Amor towels biography of martin
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For those who did not get to attend one of the events for THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, you can watch my full speech here in which I discuss my novel, the history of the highway, and my writing process in some detail. If you prefer, you can watch me in conversation about the book with Ann Patchett, Erik Larson, Ken Burns, John Grisham or Richard Russo.
Below are my answers to some common questions.
When you finished A Gentleman in Moscow, why did you choose to write The Lincoln Highway next?
When I finish writing a novel, I find myself wanting to head in a new direction. That’s why after writing Rules of Civility—which describes a year in the life of a young woman about to climb New York’s socioeconomic ladder—I was eager to write A Gentleman in Moscow—which describes three decades in the life of a Russian aristocrat who’s just lost everything. The Lincoln Highway allowed me to veer again in that the novel focuses on three eighteen-year-old boys on
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Walker Evans and the Subway Photos: While I began writing RULES OF CIVILITYin 2006, the genesis of the book dates back to the early 1990s when inom happened upon a kopia of Many Are Called – the collection of portraits that Walker Evans took on the New York City subways in the late 1930s with a hidden camera. At the time, I primarily knew of Evans’s iconic Depression-era photographs of rural America, such as those that appear in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: the tilting clapboard houses, weathered signs, stalwart women in summer dresses… But this was the first I’d seen of his urban work. The subway photos weren’t shown publicly until the 1960s, and, as I flipped through the pages, inom had the fanciful notion of someone at the exhibit’s opening recognizing the same individ in two of the portraits. In the manner of such things, inom wrote the idea on a matchbook cover and threw it in a box. Twenty years later, I pulled the matchbook back out of the box and set about writing this tale. One of
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An enticing buffet…
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I’ve been a fan of Amor Towles since his first book, Rules of Civility, appeared back in 2011. His writing is always a delight, and he has the gift of creating characters who become friends we care about. My one criticism of him has been that sometimes he strikes too whimsical a note for the story he is telling or the setting he has chosen. This book is a collection of six short stories and a novella – a short novel really – and I suspected his style might work very well in a shorter format. I’m delighted to say that my suspicion was confirmed! Here’s a taste of what the collection includes:
The Line – this is a fable-like story set first in Moscow during the Russian Revolution and then moving for its climax to New York. Pushkin and his wife Irina are farmers when the revolution begins but Irina becomes fired up by the ideals of communism and insists on them moving to Moscow. Once there, she becomes a workers’ leader, but Pushkin is out