A Writer's Moment: 'It's every novelist's obsession'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's every novelist's obsession':   “The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. “ – Philip Roth   Born in Newark, NJ on...

'It's every novelist's obsession'

 

“The novelist's obsession, moment by moment, is with language: finding the right next word. “ – Philip Roth
 

Born in Newark, NJ on this date in 1933, Roth jumped into a writing career with a bang, his first book, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories, winning the National Book Award.

  

It was the first of two National Book Awards and two Book Critics Circle Awards for Roth.  One of America’s most honored writers, he also won the Man Booker International Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award (three times), and the Pulitzer Prize (for his novel American Pastoral).

 

Roth's fiction, regularly set in his native Newark, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, and for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction.  “Literature isn't a moral beauty contest,” Roth said.  “Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.”  

 

Roth, who died in 2018, wrote 4 collections of short stories and 29 novels, including Portnoy’s Complaint, The Human Stain and The Plot Against America.  Eight of his works were adapted into movies.

                        

“It was my great problem to solve: 'How to write a book,' you know?” he said.   “And after you write one, you have to write another to prove to yourself you can do it again.”

A Writer's Moment: Absorbing the rhythms of the world

A Writer's Moment: Absorbing the rhythms of the world:   “What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sk...

Absorbing the rhythms of the world

 

“What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm - that seems to me to be of the essence.” – John Burnside

 

Born in Scotland on this date in 1955, Burnside was one of only two writers to win both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book.  Burnside’s Black Cat Bone took home the prestigious awards in 2011.  He also won the Whitbread Award for The Asylum Dance.

 

Burnside, who died from illness in 2024, authored 8 nonfiction books, 11 novels and 23 poetry collections, the last being The Empire of Forgetting, published posthumously in 2025.   He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, and two award-winning memoirs, A Lie About My Father and Waking Up In Toytown, and was honored with Great Britain’s "David Cohen Prize” for lifetime achievement in literature.

 

“I love long sentences,” he said of his writing style.  “My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and (Marcel) Proust – people who recognize that life doesn't consist of declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A wonderfully flexible form'

A Writer's Moment: 'A wonderfully flexible form':   “The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating...

'A wonderfully flexible form'

 

“The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.  You learn a lot, writing fiction.” –  Penelope Lively

 

Born in Egypt on this date in 1933, the gregarious Lively has been an active, award-winning writer for nearly 60 years.  Author of both adult and children’s literature, she earned a Booker Prize for her adult novel Moon Tiger, and the Carnegie Medal for British Children's Boks for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe.   

 

Honored as a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, Lively has written in several genres, doing novels, short stories – her most recent collection titled Metamorphosis – and radio and television scripts, reviews, and articles for newspapers and journals.  She’s also penned two memoirs:  Dancing Fish and Ammonites and Life in the Garden. 

 

While she didn’t start writing until her late 30s, she has been extremely prolific since, generating dozens of books in her main genres.  “Every novel generates its own climate,” she said.  “You just have to get going with it.”

 

And she advocates for being a good reader.  “All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me,” she said. “If I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.”

A Writer's Moment: Seeing characters and stories 'everywhere'

A Writer's Moment: Seeing characters and stories 'everywhere': "With historicals, the research is half the fun.  Contemporaries are especially easy.  People are right out there in front of you; yo...