One of the more frustrating aspects of selecting which of Paul Nelson's writings to include in Everything Is an Afterthought was deciding which works not to include. For a guy who's famous for his struggles with getting the word onto the page, he wrote a hell of a lot. As much as I hated to, one of the last chapters I deleted from the manuscript ( Read more... )

Yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, in Alexandra Alter's Q&A with writer Jonathan Lethem ("Just Asking... Jonathan Lethem"), the author confirms what many of us already knew: that the reclusive rock critic who inhabits Lethem's new novel, Chronic City, is partly based on his old friend Paul Nelson. Back in May, The New Yorker ran an excerpt from ( Read more... )