thing. Welcome back, big fella."

Stuart Jeffries' take on stupidity deserves a place in every thinking person's Christmas stocking:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/02/a-short-history-of-stupidity-by-st...

Robert Munsch chooses dignity:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c931y04jg1vo

My writing space is sacred to me--and it's nice to know I'm not alone in that view:

https://lithub.com/a-pilgrimage-to-monks-house-where-virginia-woolf-found-a-room...

Stephen King on Daphne Du Maurier:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/28/she-wrote-the-best-first-line-and-...

Elmore Leonard at 100:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n17/j.-robert-lennon/never-use-your-own-car

Jan Kerouac's BABY DRIVER, another book that is out of print, sadly neglected:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/10/24/the-female-picaresque-jan-kerouac...

I wish more young and aspiring writers would have this guy's mentality:

https://lithub.com/why-i-give-my-books-away-for-free/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm...

I can't tell you how many times I've been contacted by authors who want to know how to "monetize" their work, or asking the best way of getting an agent, or will I read their memoir and suggest a publisher for them.

More interested in being famous than actually, y'know, writing a good book.

>27 CliffBurns: Right on!

-oops, my bad-

A.E. Coppard is a writer previously unknown to me--but I intend to seek out his work ASAP:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-marvellous-forgotten-stories-of-...

I mean, if he's good enough for Russell Banks...

The demise of mass market paperbacks:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/articl...