How do writers and other artists create their work? Our library of mental images includes visions of poets communing with nature, novelists burning the midnight oil whilst scribbling away in cold and lonely attics, composers tinkling phrases on the piano then dashing the notes down as their minds race with inspiration.
"Mad Men" is back, the cultural phenomenon with a loyal audience after a 10-month hiatus. It returned with 3.4 million viewers, its second-highest rating and is again getting so much intellectual attention you might think it was "War and Peace."
Reading reviews of art exhibitions in distant metropolises can evoke envy for pleasures and excitements that are impossible to share because the locations are too far away. So a collection of exhibition reviews could seem frustrating rather than enticing, especially when the once-assembled pictures have returned to their homes. But it's excitement rather than frustration that seizes the reader of "Always Looking: Essays on Art" by the late John Updike because these reviews are so intelligent, well-informed and beautifully written.
For a man who built his career on word economy, the title is pretty darned long _ The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
For a man who built his career on word economy, the title is pretty darned long — the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
The body of Tony Scott has been cremated, and his widow will keep his remains at their Los Angeles-area home.
John Updike's childhood home in Pennsylvania has been purchased by a group that plans to restore it and turn it into a museum.
Politics may play no role in British author Martin Amis' novels, but he remains a defiantly political creature whose comments on policy and policymakers over the years occasionally have proved controversial.
Late author John Updike's childhood home is for sale and facing an uncertain future.
Unable to choose a fiction winner, Pulitzer Prize officials made a decision guaranteed to satisfy no one.
In Anne Tyler's living room, you could shelve virtually all the books under a single heading: fiction.
In the living room of Anne Tyler, you could shelve virtually all the books under a single heading: fiction.
Julie Otsuka's "The Buddha in the Attic," a brief, poetic novel about young Japanese women who emigrate to the U.S. and marry men they have never met, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Colson Whitehead's newest book is not only literary and gorgeous, it also has the potential to be a crossover hit.
Good news for those who thought their copies of Playboy were gone forever when their moms found them and threw them away.
"After a period of months, all I have is a gentleman's agreement, but nothing signed," he told the Reading Eagle newspaper for a story Wednesday.
