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Paul Chowder is turning fifty-five, wants his ex-girlfriend back, and is considering giving up poetry in favour of writing pop songs. First introduced in Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, he is the sort of character so ordinary that one might not
A friend of mine, a Hemingway scholar and long-time bull-runner, once met Norman Mailer. He cannot remember much of the evening, but he remembers the most important part. “Norman,” he asked at the height of their inebriation, “why do we
At the beginning of 2013, Brigid Delaney (@BrigidWD) attended a silent retreat. Bending the definition of “silent” somewhat, she tweeted the whole thing. Delaney told Crikey this wasn’t cheating. “I was literally silent,” she said. That the retreat managed to keep Delaney’s mouth shut
Adelle Waldman’s (@adellewaldman) The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. was one of the best new books I read last year. It could easily have been otherwise. The story of a young male novelist who is selfish and occasionally cruel but not at
As anyone who has visited Chechnya will tell you, it is not an easy place to forget. On the other hand, it is also one that seems intent on forgetting. Not for Grozny the memorials of cities such as Volgograd,
On September 6, 1951, William S. Burroughs was walking down a Mexico City street when he realised he was crying. “What in hell is wrong with you?” he thought to himself. He joined his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, and they
Matthew Thompson’s Running with the Blood God is a book about collective resistance that thinks it’s about maverick individualism. The former Fairfax reporter’s follow-up to My Colombian Death (2008), which detailed his decision to leave the newspaper game in search of
1. On the morning of the first encierro I ever saw, the first encierro of the year in question, I found myself on a balcony overlooking the square outside the town hall. It was before the first police lines had