The Casual Ignominy of the Book Tours of Yore

Then dawned the day of the book tour. Literary stars and the authors of blockbusters, the Norman Mailers and the Frederick Forsyths, had always been swaggering about the world touting their wares. Now the rest of us, poor moles digging away in the dark of obscurity, were hauled up into the light and sent abroad to appear before live audiences and pretend to be a more or less plausible and if possible entertaining version of ourselves. [...] every reading, as every writer will tell you, attracts at least a couple of maniacs. John Banville, Esquire

voglio anche segnalare una nuova traduzione del romanzo di Natalia Ginzburg, The Road to the City, New Directions. Dalla copertina, "An almost unbearably intimate novella, The Road to the City concentrates on a young woman barely awake to life, who fumbles through her days: she is fickle yet kind, greedy yet abashed, stupidly ambitious yet loving too—she is a mass of confusion".