D.T. Max on about why ‘David always wanted to be one David’, the solace he found in twelve-step programmes and what his use of wiper-fluid, on a car ride with Jonathan Franzen, reveals about his prose style.
‘Ian was a gifted journalist and editor of immense common sense, and had an insatiable curiosity about the world around him. We will miss him.’
Editor of Granta, Sigrid Rausing, remembers Ian Jack.
‘It was a peculiar, alopecic landscape of hummocks and gullies, with patches of grass growing on what looked like white earth, and rarely a soul to be seen.’
Ian Jack on the slag heaps of Glasgow, and the aristocratic lives built on them.
‘Could grief for one woman have caused all this? We were told so.’
Ian Jack in 1997 on the death of Diana.
‘Always and everywhere, this unequal struggle to preserve and remember.’
Ian Jack recalls the missing buildings of his hometown, Farnworth.
‘Outside wars and nuclear accidents, it is hard to think of any technological failure which has had such lasting and widespread effects.’
Ian Jack on the Hatfield train crash, from Granta 73.
‘Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young.’
Kate Zambreno on Marguerite Duras.
‘Without obsession, I don’t think I’d get anywhere.’
Two authors discuss atmosphere, obsession and going ‘too far’.
‘During an interrogation speech glows hot in the mouth, and what is spoken freezes.’
Herta Müller on language. Translated from the German by Philip Boehm.
‘The self is the work of art. Criticism puts that self in the service of other art.’
The authors discuss the multiplicity of the self, the idea of necessity, and how to work with what you lack.
‘What does it say about capitalism that we have money and want to spend it but we can’t find anything worth buying?’
Eula Biss on her book Having and Being Had.
