Zen of Writing

Drop a Nintendo for Peace

2012-01-22T13:46:00.003-05:00

"We should think about terrorism not as a battle between Islam and the West but as a battle within Islam, says author Salman Rushdie. And video games might just be the way to resolve this conflict. 'I often think that the best way to liberate Iran is just to drop Nintendo consoles from the air. And Big Macs,; he tells us."

Maybe he's onto something. Crime has decreased since young men have gotten so involved in video gaming...

"In his Big Think interview, the literary giant tells us about how video games influenced his newest novel 'Luka and the Fire of Life.' As he proves in this and previous novels, fantasy can be a vehicle for writing about truth. That is after all the whole premise of fiction. 'We don’t need to know that Anna Karenina really existed; we need to know who she is and what moves her and what her story tells us about our own lives,' he says. 'Once you accept that stories are not true, then you understand that a flying carpet and Madam Bovary are untrue in the same way, and as a result both of them are ways of arriving at the truth by the road of untruth and so then they can both do it the same way.'"

Voldemort: He who cannot help but be hot?

2012-01-22T13:40:00.003-05:00

Apparently. Ralph Fiennes reads erotic fan fiction. I have no idea what Mme LeStrange thinks of this. Fiennes seems to think it's a bit silly...

Happy Books at McDonald's

2012-01-12T13:22:00.002-05:00

McDonald's is replacing its Happy Meal toys with books, at least in the UK. The first selection is Michael Morpurgo's Mudpuddle Farm series. Adults will recognize the author of WAR HORSE, recently made into a movie. At Huffpo.

My first reaction to this was, Great! But then I thought, I hope they also replace their Happy Meals food with something nutritious for kids to eat, some real food, not things that can be kept on the shelf for years without going bad... cf. The Burger That Wouldn't Die.

Good to start somewhere, tho, as parents will still be taking kids to Mickey D's.

Hijacking your reward circuits

2011-12-26T21:11:00.005-05:00

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Article in Vanity Fair.

Technology is changing, but fashion, weirdly, is not, and don't forget the drop in violent crime as former bad guys are riveted to their seats playing video games.

Maybe it's Internet Compulsion Disorder. Article in The Atlantic.

The right swipe on the touch screen in Angry Birds delivers an instant hit. The constant updating on Facebook pages with interesting tidbits from friends generates the warm feelings that come from close engagement with the "in" crowd. MeetMoi.com will link you up with "singles within a few miles from you who can meet you tonight" -- no need to go through eHarmony's tedious process of communicating with someone before a face-to-face meeting.

Yes, everything is getting faster and more addictive, and now even old-fashioned online dating sites are too slow! It's funny to think people are meeting in the same kinds of clothes, tho. Anything new since fleece? Should we all go back to wool sweaters? Tie dye? Big shoulder pads? Reading and writing books instead of quick online articles and blogs? Web surfing is fun, all those quick, little satisfying facts, such as that fashion has not changed very much lately.

Amazon, for $5

2011-12-13T19:43:00.004-05:00

“The law has long been clear that stores do not invite the public in for all purposes. A retailer is not expected to serve as a warming station for the homeless or a site for band practice. So it’s worth wondering whether it’s lawful for Amazon to encourage people to enter a store for the purpose of gathering pricing information for Amazon and buying from the Internet giant, rather than the retailer. Lawful or not, it’s an example of Amazon’s bare-knuckles approach.” Scott Turow's reply to Richard Russo. Amazon's Jungle Logic.

By now, everyone has probably heard of Amazon's "promotion" in which we are encouraged to shop in a physical store but then buy the item from Amazon and receive a $5 discount. It seems most people feel that this is not only fighting dirty, but it's an example of the 800-lb gorilla fighting dirty. The authors Russo asked agree, calling it, "scorched-earth capitalism" (Dennis Lehane) and "invasive and unfair" (Stephen King).

Writer and bookstore owner Ann Patchett said, "There is no point in fighting them or explaining to them that we should be able to coexist civilly in the marketplace. I don’t think they care. I do think it’s worthwhile explaining to customers that the lowest price point does not always represent the best deal. If you like going to a bookstore then it’s up to you to support it."

Publishers Weekly... and crime

2011-12-05T20:22:00.002-05:00

My mechanic recently reminded me of that scene in The Graduate when Benjamin is informed that the future is in plastics. I was paying with a different kind of plastic at the time.

The literary future, at least near the top of this list, seems to be in crime fiction:

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "Explosive Eighteen" by Janet Evanovich (Bantam)

2. "11/22/63" by Stephen King (Scribner)

3. "The Litigators" by John Grisham (Doubleday)

4. "Kill Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown)

5. "V Is for Vengeance" by Sue Grafton (Marian Wood)

6. "Micro: A Novel" by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston (Harper)

7. "The Best of Me" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)

8. "Zero Day" by David Baldacci (Grand Central Publishing)

9. "Devil's Gate" by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown (Putnam Adult)

10. "The Christmas Wedding" by James Patterson, Richard DiLallo (Little, Brown)

11. "IQ84" by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)

12. "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes (Knopf)

13. "A Dance with Dragons" by George R.R. Martin (Bantam)

14. "The Snow Angel" by Glenn Beck and Nicole Baart (Threshold Editions)

15. "The Marriage Plot: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

List from HuffPo.

Cultivating Vonnegut

2011-11-30T13:28:00.002-05:00

Somehow, I thought he had that hair his whole life. Like Einstein.

"As the publication date drew near for Slaughterhouse-Five, on which Vonnegut had worked, fitfully, for 20 years, he brooded over his author photo. He was clean-cut, clean-shaven, a bit paunchy—in 1969, an unlikely candidate for cultural eminence. He decided “to cultivate the style of an author who was in.” “To meet the expectations of his audience was key,” Mr. Shields writes. “He lost weight, allowed his close-cropped hair to become curly and tousled, and grew a moustache. … He looked like an avant-garde artist and social critic now, not rumpled Dad-in-a-cardigan.” His upper lip would never reappear. Slaughterhouse-Five became a number-one New York Times best-seller, and its tousled (not rumpled) author became an icon of the counterculture."

New bio out, story at NY Observer.

Neil Gaiman on the Simpsons = Awesome

2011-11-29T18:43:00.006-05:00

The episode is free on hulu for a few more days. I've linked it from the Huffington Post. The Book Job. I love the way they drew him, and the episode is awesome -- from the keeled over lit majors to the tuna salad and beyond.

Interview with Neil.

“Truthfully, the real-life me almost never hangs around in Barnes & Noble-like bookstores waiting to find a group of local townsfolk who have decided to write a pseudonymous young-adult fantasy series, offering my services — and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t be doing the catering!”

Stephen King and home heating oil - Do they mix?

2011-11-28T11:07:00.004-05:00

Apparently. Salon (and others) reports that his charitable foundation is donating $70,000 to help Maine residents pay for heating oil now that state aid is being cut. The foundation will match individual donations to that level.

Zen of Writing is happy to note that 11/22/63, King's latest book, is on our reading list. 11/22/63 has made the year's top books' lists at the New York Times and the Globe and Mail, and no doubt many other best-of lists as well.

Support Independent Bookstores! And Small Presses!

2011-11-28T09:17:00.003-05:00

From Salon:

"An independent bookstore brings a lot to a city or a town: a showroom for the latest literary releases, an auditorium where authors share their work and meet their fans, a bookish environment in which to sip coffee and a fun place to browse in the 20 minutes before the movie starts. But what’s less immediately visible is your local bookseller’s expertise and influence when it comes to introducing great books to your community and, ultimately, to the world."

And, I'd like to add, consider books from smaller presses as well as those from big publishers. Lots of fascinating, hard-to-categorize books fall through the cracks because books often need to conform to genre categories or big publishers won't touch them. Smaller presses do a great job of keeping these books alive.

Poets and Writers magazine has a convenient database of small presses.

Books that have come from small presses include:

The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books). I loved this book, set in a sodden, futuristic Bangkok.
Tinkers, by Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winner (Bellevue Literary Press).
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa Editions).
Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf Press).

Pasta and Murakami's Tokyo

2011-11-19T21:36:00.005-05:00

My theory is that Haruki Murakami loves pasta. First, there's all the spaghetti getting boiled in his books. Now, in 1Q84, Tengo orders seafood linguine at the Nakamuraya cafe with Fuka-Eri, whose book he is going to rewrite.

Unless you are familiar with Japanese cafes, or perhaps with Beard Papa's, the cream puff franchise, you might not picture the cafe correctly. Very bright, bright lights, bright colors, more fast food-looking than a place to eat linguine. That's the coffee shop, anyway, above. There are apparently several eateries under the same roof. Shinjuku Nakamuraya.

I'm a Murakami fan, so I enjoyed the pics at the NY Times. Murakami's Tokyo.

Arsenic and Jane Austen

2011-11-17T22:27:00.002-05:00

Interesting theory that the novelist was either murdered with arsenic or, more likely, poisoned accidentally. Arsenic was prescribed for various ailments at the time.

It's a debilitating poison that does not kill that quickly. I remember meeting someone whose spouse tried to kill him that way, but his doctor figured it out in time. Unfortunately, it ruined his health, anyway. Amazing that it was once prescribed as a medicine.

Novelist Ann Patchett Opens Bookstore

2011-11-17T16:06:00.002-05:00

Because she really did not want her hometown, Nashville, to be without one. The Nashville metro area has 1.5 million people and would have had only specialty, used and religious bookstores, along with two Barnes and Noble branches in the suburbs and one Barnes and Noble college bookstore. That's a lot of people to be without an independent bookstore.

Advice to small bookstores:
Put the children’s section as far away from the front door as possible. Hang signs from the ceiling, and customers will buy whatever is advertised on them. And make your store comforting and inclusive, smart but not snobby.

NY Times article.

Eye Candy of Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-21T19:01:00.003-04:00

Here here and here.

Literary Supporters of Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-21T13:57:00.003-04:00

Here are the As:

* Laurie Abraham, author of The Husbands and Wives Club
* Susan Abulhawa, author of Mornings in Jenin
* Kevin Adams, author of Continuous Life
* Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor
* Pip Adam, author of Everything We Hoped For
* Nancy Agabian, author of Me as Her Again
* David Agranoff, author of The Vegan Revolution with Zombies
* Rose Aguilar, author of Red Highways
* Sergio Alejandro Aguillon-Mata, author of Quien Escribe
* Joe Ahearn, author of Five Fictions
* Steve Ahlquist, author of The Oz Squad
* Manan Ahmed, author of Where the Wild Frontiers Are
* Elisa Albert, author of The Book of Dahlia
* Malaika King Albrecht, author of Spill
* Michelle Aldredge, editor of Gwarlingo
* Alma Alexander, author of The Secrets of Jin Shei
* William Alexander, author of Goblin Secrets
* Tariq Ali, author of The Duel
* Dee Allen, author of Boneyard
* Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
* Steve Almond, author of Letters from People Who Hate Me
* Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?
* Andrew Foster Altschul, author of Deus Ex Machina
* Ivy Alvarez, author of Mortal
* P.F. Anderson, editor, MLA Encyclopedic Guide to Searching and Finding Health Information on the Web
* Natalie Angier, author of Woman
* Jessica Anthony, author of The Convalescent
* Nick Antosca, author of Fires
* Joyce Appleby, author of The Relentless Revolution
* Debby Applegate, author of The Most Famous Man in America
* Philip Appleman, author of Perfidious Proverbs
* Giovanni Arduino, Mai Come Voi
* Meakin Armstrong, editor, Guernica
* Katie Arnold-Ratliff, author of Bright Before Us
* Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah
* James Atlas, My Life in the Middle Ages
* Shaun Attwood, author of Hard Time
* Margaret Atwood, author The Handmaid’s Tale
* Esmahan Aykol, author of Hotel Bosphorus
* Anne Aylor, author of The Double Happiness Company

For the rest of the alphabet: OccupyWriters.com

Why I Am Addicted to the Internet

2011-10-19T17:24:00.005-04:00

It's not rewiring for the information age, it's just that the information age is so much... fun. Well, a certain kind of fun. It does feel like a waste of time if you spend all day at it, whereas a good book never feels like a waste of time.

"...the biggest surprise, and the one most relevant to current debates, is a “revolutionary” experiment Linden discusses near the end of his book. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health gave thirsty monkeys the option of looking at either of two visual symbols. No matter which they moved their eyes to, a few seconds later the monkeys would receive a random amount of water. But looking at one of the symbols caused the animals to receive an extra cue that indicated how big the reward would be. The monkeys learned to prefer that symbol, which differed from the other only by providing a tiny amount of information they did not already have. And the same dopamine neurons that initially fired only in anticipation of water quickly learned to fire as soon as the information-providing symbol became visible. “The monkeys (and presumably humans as well) are getting a pleasure buzz from the information itself,” Linden writes.

"If this discovery proves reliable, it implies that the Internet doesn’t change our brains at all, for good or for ill. It doesn’t damage brain areas, destroy links between parts of our brains, or grow new areas or connections. What the Internet does is stimulate our reward systems over and over with tiny bursts of information (tweets, status updates, e-mails) that act like primary rewards but can be delivered in more varied and less predictable sequences. These are experiences our brains did not evolve to prefer, but like drugs of abuse, they happen to be even better suited than the primary reinforcers to activating the reward system. So if you find yourself stopping every 30 seconds to check your Twitter feed, your brain has no more been rewired than if you find yourself taking a break for ice cream rather than celery. Picking the more rewarding stimulus is something our brains can do perfectly well with the wiring they start out with."
NY Times review of THE COMPASS OF PLEASURE
How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
By David J. Linden

Margaret Atwood: Alternative Worlds and Changing Our Own for the Better

2011-10-13T11:06:00.004-04:00

"Margaret Atwood and Canopy are piloting a new highly advanced species of paper with galactic potential for business and communities, and superhuman capacity to protect endangered forests.

"Second Harvest Paper is made without any harm to fragile forest ecosystems. It contains only straw left over from the grain harvest, and recycled paper. It is the next step forward in Canopy’s campaign to reduce the stress of paper production on our endangered forests.
Canopy Presents...

"A Limited Special Edition of Margaret Atwood’s In Other Worlds
First Book Ever on Straw Paper in North America!"

There's a link to purchase the book. Unfortunately, it costs $100, tho if waste straw were used to produce paper in any volume, it would cost a lot less than wood pulp paper. I ordered the conventional book from Barnes & Noble. I'm not sure we have to worry as much about books using up trees as about unnecessary things like junk mail, even other disposable paper products -- napkins, toilet paper, paper towels, that could better be made with straw.

On the subject of alternative worlds, such as in Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood and The Handmaids's Tale, Atwood rocks. I'm sure this collection will be as fascinating as her Negotiating with the Dead, which I recommend as highly as possible.

A small, normal thing: Bookstore in a tent

2011-10-11T23:38:00.006-04:00

After the Fukushima disaster washed 230,000 books out to sea, the owners of the bookstore reopened in a tent in response to local demand. Mainichi Daily News.

"Between May 16 and 21, the couple opened a temporary bookstore using a 2-ton truck... at a parking lot of an auto retailer along a prefectural road, which had escaped major damage. A total of 3,000 people visited the tentative bookstore in six days, resulting in 2.05 million yen in sales.

"In July, the Chidas started to run a tented bookstore every Friday through Sunday. Once again, many people flocked to the bookstore from their shelters.

"Kai Onodera, 11, an elementary school student in Kesennuma, bought two manga titles at the makeshift bookstore on the evening of Sept. 18. The tsunami had claimed the lives of his grandmother and aunt and destroyed his home. It was four days after the magnitude-9.0 quake struck that he was reunited with his parents who were taking shelter at different places. Since his family moved into an apartment far from his school in April, Kai has no friends to hang around with in his neighborhood.

"'When I'm reading manga, I get amused and distracted, if only for a little while,' Kai said with a smile."

People living in refugee shelters are buying books -- I can imagine how important that small return to normalcy is for them, after the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdowns. Browsing and buying books must seem so reassuring, especially as the problem is far from over.

Occupy Wall Street has its Own Library

2011-10-04T13:21:00.006-04:00

Occupy Wall Street Library (OWSL)

I've tried not to get too political with this blog, so I haven't been posting about Occupy Wall Street, much as it does my heart good. I'm happy to be able to report that there is a free lending library available to demonstrators. Click the link to get a look at some of the titles. The books are all marked "Occupy Wall Street Library" or "OWSL" on their edges.

Men of the Stacks

2011-09-30T10:34:00.002-04:00

A calendar of library guys, all for a good cause.

Fiction: Because Real Life Sucks!

2011-09-16T20:45:00.004-04:00

25 Depressing Photos of Closed Bookstores

The atmosphere of bookstores, the cleverness and fun, the love of words and books, the dedication and knowledge of the bookstore owners and employees... will be missed. It's hard to believe indie bookstores are going the way of the dinosaurs, but they are. Borders is gone, too, tho Barnes & Noble seems healthy enough.

New Jersey teens can't read Norwegian Wood

2011-09-09T09:44:00.006-04:00

Murakami's novel of love and mental illness, because parents complained of drug and sex scenes.

They can still read Town of Cats, an excerpt from his new novel, IQ84, which will be out next month. This excerpt deals with a young man's relationship with his difficult father, and uses the device of a story -- a man lost in a town of cats -- within a story to illustrate that this weird, not self-created predicament is "the place where he is meant to be lost." His life, in other words. Teens should identify with that, no?

I loved the excerpt and am impatient for the book to arrive.

Meanwhile, I will have to be content with this Q&A with the author on Town of Cats in the New Yorker.

I could also read Murakami on talent, focus, endurance -- what writing has in common with running.

Hurricane Reading

2011-08-27T22:10:00.003-04:00

The New Yorker recommends Six Shorts to Read During a Hurricane. Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Conrad, Lydia Davis, Kerouac and Rimbaud get mentions. Stormy settings and descriptions.

Or, you could try Ten Novels About Solitude.

And if you prefer earthquakes to hurricanes: Timequake, After the Quake, Fault Lines and Earthquakes. There are buy links at the New Yorker site, but be warned: Fault Lines is about economics and Earthquakes is a kids' book. I'd go with the Vonnegut or the Murakami.

My choice for Hurricane Irene weekend is Paula Fox's Desperate Characters. The title suits practically any situation. And, I hear the author will be at the Brooklyn Book Festival in September.

How Stephen King Really Got That Way

2011-08-26T15:10:00.003-04:00

I loved this article at Shelf Awareness about King and the bookmobile lady who gave him Lord of the Flies, due out in a new edition with his introduction:

"Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" She thought about it, then went to the section of the Bookmobile marked Adult Fiction, and pulled out a slim hardcover volume. "Try this, Stevie," she said. "And if anyone asks, tell them you found it yourself. Otherwise, I might get into trouble."

In On Writing, King mentions The Inheritors and Pincher Martin, also by Golding, both of which I read on his recommendation, and which are worth reading, even if not as compelling as Golding's more famous book. In The Inheritors, Golding imagines early human species interacting and competing. In Pincher Martin, a man has two lives, one with pinchers. Odd little book, but one which would almost certainly have gotten more attention if published today. I was happy to find both of these and I hereby pass on the recommendation.

As far as King's work, my favorites are Different Seasons, especially Apt Pupil, The Long Walk and The Stand. The Mist is a great story, too.

Publishing is Not Dying

2011-08-14T10:38:00.003-04:00

And the biggest surprise is adult fiction, the market for which has grown in the last couple of years. More adults are also reading YA fiction, which is fiction with young characters. It's often written more simply than adult fiction, which can mean it's an "easier" read, but can also mean it lacks the pretentious ambitions of "literary" fiction. Note that I'm not saying that ambition is wrong, just that pretentious attempts at originality are hard to read.

“We’re seeing a resurgence, and we’re seeing it across all markets — trade, academic, professional,” said Tina Jordan, the vice president of the Association of American Publishers. “In each category we’re seeing growth. The printed word is alive and well whether it takes a paper delivery or digital delivery.”

One of the strongest growth areas was adult fiction, which had a revenue increase of 8.8 percent over three years.

NY Times.

The article has inspired a rollicking discussion in the comments, with readers asserting things such as, they will not buy e-book readers until they have chosen "One App to Rule Them All"; that reading YA is like eating Snickers; that adults stopped reading deeply at age 12; that ebook readers may well go through the same technology changes as computer disks, and nobody can read 5 1/4" disks any more, so why not stick with real books unless for traveling light? That last is a good point. Current ebooks might be the 8-track tapes of the future.

Never Finished, Only Abandoned: Artists and the Perfectionism Trap

2011-08-07T21:50:00.001-04:00

A WSJ article on the newly restored Orson Welles film has us thinking about perfectionism.

"Any form of limitation, obligation, responsibility or enforced duty was intolerable to him, rendering him claustrophobic and destructive." That's the wrong kind of perfectionism, and it led, as it usually does, to disaster.

The article goes on to chronicle how he lost credibility with Hollywood because of his demands for unlimited tolerance and funding, and had to go the indie route, where he did not have sufficient resources to realize his vision.

With writing, it's more a time issue. We haven't got forever to finish a work, even if we haven't got an entire cast and crew standing by. I find that "limitation" can be freeing, when you commit to a form, a plot or a deadline, even. Then you just do it. Which is not to say every work must fit the same form or any particular form.

The wisest artists are the ones who finish a new work, walk away and move on to the next project. Whenever a colleague pointed out a "mistake" in one of Dmitri Shostakovich's compositions, he invariably responded, "Oh, I'll fix that in my next piece."

I think we have to accept that what we do is the best we can do at the moment. That's hard, because not only do we see it, but our audience also sees that this is the best we can do. We have to own our limitations and move on, and in creative work it's so subjective. Almost no matter how well you do, there will be some who don't like it. But endless revising limits our output and experimentation, which in turn limits innovation. The article's author, Terry Teachout, says perfectionism begins with indecision, but it's just as likely they are the same thing, not being able to decide which way to take a piece, how much to polish, if it is done, etc. Perfectionism is there at each stage.

And, it's not just in writing and making art. I had this issue when training for martial arts tests, and waited too long for my first level black belt. An instructor explained that to me, saying, "if your test is perfect, you waited too long." It only has to work, and this is something much less subjective in martial arts than in art, writing, film, etc.

We have to make sure our standards work, that they contribute to our output.

Is there a book in it?

2011-08-04T19:48:00.003-04:00

I was reading a literary agency website, and found this:

There's a cartoon that shows two women nursing cocktails and one is saying to the other: "I'm marrying Marvin. I think there's a book in it."

Which got me thinking if that's a good question for writers to apply to all the things we do. Is there a book in it? Or maybe there's a book in everything? I remember one of my writing students who was a great writer, beautiful voice, good storyteller, but she was convinced there was nothing interesting about her life. And there are others, not in my class, but I've heard, who are convinced everything they do is fascinating. Somewhere in the middle is the book. A good deal of what we do can be told in a way that makes it fascinating to a reader, but there's a lot to be said for adventure, too. Btw, who's Marvin?

Neil Gaiman is NOT a pencil-necked weasel

2011-07-15T22:59:00.003-04:00

Says your mama. Or the mama of the Majority Leader of the Minnesota State House of Representatives. At the Huffington Post.

Everyone be nice. It's Minnesota.

Gatsby wasn't that difficult, was it?

2011-07-11T12:44:00.006-04:00

There is, apparently, an "intermediate reader's" version of The Great Gatsby, the great, and short, novel by Fitzgerald.

Roger Ebert is incensed: "There is no purpose in 'reading' The Great Gatsby unless you actually read it. Fitzgerald's novel is not about a story. It is about how the story is told. Its poetry, its message, its evocation of Gatsby's lost American dream, is expressed in Fitzgerald's style--in the precise words he chose to write what some consider the great American novel. Unless you have read them, you have not read the book at all. You have been imprisoned in an educational system that cheats and insults you by inflicting a barbaric dumbing-down process. You are left with the impression of having read a book, and may never feel you need return for a closer look." The Chicago Sun Times blog.

And, "Any high-school student who cannot read The Great Gatsby in the original cannot read."

"When he later found out that the Tarner edition was actually for foreign students, he was unrepentant: 'Why not have ESL learners begin with Young Adult novels? Why not write books with a simplified vocabulary? Why eviscerate Fitzgerald? Why give a false impression of Jay Gatsby?'" From the Guardian.

I have to agree here. Of all books, it hardly seems that Gatsby needs to be simplified, even for ESL students. Just read slower. It's a short book. The vocabulary isn't obscure. They can always turn Infinite Jest into a Reader's Digest book, haha. Ebert makes the single point needed here, that unless you actually read the book, you have not read the book. So why pretend? Might as well read magazine articles or lit essays. What is the real goal here, other than making some money off a text in the public domain by creating one's own version of it as a textbook? I don't know how damaging it is to readers, I suspect not very, but it does seem pointless and dumb, and possibly barbaric, as Ebert says.

Incidentally, "barbaric" was originally used to describe people who did not speak the local language, but whose speech apparently sounded like "bar bar bar." I highly doubt that the ESL students involved actually wanted anyone to rewrite an English language classic in babytalk. So, the intermediate version would, in the original usage, be pandering to their presumptive barbarism, rather than actually barbaric.

Book Blurbs on Amazon

2011-07-10T22:33:00.006-04:00

Amazon is offering extra promotion to authors who will blurb books from its imprints.

Amazon Publishing has already shown little interest in industry traditions, and The Observer has now learned how Amazon is looking to revolutionize the process of getting author blurbs: provide a review for a book on an Amazon imprint and Amazon will give the reviewer — and his or her book — extra promotion as a thank you.

At the NY Observer.

Opinions are divided seemingly along the lines of those who benefit from this and those who don't, judging by the two agents quoted in the article. Have to see how it all turns out before deciding, but I think it may backfire on the books blurbed. People won't believe the blurbs, eventually. Kind of like the 5-star reviews on Amazon now, many of which seem written by authors' friends and relatives. I know some readers dismiss the 5-star reviews unless they are particularly in-depth.

Book Frisbee

2011-07-09T20:25:00.005-04:00

Hilarious book reviews from Amazon, via the Publishers Weekly blog.

"It is an excellent candidate for book frisbee on a sunny afternoon in the park."

But while you're at it, please do not overlook the reviews for the Steering Wheel Laptop Desk, also on Amazon.

"Thank you Wheelmate for providing a big breasted woman with the support she needs whilst driving! Goodbye to those pesty backaches. Hello to well rested breasts after a long road trip."

House of Bookshelves... Exactly!

2011-07-07T20:57:00.002-04:00

Exactly what we need.

And the future of books is...

2011-07-03T13:33:00.003-04:00

Paperbacks that are smaller than e-readers. Called flipbacks, they have small, landscape-oriented pages printed on fine paper, to take up less space. At Abebooks.

Why Not Write About Sex?

2011-06-25T15:21:00.003-04:00

Well, because it might be crass:

First, that not all writing about sex is meant to titillate. There are other reasons to describe what people do in bed. Not all of these reasons are vulgar or crass. To my mind, a conventional sex scene, say in an airplane novel (“as she raised her hips and guided him into the hot wet center of her,” etc., etc.), is indeed crass. But is it crass—is it meretricious—to write honestly about the mess and complexity of the individual libido? Not to me. What’s vulgar is an airbrush. What’s really vulgar is a sex scene in borrowed language, where the characters are stripped of individuality and the situation has no moral depth. I hope we don’t publish anything like that.

The Paris Review blog.

This reminded me of Mario Vargas Llosa's indictment of porn in The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto. I'm paraphrasing, but his point is that it's so non-individual, so off-the-rack, that it really isn't interesting. So, writing about sex, to transcend the crass and pornographic, has to have original language, well-written individuals, moral depth, and honesty as far as messiness and complexity. It has to be recognizably about the people involved. Okay. I get that. No thinly disguised wish-fulfilling, no use of sexual conquest just to pump up two-dimensional male characters or diminish two-dimensional female ones. Or vice-versa, altho it's usually not the case, anyway.

Summer Book Recommendations

2011-06-25T12:35:00.005-04:00

From the people who are concerned that we are missing almost everything (see previous post from NPR): NPR Summer Reading Lists. I have put a few on my list already, science fiction, literary fiction, crime fiction, etc. A friend tells me that the best guarantee of book sales, outside of becoming an Oprah pick, is a mention at NPR. Maybe that is why so many of these titles show up in my library's system already. I'm sure the librarians are NPR fans. I plan to buy some titles, borrow some, and maybe clone myself so I can read them all.

Speaking of science fiction, I just (finally) finished reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, the sci fi classic. Set in an abbey after the nuclear apocalypse, the centuries pass while the brothers try to make sense of the past, prevent a recurrence in the future, and preserve the "Memorabilia" and Apostolic Succession, that is, the Catholic succession of priests, on another planet, if necessary.

Let's not forget what Junot Diaz is reading this summer.

Here are Oprah's suggestions, which include at least one from NPR's list and one from the NY Times'.

What are you reading this summer?

How to Live a Creative Life

2011-06-08T19:06:00.004-04:00

You are going to have to ask yourself, at every turn: is this project making me smarter, or making me stupider. Is this job stoking my fire, or burning me out? How do I top this? How can I learn from this? How do I produce my best work in this kind of environment? Should my next set of projects build up from what I’ve already done? Or do I need to branch out, go sideways, and push myself to try something new, that I’m less comfortable with.

Think carefully about how you spend your time, because your work isn’t like other people’s work. There isn’t a hard line between uptime and downtime. Your brain is always working, and what you experience in your downtime influences the quality of what you do when you’re on task. Be mindful of what you’re getting out of the time that you spend. Does your downtime refresh and recharge you? Or does it narcotize you? Does it spark new ideas? Or do you find yourself thinking, “well, there’s three hours of my life I’m never getting back.”

Ringling College Commencement Speech, 2011. Thanks to Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.

Barnes & Noble Surprise

2011-06-07T16:22:00.002-04:00

Barnes & Noble, through its combination of physical bookstores and bn.com, remained the largest outlet for the sale of trade books in 2010. That was one of the first findings from Bowker’s annual rollup of its monthly book consumer tracking program, PubTrack Consumer. According to PubTrack, B&N’s share of spending on trade books rose from 22.5% in 2009 to 23.0%; sales exclude used books. While B&N held onto the top spot, Amazon showed the strongest gain in the year, capturing 15.1% of print trade book dollar sales in 2010 compared to 12.5% in 2009.

From Publisher's Weekly, via Laurie McLean.

This from back in March. I just saw it, and have to say it surprised me that Amazon did not hold the top spot. I guess all the actual bookstores work in Barnes & Noble's favor. And, probably the fact that their membership deal with preferred shipping is only $25 a year compared to Amazon's $79. Their prices are usually around the same. I'm happy that there is at least one venue for physically handling books before I buy them that is not going under. Even Borders was doing a reasonable share of business. This has me scratching my head and thinking about buzz vs. facts.

Stop daydreaming and get to work

2011-05-31T09:24:00.001-04:00

It's like your teachers said. Fantasy makes your dreams less likely to come true.

Positive fantasies "'make energy seem unnecessary' say Heather Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen. 'By allowing people to consummate a desired future,' the researchers explain, 'positive fantasies trigger the relaxation that would normally accompany actual achievement, rather than marshaling the energy needed to obtain it.'"

But only positive fantasies. If your daydreams feature worrying that you'll never achieve your goals, that's supposed to energize you. According to this research, pessimists should be more successful than optimists, no?

Missing Almost Everything

2011-05-29T11:12:00.003-04:00

"Consider books alone. Let's say you read two a week, and sometimes you take on a long one that takes you a whole week. That's quite a brisk pace for the average person. That lets you finish, let's say, 100 books a year. If we assume you start now, and you're 15, and you are willing to continue at this pace until you're 80. That's 6,500 books, which really sounds like a lot."

At NPR.

Then when you add music, movies, etc. All the time not spent doing what we love... It's a thinky piece about how things have to be chosen, how we choose them, how and why things fade -- because of new things, because of all the access we supposedly have to everything, via the internet, Netflix, etc.

It's worth following the link to Ebert's article, or follow it here. Which illustrates for me that things fade also because times and people change. Nobody wants to read all the old books, see all the old movies. I don't have that much interest in all of what Ebert mentions. I do appreciate more than just Howl in Allen Ginsberg's work, and I read Flaubert, Murdoch, Borges, Nabokov, Stendhal. Ebert says his goal is "to enjoy reading." I think that's the point. If you enjoy focusing your reading on a theme, becoming an expert, or if you read what you like, whether you read widely or narrowly, you have to trust yourself and just go. Otherwise, you risk spending too much time thinking about it when you could be reading, going to concerts, movies, etc.

Bookstores to Visit

2011-05-18T10:57:00.003-04:00

Really beautiful. Slideshow.

The Montague Bookmill, pictured, is one of the four (of 14) I have been to.

Go the Fuck to Sleep

2011-05-16T10:32:00.003-04:00

The "children's" book for tired parents became a bestseller a month before its release, thanks to a pirated PDF (which I read). It's also gotten a "significant" film deal, which I can't say I understand, but, whatever. The text consists of four-line poems ending with a variation of "Go the fuck to sleep." The illustrations are typical of childrens' books. One of publishing's little mysteries, I guess.

Read about it.

Writer's Block by Flaubert

2011-04-18T22:22:00.004-04:00

"I don't in the least know how to set to work to write, and I begin by expressing only the hundredth part of my ideas after infinite gropings. ...For entire days I have polished and repolished a paragraph without accomplishing anything. I feel like weeping at times. You ought to pity me!" Gustave Flaubert to George Sand.

The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters, free on Google Books. The letters are beautiful, too.

Interesting that Flaubert compares the novelist to God: "I even think the novelist hasn't the right to express his opinion on any subject whatsoever. Has the good God ever uttered it, his opinion?"

Ding!

2011-03-31T12:03:00.004-04:00

The typewriter undergoes a renaissance. I tried to learn to type on an indestructible manual typewriter -- haven't seen one of those old war horses in ages -- tho I did not do much typing on it. The keys would all bunch up as if the machine were frustrated with an inept user and throwing its hands in the air. The first typewriter I loved was a big old IBM correcting Selectric, blue, with interchangeable type balls and changeable pitch. So I totally understand wanting one of these, manual or electric. As well as a tablet PC, a Nook and a cellphone that takes hi-def pix.

A Shed of One's Own

2011-03-10T20:08:00.003-05:00

Writers' writing spaces. Including Virginia Woolf's -- who apparently had a shed of her own.

I really like the idea of a writing room built on a turntable to follow the sun.

When Librarians Go Wild

2011-03-10T17:54:00.000-05:00

They launch a boycott.

Divorce and Longevity at the WSJ

2011-03-10T11:47:00.005-05:00

The best childhood predictor of longevity, it turns out, is a quality best defined as conscientiousness: "the often complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, close involvement with friends and communities" that produces a well-organized person who is "somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree."

The Wall St Journal review of The Longevity Project, in which we are informed that a parental divorce in childhood shortens the child's life -- or did, anyway. This study was from a time when divorce was really a social disaster. Also, there is no way to compare the result of a miserable, non-divorced childhood had the parents not divorced. So, bearing in mind that there are lies, damn lies and statistics, this looks like an interesting book:

"...chipper types were also more likely to die from homicide, suicide or accident. Of course, the authors don't suggest telling happy kids to wipe the grins off their faces..."

So, conscientious, obsessive, prudent kids live longer... or does it just seem longer?

Keeping in Touch

2011-03-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

I just renewed my domain name, ZenofWriting.com -- altho this blog is accessible also by zenofwriting.blogspot.com -- while wondering how the readership numbers compare with Facebook friends who actually read my (usually non-blog) posts.

Well, I'm trying to keep in touch. Soon, I'll have to put pages of my novel up on lampposts...oh, wait. Someone has already thought of that.

Brave New Orange Juice

2011-03-05T23:33:00.006-05:00

This is a bit depressing:

Most are surprised to hear, for instance, that the big brands [e.g., Tropicana, a Pepsi company and Minute Maid, owned by Coca-Cola], which market their product as “pure” and “simple,” add flavor packs to their juice to make it fresh.

Flavor packs are fabricated from the chemicals that make up orange essence and oil. Flavor and fragrance houses, the same ones that make high end perfumes, break down orange essence and oils into their constituent chemicals and then reassemble the individual chemicals in configurations that resemble nothing found in nature. Ethyl butyrate is one of the chemicals found in high concentrations in the flavor packs added to orange juice sold in North American markets, because flavor engineers have discovered that it imparts a fragrance that Americans like, and associate with a freshly squeezed orange.

Freshly squeezed orange juice tastes fresh naturally, and some supermarkets do sell it. However, “from concentrate” and most “not from concentrate” orange juice undergo processes that strip the flavor from the juice. The largest producers of “not from concentrate” or pasteurized orange juice keep their juice in million-gallon aseptic storage tanks to ensure a year round supply. Aseptic storage involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so the juice doesn’t oxidize in the “tank farms” in which the juice sits, sometimes for as long as a year.

Squeezed, by Alissa Hamilton.

I guess we have to squeeze our own oranges, now. Most disturbing is the fact that these facts are hidden from us, that a product that contains "flavor packs" can be sold as pure orange juice. I thought we had laws regarding that... hello?

The Dogs of Fiction

2011-03-04T09:57:00.002-05:00

Not just "books about rascally lovable mutts and bad dogs that impart life lessons to simple-minded human masters." A fun look at books by and about dogs.

Which are not my favorite dog books, anyway. This list is not exhaustive, but it's a look at the uses writers have for dogs. Sci fi dogs, best friend dogs, wise dogs, foolish dogs, dogs who capture the imagination.

The Awesome Future of Literature

2011-03-04T09:55:00.001-05:00

Some more links in the ongoing gender discussions, from Monkey Puzzle Press.

What would you expect a dog to write about?

2011-02-27T11:32:00.002-05:00

His favorite dog food brand? Even Teddy Kennedy's dog was just a dog, altho he was also a humanizing influence. Everyone liked him, even Republicans who were battling Senator Kennedy's initiatives.

Cute article about intern's dog impersonation.

Editors are Timid; Ebooks are Shorter; There is No E-reading in Cafes

2011-02-15T22:11:00.005-05:00

The dystopian future is here.

Timid editors. And, I might add, most likely underpaid. Yet, "Books remain a pocket of air in an upturned boat." Jeanette Winterson, quoted in the article at the Guardian.

Are ebooks getting shorter because of smaller devices, or smaller attention spans? NY Times.

"Many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads." o rly? y is that? Does this make sense? Is it the love of books? The resistance to the spelling butchery that goes with texting? Can you even do that with a Nook? Also at the NY Times.

Responses re; Women Writing and Getting Published

2011-02-12T18:37:00.004-05:00

Responses are flying in. It's good to see this topic generate such a flurry of articles and discussions. My writing group is abuzz.

Here is Katha Pollitt, at Slate.
"As in those studies that show men overestimate the number of women in a group—one-third feels like half, half feels like a majority—a big piece by a woman two years ago feels like it was published last week, and one or two pieces by women feels like half the magazine."

Kind of like how racist whites feel about blacks moving into the the neighborhood, eh? If you look at the weak rebuttal in Tin House, the argument there, that they had a women's issue in 2007 -- over three years ago -- fits perfectly with Pollitt's argument.

Here is Percival Everett on The Great American Novel.
"I do not believe that apparent authoritative literary voices of validation would ever make such a grand claim about a novel written by a woman. I say this because I believe there are many novels by women that are about the same sort of world as presented in Freedom. Sadly, the culture usually calls these books domestic or family sagas. Are the novels of Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson and Mona Simpson any less white and middle “American” than Franzen’s? They are certainly at least every bit as literary and arguably better written, whatever that means. And they do not suffer the needless verbosity of Freedom. Were a woman to use so many additional words, the prose would be called floral or poetic or maybe even excessive."

If a woman writes a book, will anybody read it?

2011-02-09T18:36:00.006-05:00

A lot of attention lately to the disparity in publishing and reviewing between men and women. Do men care what women think? Will they read books by women? (No, apparently.) What is the reason for the disparity? Can women write as well as men? Are women overlooked more often? Pushed into chick lit categorization which turns men off? Not as concerned with international espionage and warfare? Or is it the male literary establishment hanging on by its fingernails? Why will a woman buy a book by a misogynist and/or with misogynist characters, but Jews, blacks, men and other groups largely boycott authors bigoted against themselves?

I don't want to summarize these really good articles, linked below. I think they reward reading and thought. The comments, well, some are really good, but this kind of subject tends to bring out the haters and the bigots, too. And the hidden bigots, who claim to be fair while they hold you back because you're just not as good... It's chilling, but I suppose just another example of people's rotten manners on the internet. Commenters' rage?

I wanted to say a few things that I have not seen anywhere else. One, that the establishment, any establishment, tends to defend itself from all comers. Even the literary magazines, often run by graduate students, favor male writers over female. The editors are largely male -- is it competitiveness? Is it scarier to compete with women? Because, you know, pretty soon if you let women in and blacks in and Native Americans in, let alone other ethnic groups, they will want the editorship, too. (And the Paris Review might become the Native American Women's Menstrual Review, or something, right?)

Is that why the establishment prefers its own? They don't question the gross unfairness at the bottom of it all? They embellish the status quo?

Life, Keith Richards' book, which I am reading right now and totally love, is very clear on this issue vis a vis rock and roll. At one point a group of legal big shots sat down with the Stones to ask what they wanted -- as if facing dangerous revolutionaries. Keith says it was a real eye-opener to him, how threatened they felt, how invested in a shaky status quo that must change. I think he told them they were dinosaurs, deal with it.

One thing I'd like to share is from a creative writing class years ago. We had an assignment to write about our mothers, and woman after woman wrote about a dissatisfied, critical, unhappy woman. A man in the group commented, "Another hard mother," after one of these. His story was nothing like that. Which made me wonder then and now if mothers share their unhappiness mainly with their daughters. If legions of dissatisfied women somehow transmitted their lack of self-worth or were jealous of their daughters' opportunities, or just passed on bad beliefs?

links:

Is there a glass ceiling for women writers?

Why are literary hard-hitters male?

Vidaweb survey, with thanks to Amy King.

Gender Balance, at the NY Times blogs, with links to other articles.

Women are underrepresented in literary publishing because men aren't interested in what they have to say -- Laura Miller at Salon.

It's not just writers. Women are under-represented on the radio, too.

And the solution is: How to Publish Women Writers.

Who Says Artists Have to Make Money?

2011-02-05T11:30:00.005-05:00

"You have to remember that it's only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

"This idea of Metallica or some rock n' roll singer being rich, that's not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I'm going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?"

Francis Ford Coppola.

I guess he is making money selling wine, but you'd think he had enough money from the Godfather movies.

It's Cold, Zen Cold

2011-02-02T10:11:00.004-05:00

Dongshan said,
“Why don’t you go where there is no cold
or heat?”

The monk said,
“Where is the place where there is no
cold or heat?”

Our first inclination is to say, Not here. And try to get away, sit by the wood stove, get a plane ticket to the Caribbean. But, of course, that wouldn't be very Zen. At ZenPeacemakers.org, roshi Bernie Glassman's order.

Nabokov Knew His Butterflies

2011-01-26T12:23:00.007-05:00

He was right about their appearance on this continent, it seems, and, according to the NY Times, we have the Russian Revolution to thank for his not becoming a full-time lepidopterist.

It fascinates me -- the juxtaposition between brilliant writer and lepidopterist. Why that should be more striking than poet and doctor (William Carlos Williams) or poet and insurance executive (Wallace Stevens), I am not sure. Maybe because Nabokov did not need it as his day job? It was not his day job, but another thing he loved. Butterflies are gorgeous, but he killed a lot of them, loving them as he did. Kind of like Humbert Humbert "killed" the thing he loved...creepy.

Porn for Book Lovers

2011-01-14T13:39:00.002-05:00

No words, just look at the pictures.

Keeping Books Out of Landfills and the Secret Threat of E-Readers

2011-01-13T19:42:00.007-05:00

Sounds like a good idea. Someone will buy them. Like me, e.g. Buyer of Used Books at yard sales, etc. Even if I and everyone else who can switches to Kindles and Nooks, there are still people off the grid who will appreciate actual books for a few more years, I think. And I really have no plan to switch exclusively (or at all, to be honest) to any kind of e-reader anytime soon. I have too many real books backlogged.

That said, I spent a very pleasant half hour talking with a knowledgeable clerk and playing with the Nooks at Barnes & Noble the other day. The color Nook is definitely nice. The black and white one had side buttons I found annoying, as they have functions that you can trigger unintentionally. As soon as you try to bend the Nook like a paperback, okay, admittedly not a good idea for an expensive electronic item, there goes the page... I'm not used to handling books *that* carefully, tho I guess I could get used to it. I don't beat my books up, either.

Devotee friends claim their Kindles are great for travel, and I don't doubt it. I have lugged novels and guidebooks back and forth on long trips -- not always the same books, as I often leave the old and cannot resist the new when I'm in another country and not sure the same title is available back home. You can't duplicate that situation with an e-reader. So, are e-readers part of the whole world getting to be the same, then? Is that their secret threat? Amazon and Barnes & Noble just following GAP, Old Navy and other big retailers? Am I surprised? Are you?

Put Up Your Dukes and Write

2011-01-12T16:30:00.004-05:00

Kerouac's letter to Brando, asking him to make a movie of On the Road, and play Dean to Kerouac's Sal. I guess the most interesting part of this is that Kerouac chose Brando, a sex symbol at the time, to play real-life sex symbol Neal Cassady. The letter was found among Brando's files after his death. Click on it to get a larger version.

Steve Almond on the Arizona Shooting,

2011-01-11T13:25:00.005-05:00

the movement toward fascism, hatred of anyone who disagrees with you and the hateful comments right wing readers have spewed at him. This article and its links should be required reading. Why is it that the insatiable rich can convince right wing American working people that a more egalitarian system of medical care is an assault on their freedom when it's actually saving them money and not harming their medical care?

The historian Robert Paxton, who studied Europe during World War II, defined fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

Steve Almond at the Rumpus.

Irish, Italian, Brown, Zombies, et al.

2011-01-09T11:37:00.002-05:00

Reading outside your comfort zone to be a better person... list of 2011 reading challenges.

My favorite, and it's not an easy choice with Chunksters and Quirky Brown competition, is your very own To Be Read pile challenge. Read twelve of those, one a month. Of course, I do this anyway. The real challenge would be not to add to my TBR pile in 2011. I have over 100 on the TBR list. At the rate of only one book a month, it's like making minimum payments on a credit card balance. Hm, I have til Jan 15 to sign up...

Which twelve books shall I rescue from the pile of the unread? Actually, from the several bookshelves of the unread. Madame Bovary, the Aveling translation (I hope different translations count) will be on the list I think.

Snow Haiku

2011-01-07T12:42:00.004-05:00

From readers of the NY Times.

Here's one that is not about last month's blizzard and lack of trash pickup:

In falling snow
a red bird sings
a song without a name

— Ben Connelly

and here is mine:

snow falling softly
lightly, covers the dog's coat
until he shakes

Hakuin Ekaku in New York: Monkey Writers at the Ink Stone

2010-12-23T21:53:00.006-05:00

In the days before typewriters.

"What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before the ink stone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head." -- Yoshida Kenko.

While this may make the 14th century priest sound like a writer's patron saint, he is satirized as a monkey by Hakuin Ekaku, as reported by a NY Times article about the Zen master's art, now at the Japan Society thru January 9.

He may well have thought writers were and are like monkeys, but master Hakuin is revered and perhaps best remembered for his famous koan:

An ant goes round and round without rest
Like all beings in the six realms of existence,
Born here and dying there without release,
Now becoming a hungry ghost, then an animal.
If you are searching for freedom from this suffering
You must hear the sound of one hand.

Clapping, or perhaps, in NYC, waving down a cab.

The final word on genre

2010-12-20T11:49:00.001-05:00

Should probably go to Margaret Atwood:
Genres, anyway, are inventions of people who need to rank things on bookshelves. Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time. You know that part on the back of the book where it says “Romance,” for example? That’s so somebody knows what shelf to put it on. It has nothing to do with anything else, really.

from Narrative. You may have to log in to read the interview, but it's free.

The Literary Fiction Argument vs. Stieg Larsson

2010-12-20T10:22:00.004-05:00

I don't really get the point of the lit fic vs. genre argument-for-argument's-sake -- people are going to read whatever we want, anyway -- but I love the comments on this article:

It's ridiculous to assert that literary is the most difficult genre to write in. It's the easiest. The world and the people you write about are at your fingertips, at your disposal, everywhere you look; you spend twenty-four hours a day living and breathing them; it frees you to focus on the mysteries of the human heart. Writers of science-fiction and fantasy have to do everything writers of literary fiction do, they just have to re-imagine the entire world as well -- the language, the history, the future, the science and technology, biology. You know, the universe. Those who write in the literary genre get all that pre-packaged for them gratis.

Pick up any three literary magazines at random and give the fiction a read. You will find a few good stories that stick with you, a few that are somewhat memorable even if you don't like them as a whole, and a lot that sound as if they were written by the same person: the narrator is a self-afflicted, self-obsessed loser drifting aimlessly through awkward, ugly, and annoying encounters narrated in flat, listless prose that reflects the flat, listless lives in which they are trapped. The other end of the spectrum is the hyper-observant story whose every detail is a mildly offensive grope at profundity. I've read those stories a thousand times, and they never get any better in the retelling. And it demonstrates that 'literary' is very much a genre of fiction: if re-using the same character types, the same narrative techniques, and the same faux-artistic description isn't 'genre', then I'd like to know what is.

Silly article by man with silly name.

Reading Yenta

2010-12-19T15:24:00.005-05:00

I love knowing what other people are reading and visualizing who they are. That is why I love these:

Book Spy

and at the NY Times. I hope the Times makes a regular feature of this.

I want to *know*, dahling.

Dostoyevsky, Ken Follett and Scott Turow

2010-10-31T10:10:00.006-04:00

"Here’s a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent, it’s brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire.

But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it’s never the book that you’d hoped to write. It’s smaller than the book you’d hoped to write. It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire."

Michael Cunningham, at NY Times.

Also, you can't imagine what people will make of it -- the author describes how he found his ideal reader, the one he writes for:

"...some years ago, when I was working in a restaurant bar in Laguna Beach, Calif., ...I discovered a better method. One of the hostesses was a woman named Helen, who was in her mid-40s at the time and so seemed, to me, to be just slightly younger than the Ancient Mariner. Helen was a lovely, generous woman who had four children and who had been left, abruptly and without warning, by her husband. She had to work. And work and work. She worked in a bakery in the early mornings, typed manuscripts for writers in the afternoons, and seated diners at the restaurant nights.

"Helen was an avid reader, and her great joy, at the end of her long, hard days, was to get into bed and read for an hour before she caught the short interlude of sleep that was granted her. She read widely and voraciously. She was, when we met, reading a trashy murder mystery, and I, as only the young and pretentious might do, suggested that she try Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” since she liked detective stories. She read it in less than a week. When she had finished it she told me, 'That was wonderful.'

"'Thought you’d like it,' I answered.

"She added, 'Dostoyevsky is much better than Ken Follett.'

'Yep.'

"Then she paused. 'But he’s not as good as Scott Turow.'”

Paralyzing Inhibitions and Middle-Aged Emerging Artists

2010-10-20T11:05:00.001-04:00

One of the great things about getting older is that other people's opinions have less power over us than they once did. I work with a physical therapist who recently told me, "When I turned 40, I stopped worrying about offending other people. When I turned 50, I started enjoying offending other people." In many ways this is the best time to do something that others might view with skepticism, and to risk a little ridicule that might once have been unendurable.

Robin Black, at Oprah.com.

For the love of ...books

2010-10-19T19:35:00.002-04:00

Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman at Slate.

Writing by Hand

2010-10-19T12:43:00.002-04:00

"Writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development."

WSJ

Let the Reader Do Some Work

2010-10-19T12:40:00.002-04:00

Humor works best when the reader has to connect some dots. The smarter your audience, the wider you can spread the dots.

Scott Adams telling a risque story about a friend who never had any children, in the Wall Street Journal.

Posts that almost weren't II

2010-08-31T22:34:00.004-04:00

A paean to Chekhov, 150 years after his birth.

There had been sceptics, agnostics, doubters, questioners of every kind before Chekhov, but perhaps no writer in whom the utter mysteriousness of existence was felt so deeply, or counterpoised by such inexhaustible interest in the teeming variety of forms – human and otherwise – in which it manifests itself.

"What kept these sixty-five thousand people going? That's what I couldn't see . . . what our town was and what it did, I had no idea."

Posts that almost weren't III

2010-08-31T22:33:00.003-04:00

On Drinking What You Know:
“Drink, damn you! What else are you good for?” (Joyce) -- er, I paraphrase.

When you think about it, rules for drinking are not so different from rules for writing. Many of these are so familiar they’ve become truisms: Write what you know. Write every day. Never use a strange, fancy word when a simple one will do. Always finish the day’s writing when you could still do more. With a little adaptation these rules apply just as well for drinking. Drink what you know, drink regularly rather than in binges, avoid needlessly exotic booze, and leave the table while you can still stand.

Leave the desk while you can still stand. Sounds good to me.

Posts that almost weren't

2010-08-31T22:29:00.004-04:00

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, courtesy of Mark Twain (whose autobiography can finally be purchased, 100 years after his death.

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the "Deerslayer" tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the "Deerslayer" tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "Deerslayer" tale.

I'll try to do better next month, but here are some of the posts I would have written about, if I'd had the time this month.

Margaret Atwood Writes Like...

2010-07-18T22:06:00.004-04:00

Stephen King, or James Joyce, according to I Write Like -- the popular website that told William Gibson he writes like Haruki Murakami, and based on my blog entries, told me I write like J.D. Salinger. Fun. Try it. Read Atwood and Gibson's results at the Guardian.

Janine Pommy Vega and Andy Clausen

2010-07-11T19:43:00.006-04:00

Happy to report that I saw these two excellent Beat poets read in Woodstock, NY, yesterday. You can look them up on youtube -- it was an amazing reading, and even more so to see them together, Janine drawing on personal mythology and her work in the prisons, Andy with political and humorous work. People who really believe in poetry are inspiring. It's good to be reminded that poetry can be a force.

Weirdly, only a lot of older folks in the audience. I hate being the youngest person at these things. Where is everyone?

I bought Janine's Mad Dogs of Trieste, and Andy's 40th Century Man, as well as a copy of Long Shot, with a tribute to Gregory Corso. Andy signed, and when I got it home, I realized it had already been signed by Ferlinghetti. Nice.

He loved invective.

2010-07-10T09:32:00.003-04:00

“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden.” Mark Twain, quoted in his new, unexpurgated autobiography. Review at NY Times. Title quote from Justin Kaplan, author of an earlier bio, and also of the acclaimed bio of Walt Whitman. This is volume one, and I'm sure it's a good read. Three volumes are planned, based on material Twain dictated to a stenographer over four years before he died in 1910.

“From the first, second, third and fourth editions all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out,” Twain instructed them in 1906. “There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.”

Another Reason to Like Neil Gaiman

2010-06-24T20:19:00.003-04:00

As if Neverwhere, American Gods and The Graveyard Book were not enough:

"Closing libraries...a terrible mistake."

Beauty of Procrastination

2010-05-18T09:46:00.005-04:00

"I have often asked myself whether those days on which we are forced to be indolent are not just the ones we pass in profoundest activity? Whether all our doing, when it comes later, is not only the last reverberation of a great movement which takes place in us on those days of inaction." ~Rilke

The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination. From Book Bench at the New Yorker.

Or, if you don't want to spend $50+, you can read the review.

I wonder if, like Dyer, we have chosen the wrong project when we procrastinate. He started with an academic study of D.H. Lawrence, then tried a novel, and finally gave us the funny and neurotic Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence.

Dark, Smelly Bedroom

2010-05-16T08:57:00.002-04:00

Of adolescence. Article about the darker side of YA fiction. I keep wondering what young adult readers see in the stuff when they can just as easily read adult fiction. A lot of the attraction is that it's fantasy, but also, according to this author, the obvious: young adult protagonists. Oh, makes sense then.

Who's Making Money in Publishing?

2010-04-11T21:43:00.002-04:00

Icky Glenn Beck.

Maybe conservatives don't have as much to read?

Amusing but Sad: Paris Syndrome

2010-04-11T21:14:00.009-04:00

Paris Syndrome affects around 20 tourists a year, mostly Japanese, for some reason. It appears to spring from the shock of the disparity between the popular image of Paris – of accordions, flowers and cobbled streets – and the exposure to, say, the Place de Clichy at night. They do not know that, within our lifetimes, those cobble stones have been prised up and thrown in anger; they require immediate psychiatric help.

Parisians, by Graham Robb.

I think it's touching that someone would have such a romanticized view of Paris that he or she would need psychiatric help upon finding out that the city has a modern, even seamy side. I'm always pleased when a place I visit lives up to its reputation in a good way. I kind of expect the overdeveloped and seamy stuff -- and that tourists will get the worst of it -- but then, I lived in New York for a long time. Once, returning from a trip to Europe, I was mistaken for a tourist myself by a limo driver who tried to con me into an expensive ride home in his car. Being a New Yorker, I flagged a legitimate cab under his very nose, just as he was saying that cab would never stop for me. I looked at him as the cab drove away. He shrugged. That was in the shadow of charmless, barely distinguishable downtown office towers. Not a carriage horse in sight.

Beg you read this.

2010-04-11T21:07:00.003-04:00

My favorite grammar problem: Begging the question. It has a fine meaning here, or here, having to do with faulty logic. Of which there is no end.

On Not Quitting Your Day Job

2010-03-22T12:33:00.003-04:00

Although the NEA reports that "full-time writers and authors" earn a median annual salary over $50,000, it's a bit hard to believe, unless they are talking about corporate and technical "writers." Check out the comments to this NY Times blog entry, a couple of published authors have something to say.

The NEA report is here.

Bizarre Book Observation of the Day

2010-03-06T10:05:00.008-05:00

At the library: The new Ray Carver bio has arrived (Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life) per my order -- but I had to wipe the cover off! It had unidentified yucky stuff all over it, and a distinct plate-ring. Shocking! To think that the same person who would read such a book would also defile it. I mean, come on, it's brand new and expensive. How inconsiderate can someone be? I'm going to start it asap, altho I am a little afraid now to look inside at the pages. *I hate when there is gross stuff in library books* So much for tax dollars at work -- I, personally, would never lend my books to a slob. I guess I feel that library books are communal property, so in some sense "my" book *was* lent to a slob.

I am going to try to read The Elegance of the Hedgehog first -- it's not renewable because someone has requested it, and even tho I have no idea who -- the same slob? -- I feel conscience-bound to hurry up. This volume has also been defiled -- now I remember why I buy so many books. This one has water damage. Is nothing sacred?

I love my library and I am not the only one in my house who does. Sachi enjoys our visits very much and goes directly to where the dog biscuits are kept, sitting patiently until someone can attend to him. He has so favorably impressed one of the librarians that she brought him a bag of rib bones. They were delicious, according to all evidence. (They disappeared.) If he were a human child, I'm sure that a treat of that magnitude would be a great strategy for getting him to love books. As he is a young canine, I am not sure where the karma will lead. Maybe he'll cease the occasional ear-splitting yip of protest while I am browsing the shelves and the $.25 bin.

Tips, Rules, Rules, Tips - More lists, etc. Part Two

2010-02-21T20:12:00.003-05:00

Now it's Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, and Jeanette Winterson.

1. Get an accountant. (Hilary Mantel)

2. Trust your creativity (but if you are not good, accept it). (Jeanette Winterson).

Part two, here.

I hope no one will follow these rules without a bit of editing. I'm more interested in what individual writers do than in copying their systems. Not all of us have to deal with "bowel-curdling terror" (Sarah Waters), or want to listen to Schubert (Colm Toibin) or can go back in time and make sure to read a lot of books "when a child" (Zadie Smith).

But they're still fun to read. The lists, I mean. Books, too.

Tips, Rules, Rules, Tips - More lists from writers we like

2010-02-21T20:09:00.003-05:00

Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, and AL Kennedy weigh in with rules ranging from:

1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. (Margaret Atwood)

to

2. Don't have children (Richard Ford).

Part one.

Margaret Atwood's Ten Tips for Writer's Block

2010-02-17T18:19:00.005-05:00

Here.

In #5, she recommends chocolate. In other tips, she recommends sleep, a bath, reading a book. I've just found her excellent blog, and have added it to my list to the right.

In another post, she is a fan of paper books. Always one of my favorite authors, I think she must now be my idol. One feels the world is in good hands (unlikely, I know, but still comforting).

Email, Privacy, Social Networking and Copyright Protection

2010-02-17T15:51:00.005-05:00

Am I right in seeing a connection between Google obnoxiously signing up all its email users for Buzz without asking and the German teen author who thinks plagiarism is cool?

I think the answer really is that if there is the technology to do something, there is the likelihood that it will be done. Teens have always wanted music to be free, e.g., and once DVDs came out, movies, too. We only start to respect the idea of copyright protection when we have to pay our own bills and can identify with not being paid fairly for our work. Realizing this may not end violations, but we all understand that it is wrong/illegal. The German author is arguing that it's not wrong at all: "'There's no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,' Hegemann pronounced in a statement to the press." She goes on to state, disingenuously, that she meant it to be a collaboration, but, oops, forgot to mention the other author. Oddly, the jury of the Leipzig Book Fair doesn't see anything wrong, either.

In the same way, Google is perfectly capable of signing everyone up for Buzz, so they figure, why not? Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's not. They can always backtrack, which they are now doing, adding opt-outs after the fact, just as Hegemann is claiming collaborative intent. Fortunately, technology has also given us the ability to search text for plagiarism much more easily than before, and Google can make global changes to its gmail network in a matter of days. Scary, isn't it?

And take that.

2010-02-04T21:22:00.004-05:00

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) removes Amazon buttons after Amazon's removal of Macmillan's buy buttons. Their goal is not retaliation, but to keep members' books available for purchase. If Amazon refuses to sell them, then links must, of course, go somewhere else -- indiebound.org, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Borders, which I thought was owned by Amazon, but apparently still has its own online storefront and identity.

Amazon goes to the mattresses.

2010-01-31T15:46:00.007-05:00

A bitter pricing row between Amazon and the publishing industry intensified this weekend as the online retailer stripped books from Macmillan, including Hilary Mantel's Man Booker prizewinner, Wolf Hall, from its website in the US.

The drastic move, which could be followed around the world including in the UK, followed tense talks between the two parties over the price of ebooks last week. Fresh from a deal to become one of a handful of publishers in Apple's new iBookstore, Macmillan sharpened its demands on Amazon to help ensure the "long-term viability and stability of the digital book market".

The world's biggest online retailer and home of the Kindle ebook store and reading device has long been under attack from publishers for selling digital books at $9.99 (£6.25) a title, which they argue risks undermining hard copies. Apple, which is potentially providing Amazon's biggest ebook challenge yet with the iPad, is expected to allow publishers more freedom to set their own prices.

From the Guardian.

More coverage at the NY Times blogs.

There seems to be a lot of concern about the e-book pricing strategy. Some, including perhaps Macmillan, are arguing that Amazon is making so much money from its Kindle reader that it can afford to lose money on books, whereas publishers like Macmillan obviously can't. So Amazon is striking back by removing buy buttons from new products (but allowing people to buy the books used, which gives the publisher no income).

Q: What price does an 800-lb gorilla charge for e-books?
A: Any price he wants to.

Would this be a good time to point out that Barnes and Noble online is now offering all buyers its members' discount?

RIP J.D.

2010-01-28T17:35:00.004-05:00

RIP J.D. Salinger. The man who wrote Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters, and Seymour, An Introduction, Nine Stories *and* The Catcher in the Rye has died.

I guess you can tell his most famous was my least favorite. Maybe its appeal -- and its story of a disaffected wealthy kid on the outs with his boarding school -- were somewhat dated, like its language. It seemed like pretty tame stuff when I read it in high school, even more so now. I wonder how much cool language affects what we think about what we read. Maybe Catcher is suffering from the same syndrome that keeps most readers away from book written before 1940 or so. Unfamiliar language syndrome?

Knishvendors fearsome charswaths

2010-01-27T19:23:00.003-05:00

blaggards assbaths and no apostrophes, but not in a weird way.

The comedic version of The Road, at The Millions.

The boy stood in the road with the pistol while the man climbed an old set of limestone steps and walked down the porch of the farmhouse, peering in the windows. He pushed his way in through the kitchen door. Lucy, I’m home, he shrieked, the Cuban accent poor from disuse. Trash in the floor. Broken saucers, a heap of old magazines. He looked them over. Jen’s Revenge. Kendra’s Baby Bump. J.Lo’s Booty Wars. The shelves bare save for a chipped Garfield mug, two rough spots where its handle had been. I too hate Mondays, he whispered. He went down the hallway, regarding himself in a broken woodframed mirror. The eyes haunted and sunk. Weatherbeaten cheeks, a matted gritty beard. He looked like Viggo Mortensen.

Letter from Santa Satan

2010-01-16T12:10:00.004-05:00

to Pat Robertson, via NPR.

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.

Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"?

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

He left out "press coverage."

Thumbthing Special: Paperback Reader Must-Have

2010-01-14T19:16:00.002-05:00

Thumbthing.

Office Worker Must-Haves

2010-01-14T19:15:00.000-05:00

Nondairy creamer land mines.

Also, if you go to the Dilbert store, you can read through all the comics and pick which one you absolutely must have on a coffee mug. I have about five contenders to decide among.

Plus, it's a great way to procrastinate.

Reaching through the Web

2010-01-13T15:12:00.002-05:00

I found this blog post about an author defending her work, anonymously, against a critical review. It escalated quite a bit, even after the author was identified. Although she eventually deleted all her posts, they were archived elsewhere by interested parties. You can read them if you want, or just read the comments in the article, such as this, from author Neil Gaiman:

And yes, it's a horrible car crash, and I post it here not because it's funny in an Oh God Make It Stop kind of way, but because, if any of you are ever tempted to respond to bad reviews or internet trolls etc, it's a salutary reminder of why some things are better written in anger and deleted in the morning.

I had an experience something like this not long ago, when I compared two products in an online review. I thought the review was unoffensive, but the seller of the losing product contacted me at my home email repeatedly, and had many unpleasant things to say in print on the website, as well. Rather than politely ask me to reconsider, she went ballistic, even accusing me of working for the competitor. I'm not even in the same state. So I know a bit about this tendency to feel like 1) we are writing for ourselves, although the internet is very public; and 2) we can reach through the internet to directly contact a person with whom we disagree. The internet gives us a false sense of intimacy with strangers. How far we take that is something that not everyone agrees on. Even famous authors (Anne Rice, Alice Hoffman, Alain de Botton) have reacted in this way.

I think that doing so breaks an unspoken agreement about how far we may go and in what venue. While in my case, the seller's comments on my review were nasty and her comments about the competitor even actionable, the thing that really bothered me was that she looked up my personal information and contacted me directly and angrily. She also has my home address, since I had the product shipped by ground delivery, something you might consider not doing with with individual sellers on sites like Amazon or ebay, and something I will never do again. From now on, everything goes to the PO box.

Science: Making Science Fiction Obsolete...

2010-01-13T15:04:00.003-05:00

Green Sea Slug Is Part Animal, Part Plant, at Wired.com.

And Msnbc.com.

Cf. the souped-up soldiers in Old Man's War, by John Scalzi.

...and possibly ending world hunger. I'd go green.

Books to Burn

2010-01-06T10:03:00.002-05:00

An embarrassment of riches, and of poverty, all at once.

Poor seniors are burning books to keep warm.