Many of our best writers have played the fake name game. Call it what you will—an alias, a pseudonym. But from Samuel Clemens to She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, we can find a gamut of wily writers determined to evade the postman. Or possibly, the IRS.
Can you match the writer to their pseudonym? How well do you know your heroes?
“‘There are certain historical moments when learning is more compressed and intense than others,’ wrote Howard Zinn, a month after 9/11. The historian was writing in a moment of tremendous, escalating violence, and he sensed more death and destruction looming. Zinn could hear a familiar melody in the drum taps coming out of the White House, from the pages of the New York Times, and in the academic institutions where he taught. His line about certain historical moments has been ringing in my ears. Compressed learning continues to exact a horrid cost.”
Today, we’re thinking about “female realism,” the melancholy at the heart of Sex and the City, why writers turn to fascism, and more!
Today, we’re thinking about the similarities between writers and chickens, how Jane Austen gifted us the rom-com, and why schools were never prepared to deal with AI!!!
In honor of Take Your Dog to Work Day (which is, apparently, a thing), 12 beloved writers and their canine companions.
“It’s very likely Gabo started writing Autumn of the Patriarch in the very room from which I’m writing this story now.” In which a writer discovers she has rented Gabriel García Márquez’s former apartment.
“‘The Progress of Love’ was the first of these stories that I was determined to see and not merely read. I adored the story, particularly the way in which the female narrator is haunted by her relationship to her mother in a way her brothers never are, and I mapped its shape as best I could. By doing so what I discovered, to my intense delight, was a coherence even deeper than I had experienced when reading the story.”
Elizabeth Poliner on how mapping Alice Munro’s short stories helped her grow as a writer.
