Richard Gwyn

How long is a piece of string?

Or how long should a piece of writing be? Reflecting on this, in relation to a piece I am working on, I haphazardly check into an article in The New Yorker and am reminded by John McPhee that… Read More

‘Stories can wait’: Mavis Gallant and taking your time over reading

I have taken my time reading the Paris Stories of Mavis Gallant, which is what she would have liked. But coming to the end of the book (in the elegant NYRB edition with Gallant’s own afterword) I am left… Read More

The Accidental Tourist

  So I’m crossing a bridge, to get from A to B, and suddenly I’m on a film set. No, let’s correct that: I’m on a rolling series of film sets. This is what happens on a brisk… Read More

Never any end to Paris

Extraordinary as it might seem to his many readers worldwide, Enrique Vila-Matas is practically unknown in the UK, another startling blemish on the blinkered, xenophobic, utterly predictable tastes of the British publishing industry, for which anything that deviates… Read More

How to write a novel in 13 points

Sometimes people ask really difficult questions. One of them, which crops up a lot, is ‘Who is your favourite living novelist’? First of all, it’s assumed it will be someone who writes in English, because the British and… Read More

Hobo with a Shotgun

What is a picture of  Joseph Roth, chronicler of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire doing beneath this heading? Did Roth have a shotgun? Was he a hobo? In a way, the answer is yes to both questions, indirectly…. Read More