We lost one of the American literary greats this past week. Fringe celebrates J.D. Salinger’s ineffable legacy with posts from writers who have been affected by his work. 

 Fringe contributor Justine Tal Goldberg writes: 

  J.D. Salinger was my first love. He came to me in high school, between assigned readings of Shakespeare, Hemingway and Camus, and long before those other literary giants of college—Joyce, Faulkner and Yeats. These authors stole my heart, passing my affections between them like the college boys I dated, but Salinger stayed by my side. He was a good friend among acquaintances, a relationship among flings, and the voice of reason when my own characters threatened to lie.

              As a teenager, I appreciated Salinger’s honesty, his self-deluded characters who through seamless narrative are revealed for the phonies they are. (Can you blame me? It was high school after all.) As a young woman, I was deeply moved by his faith in childhood, his authorial finger trained on the grown-ups, those poor folks utterly devoid of magic. Now, I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t thought about Salinger much until yesterday, of course, when I learned of his death and sat down to reflect upon his life.

              Is it trite to say that I feel like I’ve lost a loved one, an ex with whom I’ve fallen out of touch but still care for in... more »

A recent article in the Guardian’s Book Blog (I’m addicted) debated whether it’s necessary to date a reader if you yourself are a reader. The writer, clearly also the reader in this scenario, says that reading is not only an intensely personal ritual, but also an incredibly social one. Think about the success of book clubs–most people find they can relate better to what they’ve read if they discuss it with others. This is something I have definitely found true, though my own book club is still in its fledgling days. I love talking about books and writers, getting recommendations and different perspectives from fellow readers. I am incredibly lucky in that I work in a field (publishing) chock full of voracious readers, and many of my friends are also readers (comes with the territory when you attend a graduate program in writing and publishing).

Okay, so if you love to read, you can chat about books around the water cooler, or around a few bottles of wine at a book club. Isn’t that outlet enough? Do we really need our romantic partners to love reading as well?

According to the Guardian, no. The writer says that his wife of eight years has read... more »

This year, as the final days of December tick down, our attention is not only turned to the end of 2009, but the end of a decade–the first of the new millennium. Shocking, isn’t it? Though it doesn’t seem all that long ago that the world was in a tizzy over Y2K, we’ve come a long way. The publishing industry has evolved and changed in ways that are barely quantifiable, and only continues to change every day. We’ll be feeling the effects of the Kindle, online media, flash fiction, and Twitter on literature for years to come. We lost some literary icons (Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, John Updike, Eudora Welty, just to name a few) and created some new ones (Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon). We’ve seen the rise of wizards and vampires and the decline of newspapers. Yes, it’s been quite the decade.

I love lists. I love reading them, I love making them, and I love crossing things off of them. But when it comes to compiling a “Best of the Decade” list, I find I’m a little too daunted by all that’s out there. When the Globe and Mail asked several prominent writers to... more »

The great Florida workshop experiment culminates tonight in our very first session. Over two months have passed since I called out to Fringe blog readers for help with naming our business. A bunch of you commented after the post, a couple wrote to me privately, and I appreciate all of the input. After dismissing such terrifying (and probably terrible) ideas as Composite Monster and Shibboleth, we settled on WriteByNight.

Since that moment, life has been a whirlwind, but after nearly three months of planning and schmoozing and pleading, our eight-week creative writing workshop finally begins at 6:00 tonight in an art gallery at The Arts Council, Inc., our sponsor. We have eleven official members at present, although we’re expecting a last-minute registrant or two.

Of course, if we had a nickel for every person who said he or she would join, we’d have about three bucks. But as many of you probably know, 8-12 is a good number for a workshop, and we couldn’t be more pleased.

We even have a website. Now, I know as much about computer coding as I do about DNA coding, but with a little help from Wordpress and some friends, I managed to create something that isn’t a total embarrassment.... more »

The Nobel Prize for Literature was announced this morning amid much anticipation–ok, at least there was some anticipation within a small subset of the literary community. I knew the prize was to be awarded this morning, and I also knew that the list of nominees included Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, and Thomas Pynchon–all familiar literary heavy-hitters. However, I had never heard of Herta Muller until this morning. Ditto with last year’s recipient, Jean Marie Le Clezio.

The announcement comes in the wake of last year’s controversial comments by the Nobel Committee’s outgoing permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, who remarked that American literature was not worthy of the prestigious Nobel, as America is too insular a country and “Europe still is the center of the literary world…not the United States.” The last American writer to win was Toni Morrison, in 1993, and prior to that, Saul Bellow was the last North American writer to win, in 1976 (he was a Canadian citizen, but lived most of his life in the US).

In addition to looking like the type of woman you’d want to be friends with, Herta was awarded the prize because “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, [she] depicts... more »

I like to catch up on blogs when I first get to work, so I’ll have something to read while I drink my coffee. On this particular morning, I came across “This Is Not To Say,” a lovely essay in Brevity by Amy Lee Scott.  It’s only 3 paragraphs–after all, Brevity’s schtick is short creative nonfiction–but in that brief space, Scott manages to both evoke the sweetness of an afternoon in a waning summer and turn the whole boat around in the last biting sentence.

Says Scott of the essay, “I also wanted to practice writing a sharp turn, something that would wield the essay from one emotional state to another by stitching memories together in an associative manner. This is surprisingly difficult to do in a short space, so I thought I would tackle the space issue by using a catalog.”  Later in the interview, she admits that the use of the catalog technique can feel gimmicky, but I think it works well here, as the images stacked together create quite a picture–and one that gave a good start to my day.