The Fiction Issue 2009
Modern Fiction Is All Rubbish
Roger Lewis’ 2002 biography of Anthony Burgess polarised critics and his latest book, Seasonal Suicide Notes, is a diary-cum-memoir that made me laugh until I pissed myself on the 185 bus.
“3 Stories”
Robert Walser was underappreciated in his time and is still sort of a loosely kept secret today, passed around by writers and literature nerds like a test of how good one’s taste really is.
David Simon
David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire.
“The Ghost Business”
T. Christopher Gorelick is a mortgage underwriter by day, and by night he’s usually sleeping. He aspires to become a professional writer.
“Sits the Queen”
Damion Searls is an author and award-winning translator, most recently of Rilke’s The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams, Proust’s On Reading, and the Robert Walser stories in this issue.
“Dr. Morton’s Folly”
The term “living legend” gets tossed around without qualification all the time, but we think that the 83-year-old genius who literally wrote the horror classic titled I Am Legend has more than earned it.
“A Better World”
Blake Bailey is the author of Cheever: A Life, published earlier this year by Knopf. His previous book, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Fathers and Snakes”
Clancy Martin used to make a living as a jewelry salesman. Now he is a translator of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri.
Wands And Swords, Pentangles And Cups
For W.B. Yeats, the ordinary world would fade away, and he would walk and talk in a spiritual realm that he believed truly existed around and outside the physical world.
“Lost Limbs”
Most people know Arthur Bradford as the creator of How’s Your News?, a documentary series that has been featured on HBO and MTV.
“A Better World”
Blake Bailey is the author of Cheever: A Life, published earlier this year by Knopf. His previous book, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Dr. Morton’s Folly”
The term “living legend” gets tossed around without qualification all the time, but we think that the 83-year-old genius who literally wrote the horror classic titled I Am Legend has more than earned it.