Writing
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The Writer’s Mind: Sharing the Creative Experience
I’ve been following the many discussions recently of why we like long novels. And while those are interesting and fun, I think they’ve missed something important about the length of the creative work and its impact on the reader. My moment of truth was handed to me by that fabulous liar, Edgar Allan Poe. I’ll… Continue reading
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How to Review Books: My Manifesto
Sometimes changes make tired old arguments look even more creaky. This is how I felt when I encountered yet another back-and-forth about whether book reviewers should strive to be positive and avoid snark, or whether they should be hard-minded critics, willing to blame as well as praise in their criticism. Maria Bustillos has a rundown.… Continue reading
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Ford, Lawrence, and the Wise Professor: On Discovering Greatness in Literature
This story starts with a great moment in literary autobiography – well, fine, let’s go ahead and say it has a claim to being one of the great moments in the history of literature. I have a personal story of my own to throw in at the end. But the story begins here, in the… Continue reading
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Small Press Shout-Out: Tiny TOE Press
I’ve written before about the role for small presses in the brave new publishing world. And in my dream bookstore. Today’s small-press shout out goes to Tiny TOE Press, an Austin-based “kitchen-table press” that publishes handpressed books. Check out their definition of DIY publishing and their catalog. And dream bookstore entrepreneurs, remember: I’d like a nice table… Continue reading
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Fighting Discouragement: You Are New!
In an interview with Tinhouse’s J.C. Hallman, Walter Kirn refers to a common anxiety among writers: J.C. Hallman: Do creative writers have an obligation to act as critics, to offer up alternatives to traditional critical methodologies and assumptions? Walter Kirn: Creative writers have no obligation do anything, including their own creative work. That’s what makes… Continue reading
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My Bookstore
Okay, Borders has gone under. Barnes & Noble is struggling. Independent bookstores have been embattled for years. I’m a fan of Amazon (and used to work there! they’re good folks! they paid my wages!). But I’m also a nostalgic person. If I can be misty-eyed about the end of Blockbuster, I’m certainly allowed to think… Continue reading
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What They Knew #13
““The language belongs to fishermen, not scholars.” –Jorge Luis Borges (on efforts to impose an official diction on English) Continue reading
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Parks v. Sacks: Can A Novelist Make Magic?
Tim Parks is a novelist and critic. (The distinction is important.) Recently he wrote a piece for the New York Review of Books blog about the current state of novels, and what it means for today’s novelist. Parks’s essay, worth reading in its entirety, starts out slowly. Parks apparently feels compelled to describe (only to… Continue reading
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Penelope Fitzgerald and Failure (and Free Fiction!)
Still thinking about Penelope Fitzgerald and being drawn to failure. And it made me think of this passage in The Race: A Novella (available now at Amazon.com!), in which the narrator first meets the Governor’s wife: “Who’s he?” Tina said to the Governor in the foyer. “My biographer!” I explained that it was actually an autobiography –… Continue reading
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Failure and Penelope Fitzgerald
Oh, good lord. No wonder I love Penelope Fitzgerald so much. Here I thought it was the short length of her novels. Instead it’s the life experience: By that time, in her early sixties, Penelope Fitzgerald was long accustomed to humiliation and, far worse, to catastrophe. Indeed, her late flowering as a novelist of extraordinary… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 