Wharton Letter Bolsters Suicide Theory

(NEWSER) - David Foster Wallace declared war on depression and addiction in writing his last, unfinished novel, D. T. Max writes in the New Yorker. The writer's suicide by hanging last year was the culmination of a struggle to live normally, to achieve what he called “adult sanity," without antidepressants or the labyrinthine writing style he had developed in Infinite Jest. His last testament to that struggle, The Pale King, will be published next year. More»

A patron kept them hidden, afraid of hurting her reputation

(NEWSER) - Mexican artist Frida Kahlo reveals one of her long-held secrets in a new collection of letters published for the centenary of her birth, the Guardian reports. Titled “My Beloved Doctor,” they express her anguish over being unable to bear Diego Rivera’s child after injuries she suffered in a tram crash. “I cried a lot, but it's over, there is nothing else that can be done,” Kahlo writes. More»

'Pen and ink were his medium,' says publisher

(NEWSER) - "Society only likes dead artists," John Lennon once wrote in a heartbreaking letter. "I'm afraid Yoko and myself cannot oblige." That note was scooped up by a private collector for $13,000, but soon some 200 other letters, postcards, and doodles of Lennon's will be available to the public in a new book published next year. Yoko Ono has finally given her permission for publication, and will help Lennon biographer Hunter Davies compile the book, reports the Guardian . He'll use Ono's own archives and letters from private collections, but is also actively seeking any correspondence from Lennon's countless friends and pen pals. More»

Remembering the writer, not the myth

(NEWSER) - The myth of JD Salinger the withdrawn man doesn't match Salinger the writer, Adam Gopnik writes. On the page, Salinger was charming, expansive, and relentlessly engaged with the world. "No American writer will ever have a more alert ear, a more attentive eye, or a more ardent heart," Gopnik writes in the New Yorker . "A self-enclosed writer doesn’t listen, and Salinger was a peerless listener: page after page of pure talk flowed out of him, moving and true and, above all, funny." More»

Sex, ghosts, long-lost twins, baby monkeys inhabit Salon's picks

(NEWSER) - The frankly subjective list of the year's best fiction from Salon avoids the obvious Wolff Hall, Hillary Mantel's latest and the Man Booker Prize winner. Laura Miller names five others that, too, offered “a sojourn, however brief, into another world”:

• The Children’s Book by AS Byatt: “This is a classic Byatt fusion of fact and uncannily luscious imagery, mixed in the ideal proportions: not too hot, not too cold—just right.”