In his beautiful memoir, Let Me Finish, Roger Angell writes of the great New Yorker writer Emily Hahn (remember her? no, me neither) and describes her “gleam of everyday transcendence.”
The New York Times' double dose of Donald Antrim - a review in the book review and a profile in the magazine - gave me the name of yet another contemporary novelist I need to feel bad about not having read.
Still not sure what to make of last night's wordless tribute to Russian writers.
I was at a party recently and many of the people who asked what I did for a living, after hearing my reply, gave me a short soliloquy on how they write a little too, or have always wanted to write. They were well-meaning, trying to show camaraderie, and also I believe honest (who, apart from writers, doesn't like to write?). But if you really want to endear yourself to a writer don't say that you write - say that you read.
Saturday I picked up the Feb. 11 & 18 double issue of The New Yorker and found on page 63 a sepia-toned photograph of Joseph Mitchell standing in front of Sloppy Louie's seafood restaurant. I'm going to buy a frame at lunch today and hang it on the wall next to the photograph, cut from the same magazine last year, of Vera and Vladimir Nabokov.