Graphite Glory

Excerpt from After Dark . "I think about the old days a lot. Especially after I started running all over the country like this. If I try hard to remember, all kinds of stuff comes back -- really vivid memories. All of a sudden out of nowhere I can bring back things I haven't thought about for years. It's pretty interesting. Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other." Korogi stands there holding the remote control. "You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance of not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ...

Takahashi continues: "What I want to say is probably something like this: any single human being, no matter what kind of a person he or she may be, is all caught up in the tentacles of this animal like a giant octopus, and is getting sucked into the darkness. You can put any kind of spin on it you like, but you end up with the same unbearable spectacle." He stares at the space above the table and heaves a long sigh. "Anyhow, that day was a turning point for me. After that I decided to study law seriously. I figured that's where I might find whatever I was looking for. Studying the law is not as much fun as making music, but what the hell, that's life. That's what it means to grow up." [...] Mari is thinking about something. Takahashi asks her, 'Have you ever seen Love Story ? It's an old movie." Mari shakes her head. "They had it on TV the other day. It's pretty good. Ryan O'Neal is the only son of an o...

"It's an uncommon coincidence. The solitary existence of the writer, recasting the world alone in a room, generally unfits him for the intensely sociable, collegial life of practical politics, just as most successful politicians would as soon turn into Trappist monks as face the daily silence and seclusion of the writer's study. [...] "Yet writing has sometimes been as important an accomplishment for an American president as his skill as a general or diplomat, as when Jefferson, Madison and John Adams wrote the United States into being by lamplight, and Lincoln scribbled disconnected sentences on scraps of paper that he tucked for safe-keeping inside his hat." - Jonathan Raban. From " All the Presidents' Literature " at WSJ.com.

"It is a salutary lesson for a first-time novelist: Be careful who you get to provide the glowing endorsement to splash across the cover. "That is the mistake Sherry Jones made when she suggested who might write a few warm words to promote her book, The Jewel of Medina, a historical romance about A'isha, the child bride of Muhammad, before its publication. It is a mistake she will not make again as she puts the finishing touch this month to its sequel. "Jones could not have anticipated that her action would become a spectacular own goal that would cause her American publisher to drop the book, a potential British publisher to be firebombed, and put herself at the centre of a publishing controversy. On the plus side, the previously unknown writer has become an international name." [...] "The unravelling of Jones's book began when her publisher asked for the names of historians who might endorse the book. Jones did not know any personally but suggested...