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Churl Next Door

From letters that Marcel Proust wrote to his neighbors Marie and Charles Williams between 1908 and 1916, while he lived at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, in Paris. Charles Williams owned a…

Silver Linings Daybook

by Arsenii Formakov,

From letters sent by Arsenii Formakov to his family, in Riga. Formakov was a Latvian poet, novelist, and journalist. In 1940, he was arrested for anti-Soviet activities and sentenced to…

Grim Sleeper

by Michel Leiris,

By Michel Leiris (1901–90), from Nights as Day, Days as Night, a chronicle of the author’s dreams between 1923 and 1961. The book was published last month by Spurl Editions.…

Without a Fight

by Adam Zagajewski, Clare Cavanagh,

By Adam Zagajewski, from Slight Exaggeration, a memoir that will be published next month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Zagajewski is a poet and essayist. Translated from the Polish by…

For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Howard Rome,

From a letter written in July 1961 by the psychiatrist Howard Rome, who treated Ernest Hemingway at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, before the writer’s suicide earlier that month. The…

The Curse

by Javier Marías, Margaret Jull Costa,

By Javier Marías, from To Begin at the Beginning, a reflection on the art of writing fiction. The book was published in October by Sylph Editions as part of their…

Le Mot Injuste

by Abdelfattah Kilito,

By Abdelfattah Kilito, from The Tongue of Adam, which was published this month by New Directions. Kilito was born in Morocco in 1945. Translated from the French by Robyn Creswell.

The Old Man

by David Means,

A writer remembers his father

Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers

by Rivka Galchen,

Flannery O’Connor: No children. Eudora Welty: No children. One children’s book. Katherine Anne Porter: No children, many miscarriages. Hilary Mantel, Janet Frame, Willa Cather, Jane Bowles, Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Bishop,…

The Act of Art

by Charles Bukowski,

From a March 1961 letter sent by Charles Bukowski to Jon Webb, the editor of The Outsider and an early champion of Bukowski’s work. Bukowski (1920–94) was the author of…

Putin’s Double

by Emmanuel Carrère,

By Emmanuel Carrère, from Limonov, to be published in October by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Carrère’s books include The Adversary, My Life as a Russian Novel, and Lives Other Than…

Authors

Churl Next Door

Silver Linings Daybook

Grim Sleeper

Without a Fight

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Curse

Le Mot Injuste

The Old Man

Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers

The Act of Art

Putin’s Double

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Authors

From the Archive

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Churl Next Door

Silver Linings Daybook

Grim Sleeper

Without a Fight

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Curse

Le Mot Injuste

The Old Man

Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers

The Act of Art

Putin’s Double

August 2014

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