Stephen Koch – författare

“Make [your] characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le CarréNothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can’t get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel García Márquez together at the Algonquin, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop gives you the next best thing. Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, presents a unique guide to the craft of fiction. Along with his own lucid observations and commonsense techniques, he weaves together wisdom, advice, and inspiring commentary from some of our greatest writers. Taking you from the moment of inspiration (keep a notebook with you at all times), to writing a first draft (do it quickly! you can always revise later), to figuring out a plot (plot always serves the story, not vice versa), Koch is a benevolent mentor, glad to dispense sound advice when you need it most. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop belongs on every writer’s shelf, to be picked up and pored over for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way.From the Trade Paperback edition.

From Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, comes essential and practical advice drawn from The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop.   With nearly thirty years of teaching experience, Stephen Koch has earned a reputation as an astute and benevolent mentor; and with Advice to the Writer, his lucid observations and commonsense techniques have never been more accessible. Here Koch dispenses sound guidance for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way: in “Shaping the Story,” he untangles plot; in “Working and Reworking,” he explains the most teachable (yet least often taught) of all writerly skills: revision; and in “The Story of the Self,” he delves into autobiography. Featuring handpicked commentary from some of our greatest authors, Advice to the Writer is a unique introduction to this maddening and intoxicating pursuit.   Praise for Stephen Koch’s The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop   “An extraordinarily comprehensive and practical work by a master craftsman and a master analyst of the craft.”—Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls’ Rising and Anything Goes   “Stephen Koch was my teacher long ago. Now he is everyone’s teacher, indelibly. This is a book not just for the beginning writer but for every writer.”—Martha McPhee, author of the National Book Award nominee Gorgeous Lies   “The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop is a treasure trove of wisdom, both immensely practical and philosophical, entertaining and thought-provoking. Koch takes us inside the writing process, and it is impossible not to emerge transformed.”—Joanna Hershon, author of Swimming

On 7 November 1938, an impoverished seventeen-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, obsessed with Nazi persecution of his family in Germany, brooding on revenge - and his own insignificance - bought a handgun, carried it on the Metro to the German Embassy in Paris and, never before having fired a weapon, shot down the first German diplomat he saw. When the official died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels used the event as their pretext for the state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic violence and terror known as Kristallnacht, the pogrom that was the initiating event of the Holocaust.Overnight this obscure young man, Herschel Grynszpan, found himself world-famous, his face on front pages everywhere, and a pawn in the machinations of power. Instead of being executed, he found himself a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels prepared a show-trial. The trial, planned to the last detail, was intended to prove that the Jews had started the Second World War. Alone in his cell, Herschel soon grasped how the Nazis planned to use him, and set out to wage a battle of wits against Hitler and Goebbels, knowing perfectly well that if he succeeded in stopping the trial, he would certainly be murdered. Until very recently, what really happened has remained hazy. Hitler’s Scapegoat, based on the most recent research - including access to a heretofore untapped archive compiled by a Nuremberg rapporteur - tells Herschel’s extraordinary story in full for the first time.

The definitive critical study of twentieth-century pop culture icon Andy Warhol, the man who redrew the boundaries of art. Andy Warhol’s work and personality changed American visual culture forever, making him an international superstar. In this must-read volume, heralded as “exemplary” by Artforum and “resoundingly brilliant” by Film Comment, Stephen Koch provides unprecedented detail on Warhol’s life and work—his rise to global fame, his entanglement with the seedy New York sexual underground, and the shocking assassination attempt that almost ended his life are chronicled—giving particular attention to a medium that found Andy at his wildest: film. The “superstars” he created—Candy Darling, Ultra Violet, Edie Sedgwick—to populate his films and his curation of socialites mingling with hustlers that coined the phrase “The Beautiful People” seem prescient as we consider today’s stars and cultural panorama. In Stargazer, Koch illuminates the inspiration and brilliance on both sides of the public image that Warhol, who made paradox an art form, so meticulously crafted. In doing so, he gets to the core of Warhol’s most interesting invention: his own public personality, the strange persona that this frightened and brilliantly talented poor-boy from Pittsburgh created to survive the savage world of his own ambitions. “Stargazer is to die over.” —Andy Warhol “A volume of profound insight . . . resoundingly brilliant. It assumes the place of cornerstone in what will someday become a scholarly edifice dedicated to the analysis both of Warhol’s meanings and of Warhol’s forms.” —Film Comment “Some of the most exemplary critical writing that I have encountered. Moving across the convoluted terrain of Warhol’s sensibility . . . with an ease and fluidity that draws the reader effortlessly around their quarry.” —Artforum “A landmark in American criticism . . . Stargazer is not only compelling beyond anything one expects of criticism, it happens also to be utterly timely.” —The Boston Phoenix