Confronting the Worst: Writing & Catastrophe
I’m not an expert on natural disaster, but on man-made disaster, namely wars. I assume that all of us have received the same question over and over again: “Why… More
Quixote at 400
But what is the symbolic connection between madness and modernity? Why should modern man end up recognizing himself in the words of a lunatic? More
Quixote at 400: Margaret Atwood
The small, buried, dead books have given rise to huge living books and as we watch, the covers of the books open and some of the characters of Don… More
The Power of the PEN: Antonio Munoz Molina
ListenRight in front of me, on a crowded subway train, a woman is reading Marcel Proust. I have never seen her before, and most likely I will never see… More
The Power of the Pen: Salman Rushdie
A butterfly flaps its wings in India and we feel the breeze on our cheeks in New York. A throat is cleared somewhere in Africa and in California there’s… More
A Place in the Procession
Long long ago I dreamed this: an old soul, mud-colored, thin, ropy-haired, hunkers at a campfire. A line of naked youth has formed on the lip of a cliff.… More
Thrown Voices: Richard Howard & Susan Sontag
SUSAN SONTAG: I think of Richard Howard as a very central figure in our culture, maintaining and giving eloquent voice and illustration to standards that are in peril today.… More
Michael Cunningham: First Love
"First Love," by Michael Cunningham, appears in PEN America 1: Classics. This talk was originally presented at a tribute to Virginia Woolf, sponsored by the PEN Forums Committee, at Town… More
Confessions of a Silent Genre
The reader’s report is the most silent of literary genres, its existence publicly acknowledged only in attacks or parodies. In Umberto Eco’s Misreadings, spectacularly obtuse flunkies advise publishers to… More
Paul Auster on Samuel Beckett: Laughter in the Dark
We went on to talk about other things, and then, out of the blue, ten or fifteen minutes later, apropos of nothing, he leaned forward across the table and… More
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