【Watch Different Rooms Between Two Women Online】
Notes Nearing Ninety: Learning to Write Less
Best of 2018
We’re away until January 2, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2018. Enjoy your holiday!
Donald Hall, who died in June this year at the age of eighty-nine, was a prolific poet, essayist, and editor whose work has had an enormous impact on American letters. He was The Paris Review’s first poetry editor, and he served as the U.S. poet laureate. His Art of Poetry interview appeared in our Fall 1991 issue. Before his death, he compiled one final book of essays, A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, an excerpt from which appears below.
Donald Hall, 1977.
When I was sixteen, I read ten books a week: E. E. Cummings, William Faulkner, Henry James, Hart Crane, John Steinbeck. I thought I progressed in literature by reading faster and faster—but reading more is reading less. I learned to slow down. Thirty years later, in New Hampshire with Jane, I made a living by freelance writing all day, so I read books only at night. Jane went to sleep quickly and didn’t mind the light on my side of the bed. I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireand six huge volumes of Henry Adams’s letters. I read the late novels of Henry James over and over again. After Jane died, I kept reading books, at first only murderous or violent writers like Cormac McCarthy. Today I am forty years older than Jane ever got to be, and I realize I haven’t finished reading a book in a year.
Read more >>
Search
Categories
Latest Posts
Gods of War
2025-06-26 16:43The 40 best horror movies that center women's stories
2025-06-26 16:42How big is the average penis? Let's compare with household objects.
2025-06-26 15:57Trump tariff news: See the latest impacts on consumer tech
2025-06-26 15:36Popular Posts
5 Affordable Last
2025-06-26 17:36Refusing Heaven by Drew Bratcher
2025-06-26 17:04Apple launches Vision Pro, its first
2025-06-26 15:21Today's Hurdle hints and answers for April 1, 2025
2025-06-26 15:20Featured Posts
How to Easily Make iPhone Ringtones Using Only iTunes
2025-06-26 17:29WWDC 2023: Apple announces M2 Ultra chip, its most powerful yet
2025-06-26 16:28Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for June 5
2025-06-26 16:16Sandy’s Aftermath by Sadie Stein
2025-06-26 16:06President Trump says semiconductor tariffs are next
2025-06-26 15:55Popular Articles
The Poets the Presidents Loved
2025-06-26 16:53How big is the average penis? Let's compare with household objects.
2025-06-26 16:16Well, duck it: The Apple keyboard will finally let you curse
2025-06-26 15:45Draper vs. Arnaldi 2025 livestream: Watch Madrid Open for free
2025-06-26 14:58Newsletter
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.
Comments (55143)
Transmission Information Network
Today's Hurdle hints and answers for April 7, 2025
2025-06-26 17:22Future Information Network
Making Monuments by John Glassie
2025-06-26 17:03Information Information Network
Well, duck it: The Apple keyboard will finally let you curse
2025-06-26 17:00Exquisite Information Network
San Francisco vs. New York, and Other News by Sadie Stein
2025-06-26 15:14Fresh Information Network
SpaceX's Starlink will provide free satellite internet to families in Texas school district
2025-06-26 15:10