Search Results : John D'Agata
Blog Post Results (21-40 of 45)
Facts and fables
In this week's NYT book review section, Jennifer B. McDonald offer a fascinating and well-crafted review of what sounds like an interesting book ("In the Details: ‘The Lifespan of a Fact,’ by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal"): Under consideration in this essay is “The Lifespan of a Fact,” which is less a book than a knock-down, drag-out [...]
Book Review Podcast: Fact, Fiction and In Between
Jennifer B. McDonald talks about "The Lifespan of a Fact," in which the essayist John D'Agata wrestles with a fact checker over questions of truth, beauty and accuracy.
Doubling Down: an interview with John D’Agata and Jim Fingal
I’ve spent plenty of time and energy here already praising The Lifespan of a Fact, the strange and mesmerizing book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, and tempting as it is to keep shouting about the thing, I’ll back off… Continue reading ?
Lifespan of a Fact
Once I discovered John D’Agata’s new book, The Lifespan of a Fact, I had high hopes that he would recant, or at least evolve, his views on fact and fiction and their place in literary essays. I can’t imagine that, given his blithe disregard for facts, D’Agata would have gotten nearly the regard he has so far if not for his clear gifts with prose. Show More Summary
The 6th Floor Blog: Writer vs. Fact-Checker: This Time, It's Personal
An adaptation from ''The Lifespan of a Fact,'' a book by John D'Agata, a professor of nonfiction at the University of Iowa, and Jim Fingal, a former fact-checker, that deals with the practice of fudging facts in the name of Art.
Riff: The Fact Checker Versus the Fabulist
What we can learn from the nasty fight between John D’Agata and his zealous researcher.
Some Other Conversations With A Fact-Checker
The publication of The Lifespan of a Fact, which is based on seven years of email exchanges between writer John D'Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal, has prompted a lot of thoughtful discussion (an excerpt from the book ran in this month's Harper's). Show More Summary
Missing the Point
I’ll admit at the outset to some frustration. I like John D’Agata’s work quite a lot. I liked Halls of Fame, I really liked About a Mountain, I think the two anthologies he’s edited are among the most crucial +… Continue reading ?
The Fact of a Poem
Earlier this week, while there were some interesting—and interestingly broad—reactions to the excerpts from the forthcoming/arriving book The Lifespan of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal printed in Harper’s (see here and here by KR Writer’s Workshop’s own… Continue reading ?
The Art of Fact-Checking
Which are more important: true words, or beautiful words? “The Lifespan of a Fact,” a book by John D’Agata, a writer, and Jim Fingal, a former intern and fact-checker at The Believer, purports to explore this question by documentingShow More Summary
Should Essays Be Fact-Checked?
This month, Harper’s Magazine excerpted a portion of The Lifespan of a Fact, a book reproducing email debates between John D’Agata and Believer fact-checker Jim Fingal.
As Fingal struggled to fact-check D’Agata’s “What Happens There” essay for The Believer, the author made passionate arguments about the nature of facts in essays. Show More Summary
Lifespan of a Fact
Harper’s serializes a little of John D’Agata’s latest book, Lifespan of a Fact. Though I had some serious reservations about D’Agata’s previous, About a Mountain, that book was nonetheless one of the freshest, most interesting things I’d read in a while, back then I read it. Show More Summary
Matthew Weinkam: The Last Book I Loved, About a Mountain
I often worry about over-hyping books. Nothing ruins a good novel or collection of stories quite as well as a glowing review. So when Nick Flynn calls John D’Agata’s latest book of creative nonfiction, About A Mountain, “utterly amazing” and Ben Marcus raves, “Here is the literary essay raised to the highest form of art,” [...]
John D’Agata Guggenheim Fellow
One of the few names I recognized on the list of new Guggenheim Fellows is John D'Agata, who of course is doing incredible things with the essay form. So now would be the proper time to link to the essay I wrote about him last year.... continue reading, and add your comments
Favorite Reads of 2010: About a Mountain by John D’Agata
My reading divides into 3 kinds of books: 1) the books I just don't care for; 2) the books that are pleasing but ultimately forgettable; and 3) the books that force me to reckon with them. Of the three kinds, the third is indisputably the best. Show More Summary
John D’Agata and Cesar Aira
Two pieces of mine both went online elsewhere: My review/essay of Cesar Aira’s The Literary Conference at Abu Dhabi’s English-language newspaper The National And about 6,000 words of mine on John D’Agata, centered around his About a Mountain, which I have deeply mixed feelings about
Notable New York, This Week 4/12 – 4/18
This week in New York The Future of Criticism with Lorin Stein and Maud Newton, John D’Agata and Thalia Field discuss the lyric essay, Alice Walker on activism, Salman Rushdie and Lee Bollinger discuss free speech in a globalized world, Mikael Kennedy shows his Polaroids at the Chelsea Hotel and Congress for Curious People symposium [...]
Faith in Withheld Meanings
What do nuclear waste, suicide, and Las Vegas have in common? John D’Agata searches for meaning in the heart of Yucca Mountain
A familiar cast of characters populates John D’Agata’s new book-length essay, About a Mountain. Activists,...Show More Summary
About a Mountain — Read It
About a Mountain — Read It Since I’m currently reading John D’Agata’s book-length essay, About a Mountain, for an upcoming review, I don’t want to say too much about it. But, I will recommend it most emphatically. Without in any way, shape, or form implying that a style as interesting as that which D’Agata has summoned... continue reading About a Mountain — Read It
Why Read Nonfiction?
Over at The Utne Reader, Keith Goetzman asks a question originally posed by John D’Agata, “Do we read (nonfiction) to receive information, or do we read it to experience art?” Goetzman said the question ate at him most while reading D’Agata’s recent essay in The Believer about a teenage suicide in Las Vegas. “I was immediately [...]