Oh yes, the whole issue of postmodern novels as exercises in literary criticism is very interesting…

Haven’t read Gorra’s “Portrait”, though I love James. Thank you!

Has anyone mentioned Michael Gorra’s “Portrait of a Novel”  (about Portrait of a Lady)?  Many of David Lodge’s academic novels introduce (and explain) literary history and theory, actually using theory as a plot element– “Small World” and “Nice Work,” for example.

Thank you!

…or else, be among the first and help define the style and length of contributions (re the latter, we’ll risk starting at 1000 words)

Dear Alexandra (and of course you can use my first name 🙂

I’ve read the Latin American authors in Spanish a while ago but judging by the quality of the publishing houses they should be good translations. I found a couple of Bolaño’s essays in The New York Review of Books if you are…[Read more]

Dear Carlos (may I?), thank you!

I’d be delighted about a contribution from you. To my shame, I haven’t read any of your suggestions — and now I will, asap.

Starting the journal was worth it for all recommendations in these forum alone.:)

Indeed!

Ah, speaking of Latin writers, how about Horace, On the Sublime?  Short, and big.

Hi Alexandra,

Your project sounds really cool, I hope I can send a contribution in the future.

As for suggestions, I thought of Orhan Pamuk’s The Naive and Sentimental Novelist and to include the Latin American tradition in the conversation: Roberto Bolaño’s Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003, García Marquez’s Li…[Read more]

Thank you so much!

I’ve actually met Glyn Maxwell and we had a great talk on poetry (and yes, I’m very much into it; the topic of my own first book, Brodsky Translating Brodsky, was poetry in self-translation).

Do have a look at readingsjournal.net, it might suit you. (I’m starting this journal more or less on my own, in my spare time, and am…[Read more]

Thank you!

To which I would add the nonfiction of Kundera, Testaments Betrayed and The Art of the Novel.

Wonderful question, wonderful answers–I’ll just toss in four more: Borges, Seven Nights, Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, and in case anyone out there still considers poetry part of what we mean by “literary” (many non-litterateur friends of mine do, but I’m drawn to poetry-lovers), Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry and Glyn M…[Read more]