Sixteen New York Times journalists recount their work on the Cuban revolutionary’s obituary, first drafted in 1959.
Though very different in spirit and style, The Argonauts and A Little Life might be seen as two sides of the same coin. In juxtaposition, their experiments unravel the dialectic of the novel by testing the limits of its ability to make form and life commensurate: the little life of Jude with its preponderance of ghastly details and the epic journey of The Argonauts; fixed form and fragmentary form; gathering darkness and open-ended journey. Operating at opposite ends of the spectrum of life-writing, these texts, taken together, are responses not only to Lukács’s world abandoned by God, but also the prospect of no world at all.
"I told myself that getting into his life and putting something into the world, that was what I needed to make all of my problems disappear," Diamond admits. He does, and he does, but not in the way he expects. And while Searching for John Hughes isn't exactly the book he originally set out to write, it's clearly the book he was meant to write. Diamond helps us — with an assist from that wise bartender — understand that our love for these flawed, wonderful movies were never really about John Hughes at all. It was about us the whole time.
I’m surely not the only bookworm who has fantasized about working in a bookstore: The quiet, convivial atmosphere; the rows of spines with titles you’ve always meant to read; the enthusiastic conversations about books.
But as I learned, it’s not quite as relaxing as it looks.
In interviews, the Greenlight owners and other bookstore entrepreneurs in New York walked me through some of the decisions that need to be taken into account in such a venture.