"I can't understand the American literary block... unless it means that the blocked man isn't forced economically to write (as the English writer, lacking campuses and grants, usually is) and hence can afford the luxury of fearing the critics' pounce on a new work not as good as the last".
The stripped down Greek Revival house is one of the less historically noteworthy places on W. 10th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, a very literary block (once home to Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis and Emma Lazarus, author of The New Colossus: "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…").
Maybe that's a goal if you were a literary blocking back.
Carr's bag of tricks is bottomless: filled with citation, reportage, collage, snippets of what appears to be found poetry, faux literary criticism, blocks of prose poetry alongside sinuous, white space-laden lyricism, Notes on Violence is exactly what it purports to be, and tackles its colossal topic as achingly and harrowingly as is both deserved and required.
For decades, the Algonquin Hotel, on West 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, overshadowed the Iroquois, down the block, when it came to drawing a literary crowd.
They were incapable of doing a close reading, the building block of literary writing and analysis.
The block's literary pedigree goes beyond Moore, author of an early American Hebrew lexicon (though perhaps not of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," the Christmas poem for which he is best known).
The inaugural shortlist of the latest literary award on the block, the Folio Prize, has been unveiled - with a strong showing by American authors.
Paul Dano, Ms. Kazan's real-life partner, is Calvin, a literary whiz kid turned blocked writer who breathes life into Ruby, a figment of his imagination, and then directs her every move.
Paul Dano (above, with Ms. Kazan), Ms. Kazan's real-life partner, is Calvin, a literary whiz kid turned blocked writer who breathes life into this figment of his imagination, and then directs her every move.
Paul Dano, Ms. Kazan's real-life partner, is Calvin, a literary whiz kid turned blocked writer who breathes life into this figment of his imagination, and then directs her every move.
