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When I recently telephoned an author to say that we would be publishing her book, I was struck by how self-possessed and clear-headed the writer sounded. I have no doubt that she’d waited patiently to find the right publisher, and as we spoke I began smiling to myself, remembering the day that I received the phone call from an editor who published my first novel. That day I was anything but self-possessed and clear-headed. [Read more…]
When Joan Didion published her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, I avoided reading the book. I am a Joan Didion fan and eagerly read the excerpt from the book that appeared in the New Yorker before The Year of Magical Thinking was published. Didion, who lost her husband and only daughter within a two-year period, certainly had compelling material at her fingertips.
She was married to the novelist and journalist, John Gregory Dunne, and for many years they were known as a premier literary couple. [Read more…]
SOME TIME AGO, I realized that my strongest memories of a particular moment in my life were almost always illuminated by a novel I happened to be reading at the time. For example, I remembered being in a music class when I was twelve years old and a teacher who’d watched over a boy whose life was already marked by tragedy. [Read more…]