Still no news from the Fair, so I will have to tell you about Los Angeles: my book fair of one at the Chateau Marmont. My first meeting–breakfast–was with PR guru Jonathan Bing, who fifteen years ago (as an editor … Weiterlesen →

I had hoped to surprise you today with news from the Fair, but my sister, my spy–the New York representative of Aitken, Alexander–is laid up in the Frankfurter Hof with the flu. (Get well, Momo!)  Here in San Francisco I … Weiterlesen →

As a fiction editor you are often asked, by agents or foreign publishers, what kind of novel you like. At first the question stymied me. Then I realized you can answer in the negative: Science fiction wasn’t for me. Neither … Weiterlesen →

It’s because of that Nicholson Baker novel, The Anthologist -possibly the most entertaining novel ever written about writer’s block and editorial self-doubt. (Next Baker will write an entertaining novel about a root canal.) The narrator, Paul Chowder, has spent months trying … Weiterlesen →

A confession, for starters: I’m not at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I write this dispatch from a sleeper train in the Nevada desert, somewhere between Winnemucca and Reno. It’s just before dawn. The moon has set, the stars are out. … Weiterlesen →