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Posts tagged "Hemingway"

Dec 31, 2012
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“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
— Ernest Hemingway
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Apr 21, 2012
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Elmore Leonard, Rum Punch1 Elmore Leonard is my favorite author for air travel. No bullshit, just great dialogue and a big bag of money everybody’s trying to get. Rum Punch is the source material for my favorite Tarantino movie, Jackie Brown. The movie is a case study of great adaptation: trimming a little fat (tasty, but still fat) from the story, transforming the material into something of your own (Jackie, in the original, is not black, and certainly not Pam Grier), etc. If you’re not familiar with Leonard’s work: GET TO IT. Here’s a great line on Hemingway from a recent Q&A: “I used to read a lot of him till I learned he had no sense of humor.” You’ll notice from the photo that I’ve had the hardcover for ages, but only finally read the ebook—Leonard is the perfect for the Kindle. ↩

Elmore Leonard, Rum Punch1

Elmore Leonard is my favorite author for air travel. No bullshit, just great dialogue and a big bag of money everybody’s trying to get.

Rum Punch is the source material for my favorite Tarantino movie, Jackie Brown. The movie is a case study of great adaptation: trimming a little fat (tasty, but still fat) from the story, transforming the material into something of your own (Jackie, in the original, is not black, and certainly not Pam Grier), etc.

If you’re not familiar with Leonard’s work: GET TO IT. Here’s a great line on Hemingway from a recent Q&A: “I used to read a lot of him till I learned he had no sense of humor.”

  1. You’ll notice from the photo that I’ve had the hardcover for ages, but only finally read the ebook—Leonard is the perfect for the Kindle. ↩

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May 03, 2011
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How Writers Build the Brand - NYTimes.com It’s always comforting to be reminded that literary whoring — I mean, self-marketing — has been practiced by the greats. The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed,” Balzac observed in “Lost Illusions,” his classic novel about literary life in early 19th-century Paris. As another master, Stendhal, remarked in his autobiography “Memoirs of an Egotist,” “Great success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of out-and-out charlatanism.” Terrific read.

How Writers Build the Brand - NYTimes.com

It’s always comforting to be reminded that literary whoring — I mean, self-marketing — has been practiced by the greats.

The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed,” Balzac observed in “Lost Illusions,” his classic novel about literary life in early 19th-century Paris. As another master, Stendhal, remarked in his autobiography “Memoirs of an Egotist,” “Great success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of out-and-out charlatanism.”

Terrific read.

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