Link Salad, the Nom de Plume Edition
-- John le Carré and I worked for years on his biography. Why is he telling his own story 12 months later? - Adam Sisman, The Guardian, Sept. 16, 2016
"A degree of disgruntlement on his part would not be surprising. Though my biography was written with my subject’s cooperation, it would be disingenuous to pretend that there was no strain between us during the four years I spent writing his life. I don’t think that I should have been doing my job properly if there hadn’t been: I saw it as my job to uncover the truth, however painful that might be. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can stand,” David said to me after one session. I can only imagine how hard it was for him to have a comparative stranger explore every room of his life, from attic to basement, to expose his mistakes and quarrels, and to probe his sore spots. “I think our continuing relationship is an achievement in itself,” David wrote to me in 2014. So it is only right that I should acknowledge his generosity, his tolerance and his continuing sense of humour. There were some tense moments during those four years, but there were also a lot of laughs. “I know it’s supposed to be warts and all,” he said to me at one point, “but so far as I can gather, it’s going to be all warts and no all.”"
-- The "Unmasking" of Elena Ferrante - Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2016
"Like many-maybe most-enthusiastic Ferrante readers, I have no interest in knowing who the writer who publishes her novels under the name Elena Ferrante is. I don’t care. Actually, I do care: I care about not finding out. There are so few avenues left, in our all-seeing, all-revealing digital world, for artistic mystery of the true kind-mystery that isn’t concocted as a publicity play but that finds its origins in the writer’s soul as a prerogative of his or her ability to create. That kind of mystery has a corresponding point in the soul of the receptive reader. To fall in love with a book, in that way that I and so many others have fallen in love with Ferrante’s, is to feel a special kinship with its author, a profound sort of mutual receptivity and comprehension. The author knows nothing about you, and yet you feel that your most intimate self has been understood. The fact that Ferrante has chosen to be anonymous has become part of this contract, and has put readers and writer on a rare, equal plane. Ferrante doesn’t know the details of our lives, and doesn’t care to. We don’t know those of hers. We meet on an imaginative neutral ground, open to all."
"A degree of disgruntlement on his part would not be surprising. Though my biography was written with my subject’s cooperation, it would be disingenuous to pretend that there was no strain between us during the four years I spent writing his life. I don’t think that I should have been doing my job properly if there hadn’t been: I saw it as my job to uncover the truth, however painful that might be. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can stand,” David said to me after one session. I can only imagine how hard it was for him to have a comparative stranger explore every room of his life, from attic to basement, to expose his mistakes and quarrels, and to probe his sore spots. “I think our continuing relationship is an achievement in itself,” David wrote to me in 2014. So it is only right that I should acknowledge his generosity, his tolerance and his continuing sense of humour. There were some tense moments during those four years, but there were also a lot of laughs. “I know it’s supposed to be warts and all,” he said to me at one point, “but so far as I can gather, it’s going to be all warts and no all.”"
-- The "Unmasking" of Elena Ferrante - Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2016
"Like many-maybe most-enthusiastic Ferrante readers, I have no interest in knowing who the writer who publishes her novels under the name Elena Ferrante is. I don’t care. Actually, I do care: I care about not finding out. There are so few avenues left, in our all-seeing, all-revealing digital world, for artistic mystery of the true kind-mystery that isn’t concocted as a publicity play but that finds its origins in the writer’s soul as a prerogative of his or her ability to create. That kind of mystery has a corresponding point in the soul of the receptive reader. To fall in love with a book, in that way that I and so many others have fallen in love with Ferrante’s, is to feel a special kinship with its author, a profound sort of mutual receptivity and comprehension. The author knows nothing about you, and yet you feel that your most intimate self has been understood. The fact that Ferrante has chosen to be anonymous has become part of this contract, and has put readers and writer on a rare, equal plane. Ferrante doesn’t know the details of our lives, and doesn’t care to. We don’t know those of hers. We meet on an imaginative neutral ground, open to all."