Still, in the same way that you have to read a lot of books in order to write novels, to write about people you need to know a lot of them. By “know,” I don’t mean you have to really understand them deep down. All you need to do is glance at people’s appearance, notice how they talk and act, what their special characteristics are. People you like; ones you’re not so fond of; ones who, frankly, you dislike—it’s important to observe people, as much as possible, without choosing whom to watch. What I mean is, if the only people you put in your novels are the kind you like, are interested in, or can easily understand, then your novels will ultimately lack a certain expansiveness. You want all sorts of different people, doing all sorts of different actions, and it’s through that clash of differences that things get moving, propelling the story forward. So you shouldn’t just avert your eyes when you decide you can’t stomach somebody; instead, ask yourself, “What is it I don’t like about them?” and “Why don’t I like that?”
The list of good novels about movie directors is not a long one. You won’t find much beyond the over-the-top satiric Blue Movie by Terry Southern, and Diane Spiotta’s Innocents and Others, which is more about relationships than it is about movie-making.
But now the British writer Jonathan Coe has written Mr. Wilder and Me, a sometimes-funny, sometimes-melancholy, but always moving novel about the great American director Billy Wilder on the down-slope of his career.
Ted Chiang is an award-winning short story writer whose understanding of the sci-fi genre allows him to break these rules and write stories that, though overwhelmed with novelty, allow for even more experiment than a single novum could initiate. In many of his stories, Chiang combines multiple ideas and concepts that could form stories on their own, thus creating unique and enriching science fiction worlds that capture the imagination. This is demonstrated clearly in Stories of Your Life and Others (2002; republished as Arrival in 2016).
Full of dueling egos and narratives, The Stars Undying alternates between two perspectives: Princess and Oracle Altagracia Caviro Patramata, our cunning Cleopatra, and Commander Matheus Ceirran, a charismatic Caesar. Robin leverages these two legendary egos to great effect, charting their relationship and Ceirran’s rise to power. The result is an ambitious blend of romance, tragedy, and political intrigue, and one that probes compellingly at the unsteady boundaries between divinity and duplicity.
Where does a text exist? A book seems like the obvious answer, but texts can be orally transmitted, etched onto banana leaves, or downloaded from cyberspace and read on a screen. Yet whereas a text is metaphysical, books are decidedly physical (leaving aside, for now, e-books and audiobooks) and Oxford professor Emma Smith explores books as material objects in "Portable Magic," a book for people who love books.
"What matters to me is that Prince and Dickens tell me, every day, Not good enough. Not quick enough. Not enough. More, more, more. Think quicker, be more ambitious, be more imaginative. And whatever you do for a living, that's something you need to hear." He has pictures of them both on his office wall.