fieldus

An exclusive interview with J M Coetzee - DN.se
On influence
There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind. I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of [...]

New Statesman - Eternal vigilance
He was not, as Lionel Trilling once pointed out, a genius; he was not mysterious; he had served in Burma, washed dishes in a Parisian hotel, and fought for a few months in Spain, but this hardly added up to a life of adventure; for the most part he lived in [...]

Youth by JM Coetzee | Books | The Guardian
He lives in a one-room flat near Mowbray railway station for which he pays eleven guineas a month. He is at pains not to be late with the rent because he has obtained the flat under false pretences. He has given his occupation as library assistant rather [...]

FROM the collection by Edgar Lee Masters - all poems from Bartleby.com
Dissolute son, REUBEN PANTIER:
WELL, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,
Your love was not all in vain.
I owe whatever I was in life
To your hope that would not give me up,
To your love that saw me still as good.
Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell [...]

Interesing man - a profile in The Forward:
Josipovici knew early on that he wanted to write. Throughout his career, he explained, he has followed his instinct rather than any overriding philosophy of art: “I don’t know if what I write are novels, and names don’t seem to matter. I quicken at the apprehension of some [...]

Essay - The Case for Memorizing Poetry - NYTimes.com
The grandest claim for memorizing poetry is made by Clive James, himself a formidable repository of memorized verse. In his book “Cultural Amnesia,” James declares that “the future of the humanities as a common possession depends on the restoration of a simple, single ideal: getting poetry by [...]

My life had stood by Emily Dickinson
My life had stood
My life had stood–a Loaded Gun–In Corners–till a DayThe Owner passed–identified–And carried Me away–
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods–And now We hunt the Doe–And every time I speak for Him–The Mountains straight reply–
And do I smile, such cordial lightUpon the Valley glow–It is [...]

An Appraisal - John Updike, Intuitive and Precise, Mapped America’s Mysteries - NYTimes.com
In one of these collections, Mr. Updike summed up his love of his vocation: “From earliest childhood I was charmed by the materials of my craft, by pencils and paper and, later, by the typewriter and the entire apparatus of printing. To condense [...]

A place to start with Bolaño?
Bolaño’s Voyage: “Last Evenings on Earth” by Donald Long
In “Anne Moore’s Life” we follow the peripatetic adventures of Anne from birth in Chicago to middle age in Berkeley, her serial sexual affairs in the U.S., Mexico, Asia, Europe, Africa and Barcelona, where the narrator finally meets her. He reads her [...]

Part way through Zadie’s NYRB article, Two Paths for the Novel, looking at Netherland (next up) and Remainder.
Ambitious and serious, even pretentious.
I may be wrong, but I think I saw ZS in Bloomsbury: walking a small pooch.
For more discussion see RSB.