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  • Books
    Culture Report II

    Words of wisdom (sort of)

    Sales? Meh. Journals? Not that helpful. Grants? Nice—if you can get ’em. Despite a seemingly simple formula, the factors of literary stardom are not all that clear-cut. Here, seven notable New York writers weigh in on what they think of the benchmarks they’re supposed to hit.
    By Michael Miller and Drew Toal

    The authors

    Jonathan Ames
    Essayist (I Love You More than You Know) and novelist (Wake Up, Sir!)

    Tao Lin
    Novelist, poet (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy), blogger

    Fiona Maazel
    Author of Last Last Chance

    Ed Park
    The Believer coeditor and author of Personal Days

    Christopher Sorrentino
    Author of Sound on Sound and the NBA-nominated Trance

    Amanda Stern
    Curator of the Happy Ending Series and author of The Long Haul

    Darin Strauss
    Novelist (Chang and Eng and More than It Hurts You)




    On winning awards

    Sorrentino: After I was named a finalist for the National Book Award, I got an e-mail from a friend who wrote, “Congratulations on becoming one of the most hated writers in America.” This is a form of success, I suppose.

    Strauss: Of course it helps sales and with the fluffing of one’s ego, and neither of those things are to be underestimated in this often-hard profession. But it can be tough to follow up acclaim; the weight of accolades can pull down on every sentence a novelist writes in his next book. All the same, I’d cut off my pinkie to win the National Book Award. Well—the left pinkie, at least.

    Maazel: I imagine getting a big, fancy award is nice and that probably your book sales improve as a result, though for literary fiction, this might mean the difference between having 100 readers and 1,000.

    NEXT: GETTING PUBLISHED IN JOURNALS »

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    Time Out New York / Issue 669 : Jul 22–30, 2008
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    Comments
    1. Posted by anonniemuss on Sun, May 10, at 08:49pm

      This is an interesting feature and that makes it all the more annoying that it is chopped up into tiny bits and pieces over 8 pages. It's maddening to read and I can't understand why a publication would discourage readers this way. I am not a regular reader of this website and I am not coming back because of this.

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