J.D. Salinger on the beaches on D-Day, marching through concentration camps, and in liberated Paris.

A 2000 speech on the impossibility of all forms of exile, particularly literary.

A profile of the director, written from the set of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

On Huck Finn, the book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, and the evolution of language and race in America.

The fever-dream life and death of Chinese poet Gu Cheng.

“Fiction writers are good people, usually. There’s a lot of pretenders, but I haven’t met a lot of sons of bitches.”

In 1926, at the age of 12, Barbara Follett published a critically acclaimed novel. Fourteen years later, she disappeared.

A profile of the late artist and author Norris Church Mailer, who stayed with her husband Norman despite his notorious philandering.

On America’s two literary fiction cultures and why one will endure.

The team of assistants that made Gandhi.

Jay-Z on his new book Decoded, his parents’ record collection, and the real reason rappers have a tendency to grab their junk on stage.

On the BBC radio addresses of E.M. Forster: “For one thing, he won’t call what he is doing literary criticism, or even reviewing. His are ‘recommendations’ only. Each episode ends with Forster diligently reading out the titles of the books he has dealt with, along with their exact price in pounds and shillings.”

James Frey is starting a publishing company, paying young writers (very poorly) to reverse engineer a Twilight-esque hit.

Booker winner Howard Jacobson on the bumper crop of sex worker memoirs and what they say about our understanding of paid sex.

An interview with R. Crumb on how he adapted Genesis into comic form.

Eleven books into his planned thirteen book The Wheel of Time cycle, the most popular fantasy series since Lord of the Rings, Robert Jordan saw death on his own horizon and planned accordingly. A 31-year-old former Mormon missionary inherited his universe.

How a childhood gorilla-hunting safari and a string of sexless marriages led Alice Sheldon to become reclusive sci-fi legend James Tiptree Jr.

David Foster Wallace’s struggle to surpass “Infinite Jest.”

An interview with William Gibson on the “dark, dark world of marketing, advertising, and trend forecasting.”

The poet and his love affair with Italian motorbikes (and also lots of women.)

For nearly a decade, Laura Albert lived a double life as troubled teen turned cult writer J.T. Leroy, writing books, chatting constantly with celebrities, and convincing another woman to appear as J.T. Leroy in public.

An excerpt from a new biography explores the trio of tragedies that struck Dahl’s family just as his career was taking off.

A Pynchon conference in Lublin, Poland may say more about the men (yes, only men) who attend Thomas Pynchon conferences than the works of the reclusive author.

An interview with Lawrence Schiller, himself one of the great interviewers of his time, whose research fueled Norman Mailer’s Executioner’s Song.

What the great romantic novels of history can tell us about “seduction theory” and the cult of the pickup artist.