Category: My Essays

A Marine’s Vietnam Story & Other Writing

Post author By Robert Fay
Post date February 6, 2013

This month I published a creative nonfiction story titled “The Consecration” in Booth, the literary journal of Butler University. The story is taken from my recently-completed memoir, and recounts my teenage friendship with a Marine Gunnery Sergeant who had fought in Vietnam as a combat engineer.

This week I also published a book review in Full Stop where I looked at recent works by novelist Marilynne Robinson and French philosopher Pascal Bruckner in light of today’s disheartening culture wars.

Tags Booth, Butler University, Marilynne Robinson, Marines, Pascal Bruckner, Vietnam War

My Essays

Writers & Day Jobs

Post author By Robert Fay
Post date January 26, 2013

For my January article in Full Stop I wrote about writers and day jobs with a little intro about T.S. Eliot and his years working as a clerk at Lloyd’s bank in London.

I couldn’t have imagined the interest that the article generated across the Internet over the last week and a half. There are clearly a lot of writers who work full-time and are conflicted about what this does to their creative work.

Here is a sampling of the sites that wrote about and linked to the essay:

The Paris Review Daily linked to it (this put a smile on my face)
Poetry Foundation blogged about the piece
The Millions included it in their “curiosities”

Tags Lloyd's Bank, T.S. Eliot, writers day jobs

My Essays

Casting Sophia Coppola in ‘The Leopard’

Post author By Robert Fay
Post date December 26, 2012

My Twitter friend the writer Kim Askew invited me to guest post on her site Romancing the Tome last week as part of a celebration of the release of her new book Tempestuous (co-authored with Amy Helmes). I wrote about one of my favorite novels The Leopard by the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa and why director Francis Ford Coppola should use it as a vehicle to redeem Sophia Coppola’s notoriously poor acting performance in his 1990 film The Godfather III.

picture-sohia-coppola — Hoping Sophia Coppola one day stars in ‘The Leopard’

I was honored to guest post for Kim alongside such luminaries as famed literary networker Lauren Cerand, writer and editor Edward Champion and publisher Richard Nash.

This is not the first time I’ve written about Sophia Coppola. Last year in The Millions I imagined moving to Paris and bumping into Sophia and her singer husband Thomas Mars somewhere in the Latin Quarter.

Tags Francis Ford Coppola, Kim Askew, Lauren Cerand, Paris, Romancing The Tome, Sophia Coppola, The Godfather III

My Essays

My ‘Full Stop’ Piece on David Foster Wallace

Post author By Robert Fay
Post date December 17, 2012

Recently I had the good fortune to be named a monthly contributor to Full-Stop Magazine. For my December piece, I wrote how I had been unknowingly “shadowing” the late-novelist David Foster Wallace across America for years. When I read the novel Infinite Jest back in 1996 or ’97, I immediately recognized that Wallace and I shared connections to some very odd and specific American places.

Vol. 1 Brooklyn linked to the article today as part of their “Morning Bites” daily round-up. Morning Bites (and Afternoon Bites) features some of the best literary and cultural writing online and is well-worth keeping tabs on.

I have blogged about David Foster Wallace before. Most recently I wrote about the mystery surrounding religion and David Foster Wallace. There is a lot of speculation that DFW had been something of a closet Christian–but the issue of his faith in not a clear one–and D.T. Max’s new biography seems to discredit the notion that Wallace was a believing Christian.

Tags David Foster Wallace, DFW, Full Stop Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

My Essays

Whereby the National Book Critics Circle Mentions Me

Post author By Robert Fay
Post date July 19, 2012

Book critic Mark Athitakis, the respected author of the blog American Fiction Notes and editor of the National Book Critics Circle’s blog “Critical Mass,” included my essay on Yukio Mishima in one off their weekly roundups last month. It was an honor to be mentioned on the site and with so many other gifted writers. Each week Critical Mass provides a great rundown of the best reviews and essays in the literary world.

Tags American Fiction Notes, Critical Mass blog, National Book Critics Circle

My Essays

‘First Things’ Blogs on my New ‘Full Stop’ Feature

Post author By Robert Fay
Post date June 12, 2012

I really love the headline that First Things gave to their blog post about my feature essay in Full Stop: “Roger Scruton and Yukio Mishima Walk into a Doughnut Shop…” That’s perfect.

Read the First Things post on my essay about Mishima, Roger Scruton and beauty.

Tags First Things, Full Stop Magazine, Yukio Mishima