The Great Gatsby – Michael A. Kahn

Maybe You Can’t Tell a Book by Its Cover, But You Can Sure Sell It That Way

Posted on February 15, 2019February 17, 2019 by Michael Kahn

I read a fascinating post on the Jezebel website by Kelly Faircloth in which she recounted the history–or, per the title of her post, the “steaming, throbbing history”–of the covers of romance novels, from the sweet innocent covers of the 1950s to the soft-porn bodice-rippers of later decades, many of which featured the male model…

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What’s in a name? More than you imagine!

Posted on May 8, 2017June 27, 2018 by Michael Kahn

“Mike, I have a better idea for your book title.” I’ve heard that from my editor three times over the years. All three times she was right. But first, some background: While you can’t tell a book by its cover, you might consider reading a book by its title. Nevertheless, the history of literature reveals…

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God or Huck Finn: Who Should Tell Your Story?

Posted on September 15, 2016September 14, 2016 by Michael Kahn

An online discussion among several of my fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors got me thinking about the one decision every fiction author must make before typing CHAPTER 1 at the top of the page. That decision? Who will tell your story? “Huh,” a baffled reader may wonder, “doesn’t the author tell the story?” Only rarely….

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Top 10 Baseball Walk-Up Songs in Literature

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Michael Kahn

For the true baseball fans among us, name a favorite player and you can name his walk-up song. Same for your team’s closer (whose walk-up song is known as the “entrance song”). For the uninitiated, a walk-up song is that heavy metal, hip hop, or country tune that blares throughout the stadium as the player…

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The 10 Best Lines in Literature: Let the Debate Begin

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

The editors of The American Scholar–the quarterly publication of the Phi Beta Kappa Society–have published a piece on their website featuring their ten favorite sentences from fiction and nonfiction. Several were familiar, including one each from The Great Gatsby, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A Farewell to Arms, and Pride and Prejudice. My favorite of…

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Let Us Now Praise (In)famous Baz

Posted on January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 by Michael Kahn

Great literature is the third rail of the motion picture industry. The director who attempts to adapt a beloved novel to the big screen invites the slings and arrows of outraged fans. One obvious reason is that the standard length of a motion picture is 100 minutes (or 100 script pages), which means that big chunks…

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My Five Favorite Narrators (Part 4)

Posted on October 30, 2013October 30, 2013 by Michael Kahn

So far, I’ve shared my thoughts on 3 of my 5 favorite narrators: Huck Finn, Philip Marlowe, and Marlow. For #4, I turned to my list of favorite semi-reliable nice-guy narrators. One possibility was Nick Carraway, the charming narrator of The Great Gatsby. who sets the tone of his narration in the opening paragraphs: …

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