Tuesday

Mar. 28, 2000

Mid-Term

by Reynolds Price

Broadcast Date: TUESDAY: March 28, 2000

Poem: "Mid-Term," by Reynolds Price, from The Collected Poems of Reynolds Price (Scribner).

It's the birthday in Newton, Massachusetts, 1940, of novelist and short story writer RUSSELL BANKS, author of Continental Drift (1985), which won him the Pulitzer Prize. His other novels include Affliction (1989), and The Sweet Hereafter (1991).

Writer Mario Vargas Llosa was born in a village in the south of Peru on this day in 1936. He's the author of Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), The War of the End of the World (1984), Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1987) and other books.

It's the birthday of novelist FREDERICK EXLEY, in Watertown, New York, 1929, author of A Fan's Notes (1968).

It's the birthday of NELSON ALGREN, the novelist of Chicago, even though he was born in Detroit on this day in 1909. His best-known books are a collection of 20 short stories called The Neon Wilderness, published in 1947, and the 1949 novel, The Man with the Golden Arm.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

«

»

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show