Gregory Cowles

Dec 10, 2024 | nytimes.com | Reece Williams |Gregory Cowles

Nikki Giovanni, the Black Arts poet who died on Monday at the age of 81, catapulted to fame in her 20s and remained a celebrity for the rest of her life thanks to her charisma, her command and, not least, the colloquial power and wisdom of her language.

May 21, 2024 | nytimes.com | Gregory Cowles

For years when I was younger, and still dreamed that I might be a novelist instead of an editor or a critic, I kept a quote from Don DeLillo's 1993 Paris Review interview pinned to the bulletin board above my desk as a sort of talisman or goad prompting me to write: "Do you think it made a difference in your career," Adam Begley asked him, "that you started writing novels late, when you were approaching 30?" DeLillo's mild answer ("Well, I wish I had started earlier, but evidently I wasn't...

May 14, 2024 | nytimes.com | Gregory Cowles

El primer relato de su primer libro evocaba la vida de su padre. El último relato de su último libro evocaba la muerte de su madre. Entre ambas obras, en 14 colecciones de cuentos y a lo largo de más de 40 años, Alice Munro demostró en un deslumbrante relato breve tras otro que los modestos detalles de la experiencia de una persona -sometidos a la alquimia del lenguaje, la imaginación y la agudeza psicológica- pueden ser materia prima de la gran literatura.

May 14, 2024 | nytimes.com | Gregory Cowles

The first story in her first book evoked her father's life. The last story in her last book evoked her mother's death. In between, across 14 collections and more than 40 years, Alice Munro showed us in one dazzling short story after another that the humble facts of a single person's experience, subjected to the alchemy of language and imagination and psychological insight, could provide the raw material for great literature. And not just any person, but a girl from the sticks.

Jan 31, 2024 | pilotonline.com | Gregory Cowles

Early in José Saramago’s 2006 memoir, “Small Memories,” he tells readers that he briefly considered calling it “The Book of Temptations” instead. His reasons were characteristically elliptical and charming: something about Bosch, and sainthood, and the fat prostitute who “in a weary, indifferent voice” invited a 12-year-old Saramago up to her room.