Curated playlist
American postmodern writers
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
- Salman RushdieA fatwa ordering Salman Rushdie's execution was broadcast on Radio Tehran on Valentine's Day 1989.
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died four months before Blade Runner opened. He never saw the film that made his name famous.
- Truman CapoteOn the 23rd of August 1984, Truman Capote boarded a flight from New York to Los Angeles with a granny-square baby blanket. A relative he called Sook had made it for him when he was small. Friends said he was seldom without it, even when he…
- Thomas PynchonThomas Pynchon told his agent in April 1964 that he had four novels in progress at once. If they came out on paper anything like they looked inside his head, he wrote, the result would be "the literary event of the millennium." The writer…
- David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace wrote a novel that Time magazine placed among the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. That book was Infinite Jest, and it reached readers in 1996. Years later, the critic David Ulin wrote…
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
- James BaldwinThe FBI file on James Baldwin ran to 1,884 pages, gathered from 1960 until the early 1970s. In that era of surveillance of American writers, agents filled 276 pages on Richard Wright and 110 on Truman Capote. Henry Miller rated just nine.…
- Patti SmithPatti Smith, the American singer, songwriter, poet and author, lost her place in the middle of a song at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm. The date was the 10th of December 2016. She was standing in for Bob Dylan, winner of the…
- Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin was eleven years old when she mailed her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction. The magazine sent it back. She then submitted nothing else for ten years. Nearly sixty years of publishing lay ahead of her after…
- Ralph EllisonA 1967 fire destroyed more than 300 pages of Ralph Ellison's second novel. He never finished it.
- Jonathan FranzenA gate-crasher once pulled novelist Jonathan Franzen's glasses off his face. He jokingly demanded $100,000 in 2010.