In the end, Ivan Doig & Co. come to very different conclusions about How the West Was Lost, but they share a sense that the loss is as irreversible as it was wrong-headed.
If I wanted to become a novelist, according to Flannery O’Connor, I didn’t need to wander the world harvesting experiences. I needed to contemplate experience and then write about it.
Maybe the finest thing about 'Scrapper' is the way in takes us into a deep-pore underworld that’s rarely explored in even the best books about Detroit.
Iceberg Slim, brutal pimp turned popular author, received a fraction of the royalties due him -- which meant, ironically, that he ended up getting pimped by his own publisher.
The Grateful Dead’s final tour is another reminder that the band long ago became a large corporation with a bottom line to consider. That’s not a knock on their success. It’s just a fact.
There are many sentences in 'The Turner House' that nail a sense of place with a precision long-time Detroiters like Elmore Leonard or Donald Goines would have envied.
The reason these typewritten book covers have caught my eye and captured my heart is because they’ve so ingeniously captured the essence of the writing process -- and the central truth that no piece of writing is ever truly finished.
I’m happy to report that the writers nominated for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar mixed a little fiction into their reading diets last year. A very little. One novel.