Ben Fountain was featured a few weeks ago in our Preston Hollow publication. This lawyer-turned-author’s is a compelling story.
Fountain also has written some fascinating fiction, including his latest, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a receiver of rave reviews.
Fountain will answer questions sign copies of his book Thursday at the Dallas Arboretum as part of the Morning News’ summer book club program. The forum is free, but you must register. Email Rachel Watkins at rwatkins@dallasnews.com or call 214.977.8152.
More about Ben Fountain (full thing here):
Fountain was an attorney at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Field when he developed an undesirable urge to write. He’d taken a class or two in college. He started writing after work. That was unacceptable and counterproductive, so he quit. His job at the firm, that is.
Malcom Gladwell, author of the book, Outliers (with which I have been obsessed for a couple of years now) wrote about Fountain in the New Yorker.
“I was tremendously apprehensive … like I’d stepped off a cliff not knowing if the parachute would open,” Fountain told Gladwell.
In the first year, he developed a strict writing regimen for himself and did not stall. He worked hard. Sold a couple of stories. Received excellent reviews from esteemed critics. Kept plugging away.
Even so, he told Gladwell, for every magazine piece or story he was able to sell, he received at least 30 rejections.
Some 18 years after he first decided to write, Fountain finally Arrived.
“The ‘young’ writer from the provinces took the literary world by storm at the age of forty-eight.”
