Jordan E. Rosenfeld interviews Ben Marcus, editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories and author of The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women:

I wonder if you can address the word "new" in the title. Is it intended to mean that these stories are doing something new and different?

That's a good question. New could just mean it had to have been written today, and it's a slower timeline in literature, so if it's been written in the last 15 years we could call it new. I was using it more temporally rather than that these are all new kinds of styles, because I think, as I say in my introduction, quite a few of these styles are an extension of literary styles of the past. That's an ongoing conversation that writers have with each other. That's what a tradition is, to absorb the work from the past and engage it and make your own version of it and maybe modify or supplement or subvert it in some way. I guess I'm not a real believer that there are all the sudden a bunch of new styles; I think there are tiny gradual shifts that go on all the time.

(And, later in the interview:)

Earlier you said that the stories in this collection, while they may be original, are very much building on older techniques. Is there anyone in this book you feel really is writing from a cutting-edge point of view, or doing something more different than everyone else?

I think Sam Lipsyte is writing very charged prose with complex sentences that explore the limits of grammar but still connect emotionally to the characters. His stories are a bit other-worldly and slightly outside of reality, yet the emotions are completely true to life. Gary Lutz, to me, is a writer at the outer limit of what can be done right now with language. He is an actual language artist as opposed to simply a writer of short fiction. It's interesting to me that we refer to artists as people who make paintings or sculptures or installations but a writer is not often referred to as an artist. I think Gary Lutz is somebody who reminds us that simply putting words together can be an art form. He writes sentences that actually do tell a story but on top of that they stir up our insides and completely shift around our sense of how the world works. I see him as a philosopher of language.

(Interview link via Maud.)

• Is Naipaul pulling a King?

  Nobel laureate and renowned writer V S Naipaul today made a shocking declaration at the India launch of his novel Magic Seeds, saying, "this is likely to be my last book." As Delhiites at a jam-packed hall at the British Council here listened with disbelief, a nostalgic Naipaul said, "This could be the last time I am struggling with the ribbon (to unveil the book)."

• William Gibson recommences blogging.
  
  
• Slashdot readers interview Neal Stephenson. (I'm not sure I'll stick around to read the answers. Something about Slashdot -- all those collapsable towers of text, maybe -- gives me vertigo.)
  
  
• The British Library begins archiving writers' emails "as the written word is replaced by electronic messages." Imagine how sinister this would sound if set in the US: "It has already acquired emails written by [Ted] Hughes, and has created a list of important people whose computer files it would like to collect, including J.K. Rowling, A.S. Byatt, Alastair Campbell and Stephen Hawking."
  
  
• My Chinese kung fu novelist technique is unstoppable.
  
  
• Pirate copies of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's new book are flooding the Colombian market, the BBC reports. "Observers say the Nobel-prize winner's new book has sparked even more interest than usual because of its title, Memories of My Melancholy Whores."

"I have only read Proust in translation. I thought he began well but went dotty half way through like J Joyce in Ulysses. No plan. Nancy [Mitford] says it is uproariously funny throughout & only English & Americans treat it as anything superior to P.G. Wodehouse."

-- Evelyn Waugh, letter to Margaret FitzHerbert (Aug. 9, 1964)

(Thanks go to Terry at About Last Night for the quote.)

... enlists attention, or simply blows?