John Baker’s Blog

A taster: this section comes at a meeting between the narrator and the Swede, a former ballplayer and one of his boyhood heroes:
I was impressed as the meal wore on, by how assured he seemed of everything commonplace he said, and how everything he said was suffused by his good nature. I kept waiting for [...]

In this interview, published in The Guardian, Hermione Lee talks to Philip Roth on the publication of his latest novel, Exit Ghost.
Here’s a taster:
HL: Nathan Zuckerman, talking about Lonoff, tells Kliman that ‘writers can be shattered by writing’. Can you say more about what he means, and what, in particular, this might mean in [...]

1. Why do you blog?
I started because, for a time, I was caught fast at home and it brought me the outside world. Now I can’t seem to stop. Though sometimes tiresome, the exercise of regular writing brings discipline and creative pleasure. It is admittedly a quest for audience approval and its thread of journalism [...]

1. Why do you blog?
For me, a fit of pique is always a wonderful motivator, and that’s what got me started as a blogger: annoyance at something I had read. But that’s not sufficient motive in the long run. What keeps me going is the opportunity to share my enthusiasms. I see that as the [...]