Some people are writing more than ever, others aren’t writing at all. Some editors are overwhelmed with submissions, others are extending their deadlines for contests and themes because submissions are down. Writers’ responses to the pandemic are as varied as any other group. As floundery…as dedicated…as anyone. One thing
The call for witnesses in The Stone Diaries resonates throughout Shields’ work: “Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us. Our own memory is altogether too cherishing, which is the
Rereading Cat’s Eye while rereading Rosemary Sullivan’s biography of Margaret Atwood emphasized the parallels between the narrator’s and author’s childhoods. I was a teenager when I read Cat’s Eye for the first time; I would have had no idea that Elaine’s childhood of lakes and insects was Peggy’s childhood
Many of the letters in A Memoir of Friendship are about writing and reading, books and manuscripts; Blanche Howard and Carol Shields swapped book recommendations and writing frustrations and philosophies alongside the everyday stuff and nonsense of life. In 1993, Blanche wrote to Carol Shields, two years after their
If Forain was reading this story, the one which follows the story about him, in Mavis Gallant’s ninth collection, he would be so disappointed to hear that M. Wroblewski can’t find a thing to read in Paris. “There are no books worth reading—nothing but pornography and translated Western trash.”
