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Plugging a Les Paul straight into a 1959 Marshall Super Lead, rolling your hand across the knobs until all of them are dimed, then standing in front of a greenback-loaded 4x12 cabinet and striking an open E chord.

Cormac McCarthy, Larry Brown, Rick Bass, Daniel Woodrell, Raymond Carver, Tom Franklin, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Harry Crews, Philipp Meyer, Charles Portis, Donald Ray Pollock, S.A. Cosby, Frank Bill, Ron Rash, Breece D'J Pancake, Richard Ford, Barry Hannah

Michael Shaara, THE KILLER ANGELS

I made a list of 20 books for readers who are getting into literary fiction for the first time:

I’m genuinely grateful there are still people who are this passionate about Literature, regardless of their feelings about me or my recommendations. This is a net positive. I encourage Ms. Russell and anyone else who cares about literary fiction to make their own lists.

Encourage my fellow fiction writers on here to read Kazuo Ishiguro’s (excellent) Nobel Prize acceptance speech. This paragraph, in particular, has been very helpful to me over the past several years, even though—as Kazuo says—the concept seems, on its surface, quite simple.

Ms. Lorenz, do you know bin Laden’s stated reason for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11?

Had no idea this could raise anyone’s hackles. Got done writing yesterday morning, was thinking about some fairly accessible literary novels, jotted down a list. Wouldn’t have thought a list of books for would-be readers would get me arrested. I was just passing through.

America did not, in fact, “deserve 9/11,” and the innocent men, women, and children (the youngest of these was two and a half) did not deserve to be incinerated or fall to their deaths. The survivors did not deserve to be horribly maimed and psychologically scarred for life.

Empathy:

“We know psychiatry is a scam for the following two reasons— One: all the children of psychiatrists are insane. And two: in a hundred years of psychoanalysis, no one has ever gotten better.” —David Mamet, Director’s Commentary, HOUSE OF GAMES

Reading Thomas Harris’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (I’ve only ever seen the movie) after learning it was one of David Foster Wallace’s favorite novels—a top ten for DFW. The writing is actually quite skillful. I guess I expected merely functional prose. It’s really solid, though.

Can’t stop what’s coming. And the Raynaissance is certainly coming.