Joshua Landsman pays homage to the books and writers that have been important to him in a project entitled “Writers I Have Loved.” Landsman filled a sketchbook of drawings, depicting authors such as William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell, and other literary figures and works that made an impression on him—including the books that ultimately suffered defenestration. While Landsman’s sketches are particularly impressive, I think this would be a fun project for any literary junkie—a record of one’s “life as a reader”:
I’ve ended up with what I think is a pretty accurate record of my life as a reader, or at least a record of the highlights, the stuff that has stayed with me. It’s been very satisfying for me to revisit these books and writers. I really do love them—I feel like they’re friends of mine who have had a tremendous influence on who I am and how I think. I’ve tried to make the pages personal, too—to tell a little story about my relationship with the writer or book. But sometimes it’s just my thoughts about them.
- Joshua Landsman
When Martin Amis moved to Cobble Hill last year it was widely viewed by the press as an official imprimatur on Brooklyn’s status as the writing factory of America. Not that Brooklyn was ever short of writers – Walt Whitman used to edit the Brooklyn Eagle, and Norman Mailer held court in Brooklyn Heights for much of his life, alongside Truman Capote – but the phenomenon is now so pronounced that you could say, without exaggeration, that there are two principal avenues for would-be writers in America. The first is to swallow the exorbitant price tag for one of the country’s multiplying creative-writing courses (usually Masters of Fine Arts, or MFAs); the second is to move to Brooklyn.