After a week or so of heavy book news, (including the deaths of authors J.D. Salinger, Howard Zinn, Louis Auchincloss, Robert Parker), it’s nice to note something happy.
A couple of weeks ago I spoke to the St. Louis Writers Guild, which turns…
Two and a half months after Sarah Palin went on the road to promote “Going Rogue,” the former governor’s book tour seems to have accomplished its mission.
In a Post-Dispatch story Nov. 17, Wayne Fields - a Washington University professor who is…
The Eugene b. Redmond Writers Club says “many paths lead to black history.”
One way is poetry. The writers group, named after the poet laureate of East St. Louis and SIU English professor emeritus, will discuss poetry and arts as paths to black history at 6…
Did you read that a film version of Daniel Woodrell’s “Winter’s Bone” took first prize for dramatic feature at the Sundance Film Festival? My colleague Joe Williams blogged about it recently.
How exciting for Woodrell and his fans that the movie…
Want to know why Mark Twain’s work has survived the 100 years since his death?
The Foundry Art Centre quotes him: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
The reason writers like Twain are still relevant a…
Did you see the uproar last week about a school that pulled a dictionary after a parent supposedly complained about the words “oral sex”?
School Library Journal says that the dictionary has been safely returned to shelves after parents of fourth- and…
Pop quizzes can kill great literature. Avoid them.
That’s one of the messages Cindy Lovell, executive director of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum, will convey at several events this week for two Big Reads.
As a Twain expert, Lovell relishes…
Look for more smarmy political dirt Saturday when “The Politician” by Andrew Young goes on sale. The Associated Press is reporting that Young, a former aide of John Edwards, will be making the rounds on TV talking about the book.
Why assume…
Charles McGrath wrote a masterful obituary of J.D. Salinger for The New York Times. See part of it in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch and in full at The Wire on stltoday.com.
Although most people believe it is right to only speak…
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran this review of “The Catcher in the Rye” on July 15, 1951, under the headline “Vivid Story of Adolescence.” It predicted a “sure best-seller.” Fifty years later, the Post-Dispatch reprinted it in honor of the…
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