James Atlas
James Atlas
James Atlas, Evanston, Illinois the president of Atlas & Company, publishers, and founding editor of the Penguin Lives Series. A Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and onetime contributor to The New Yorker, he was an editor at The New York Times Magazine for many years. He has edited volumes of poetry and has written several novels and two biographies. In 2002, he started Atlas Books, which at one time published two series in conjunction with larger publishers. In 2007, the company...
became book discovery fascinated generation larger life voice
In writing this book I'm writing about my own life, a generation removed, ... But in the larger sense ... it was my discovery of Bellow's work, his voice that became for me the inspiration for this book. I was always fascinated by his life and wanted to know more about it.
answer directly explicitly james life people york
If I could answer a critic, people like James Shapiro in the New York Times say that I extrapolate the life too directly and explicitly from the work,
books books-and-reading events figure follow himself life mean patterns points reading simply starting
He himself has said you can follow the patterns and real events in his life by reading his books, which doesn't mean you can figure out his life by reading his books. Simply that the events in his life are the starting points for the books that he writes. But that's just the beginning.
amuse buoyant certain deal entertain extremely finds goes great himself life mild obsessed self terrible vivacity
He describes himself as a mild depressive, and he goes through just terrible suffering, much of it self-generated. And yet he's also an extremely buoyant person who finds a great deal in life to entertain and instruct and amuse him. He has a kind of vivacity about him. He's very funny, and he's very obsessed with certain themes.