On July 21, the Sewanee Writers Conference was visited by George Borchardt of the Borchardt Inc. agenting house. I admit that I looked forward to this panel, since prior to the conference I had only a peripheral idea of what book publishing entailed–and I was not disappointed. Though Borchardt Inc. is small–six total employees–they manage [...]
The first lecture at Sewanee was by John Casey, and centered around sex in literature–how it is handled, when it is worth writing about, and what about it is worth fixating upon. He mentioned, by introduction, that Updike said he enjoys writing his own sex scenes much more than reading sex scenes of others, because [...]
Continue reading about Sex and Politics (well, perhaps just sex)
On Friday morning, James Wood moderated a panel that included the poetry editor for The Atlantic Monthly, the fiction editor for The New Yorker, and the managing editor for The American Scholar. Much of the material was familiar (“getting published is hard, but keep at it”; “We’re excited when we discover something good”; “We don’t [...]
On Thursday afternoon, James Wood–noted essayist/critic and senior editor of The New Republic–gave a discussion he claimed might well be titled, “In Defense of Flat Characters.” It is difficult to summarize because it was essentially an upcoming book chapter, and admittedly free-associative and structureless. Wood opened with an observation that beginning novelists seem drawn to [...]
Facebook
Twitter