The writing life is an anxious, competitive, and disappointing one (“Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, match the expectation,” Charlotte Brontë wrote). But it can also be thrilling and joyous, with occasional intimations of greatness. This week, we’ve collected six pieces about writers from our archive, each capturing, in its own way, the excitement of transmuting life into literature.
“The Hunger Artist” (2000): “I thought I was a student. I thought I was a teacher,” Susan Sontag tells Joan Acocella. “And then I discovered that I liked to tell stories and make people cry.”
“The Dead Are Real” (2012): Larissa MacFarquhar Profiles Hilary Mantel. “When she wakes in the morning,” MacFaquhar writes, “she likes to start writing right away, before she speaks, because whatever remnants sleep has left are the gift her brain has given her for the day.” **{: .Apple-converted-space}
“Ghosts in the House” (2003): Hilton Als profiles Toni Morrison. “Being a black woman writer is not a shallow place to write from,” Morrison says. “It doesn’t limit my imagination; it expands it.”
“The Storyteller” (2004): “I once asked L’Engle to define ‘science fiction,’ ” Cynthia Zarin writes of the “A Wrinkle in Time” author. “She replied, ‘Isn’t everything?’ ”
“The Background Hum” (2009): Daniel Zalewski profiles Ian McEwan. “All novelists are scholars of human behavior,” but McEwan “pursues the matter with more scientific rigor than the job strictly requires.”
“Inheritance” (2014): Edward St. Aubyn says that his father was “the most destructive person I’ve ever met.” Ian Parker explores how St. Aubyn has turned this poison legacy into literature.
We hope that you enjoy these pieces, as well as the stories we’ve already shared in previous collections, and that you’ll follow us on Facebook and Twitter, where our contributors continue to recommend their favorite articles from the archive.
