It’s definitely partly of my own choosing. Is that of your own choosing, or has it just become what people expect from you? I can’t figure out where I end and New York starts. Melissa Giannini for The Aviary: Do you ever get tired of writing about New York-or talking about writing about New York? The notorious curmudgeon-he wrote an essay titled “Against Joie de Vivre,” after all-kindly invited a former student into his Brooklyn home on a bright afternoon to discuss writing and New York for The Aviary.
He will flip through the mess of loose-leaf for mere seconds before clearing his throat and reading aloud his essay on “Reflection and Retrospection.” If that weren’t enough, Lopate is also an annoyingly fine writer, the author of critically acclaimed collections of personal essays, novels, novellas, nonfiction works, and books of poetry, including two forthcoming books, both out February 12, 2013, from The Free Press/Simon & Schuster-one on the craft of literary nonfiction, To Show and to Tell, and an essay collection, Portrait Inside My Head. If you happen to find yourself in a workshop he’s running, and a question arises on, say, establishing a double-perspective, Lopate will hold up his index finger and whisper, “Aha, one moment.” He’ll reach for his tote bag and pull out a fat, falling-apart folder. He wrote the book on both, or rather, anthologized both, with Writing New York and The Art of the Personal Essay -which, needless to say, also makes him an excellent teacher of writing.
Phillip Lopate may be the greatest living expert on New York writing and the personal essay.
0 kommentar(er)
