Blog Detail
John Baker's Blog
http://johnbakersblog.co.uk
Blog of UK based novelist with posts on the creative process, writing tips, publishing and the art of fiction. Book, film and music reviews, quotations and cultural and political comment.
Recent Posts
The Publisher’s Pudding
Eliza Acton was a nineteenth century poet who turned her pen to the writing of recipes. In her book, Modern Cookery In All Its Branches she gives recipes for a publisher’s pudding, and also for a poor author’s pudding. Things haven’...
Have you seen the most beautiful woman in the world?
Yes, sometime around 1984 when I worked at a store. The store was empty and in came a Hindu woman. She looked like a princess and well could have been one. She bought some hanging costume jewelry from me. I was at the point of fainting. She had coppe...
Bolaño’s Vast Forest of Literature
“… i would never manage to create anything like a masterpiece. You may say that literature doesn’t consist solely of masterpieces, but rather is populated by so-called minor works. I believed that, too. Literature is a vast forest a...
Falling off a cliff
John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, was speaking at York University the other night. He told the following story: A man out walking by the coast fell off a cliff. On the way down, after a couple of hundred feet a shrub or tree broke his fall. He ma...
A Poem by Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And...
Vonnegut to Willeford
From a letter written by Kurt Vonnegut to Charles Willeford, dated 13 August 1985: Your publisher asked for a blurb, but I don’t do those anymore having given thousands in the past, and thus having laid myself open to requests for thousands mo...
