Live! Online, It’s ‘The View From Here’
tags:
community, fiction, interviews, litblogs, literary magazines, reviews
Metaxu readers might want to check out The View From Here, a new online literary magazine with an international staff. Launched by Mike French, a UK author, The View From Here is a place for writers and book lovers to come together to talk and…
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leave a comment “The horror. The horror.”
tags:
classics, Conrad, fiction, Heart of Darkness, literature, modernism, novels
Conrad’s singular phrase from the turn-of-the-century novella, Heart of Darkness, says it all. So many have borrowed from it, the best known work being Apocalypse Now, which is set in Vietnam instead of the Congo. Most people find the book a challenging read, but with…
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The Bodies Exhibit: Why We Read Frankenstein
tags:
fiction, Frankenstein, Human Bodies Exhibit, literature, museum exhibit, reading, romanticism, Shelley
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man’s overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often horrific events that follow such actions. In Shelley’s day, early 19th century, many in the…
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1 commentAyn Rand’s early unpublished fiction
tags:
Ayn Rand, books, fiction, literature, Peikoff, reading, writing
I picked up an old, yellowed copy of The Early Rand (Signet, ed. Leonard Peikoff, 1984) and have thoroughly enjoyed reading from her early unpublished fiction. Peikoff and Rand were friends. In fact, she was influential in his move from studying medicine to philosophy. He…
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The Liar’s Diary
tags:
bloggers, books, fiction, novels, Patry Francis, wirters
The Liar’s Diary by Patry Francis is released today in paperback. With a title like that, you can expect it to be a compelling read. Here’s the description: When new music teacher Ali Mather enters Jeanne Cross’s quiet suburban life, she brings a jolt of…
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Recognition at Last for Stuart Dybek
tags:
fiction, short stories
A few weeks ago I found a first edition hard-cover of Stuart Dybek’s I Sailed With Magellan in a bin of unwanted books selling for a dollar apiece. A week later, Dybek won the Macarthur Foundation “Genius” award, worth $500,000, and on its heels, the…
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Periodically Speaking
tags:
essays, fiction, literature, poetry, readings
Listen to what’s coming up—for free—at The New York Public Library, thanks to The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses [clmp]. On Tuesday, October 9th, the group kicks off its Periodically Speaking reading series. Each event (the October reading is one of three) will present…
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The Haunting of History
tags:
fiction, haunted, history, theory
All historical fictions are ghost stories. Both metaphorically and literally, they are ghost stories. These stories exist as a haunting of memory, of a faint trace of the real superimposed by the ghosts that influence us in the interpretation. As a genre fellow, I mean…
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Book Review: The Road
tags:
Fiction, Post-Apolcalyptic Fiction, Pulitzer, Science Fiction
The Road is a one sit read. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could possibly start reading this book and not continuously read it through to the end. Cormac McCarthys Pulitzer-prize winning book is so harrowing, and yet so hopeful, that as a reader turns the pages, he will not be able to stop.
The plot is simple. A father and son travel across a post-apocalyptic wasteland of ash and death. Following old maps, scrounging for tinned cans of food (as nothing grows anymore) and avoiding those humans who have turned to cannibalism in order to survive. The story follows them through their trial and travails. It is not a new plot, and has been used many times before.
But that is not what won the novel its awards. It is the relationship between man and boy that gathers these. The man is practical and utilitarian, the boy conscientious and caring. (Perhaps it is a metaphor for government by the people?) As the two face death, day by day, they find solace in one anothers company. This bond is strong and gets stronger as they face bandits and come close to starvation more than once.
The style of writing is, I believe, Faulknerian, in that punctuation is ignored. Quotation marks and apostrophes are particularly ignored. This can be off-putting to the reader, but move past it, as the work gets really good. The lack of punctuation works for the novel, adding a level of austerity and bleakness to the text. McCarthys writing in this way heightens the emotions of the reader and leads him/her to feel the ultimate despair of its characters.
And the despair is deep. It is only deepened in that, as the pair travel the road, the story only gets bleaker and the reader begins to wonder why they continue to travel. It seems the world has ended. Unlike in other post-apocalyptic novels, there is no idyll or paradise waiting just over the next hill. It makes you wonder just what the man and boy are hoping to find at the end of their journey.
Some critics have tried to turn this book into a metaphor on environmentalism. The world is ash and it was caused by some sort of holocaust. A holocaust powerful enough to keep wildlife from surviving, trees from growing, seeds from taking root, and turning the ocean into a gray morass. I can see where those critics get that idea. But the characters never dwell on the destruction, nor really comment on the world as it has become. Most of their conversation centers on death, survival, and the nature of God.
Rather than being a metaphor for environmentalism, I see this book as a metaphor of the search for God and the power of hope and love for one another. Perhaps that sounds like a platitude, but McCarthy has shown the depth to which these things affect us, and how all of our life is really a striving after purpose and hope.
Ultimately, the man finds his purpose in saving the boy and the boy in helping others even needier than him. More than once the man refers to the boy as a god, and it makes me wonder if the boy is a metaphor for Christ? He certainly displays similar traits. But honestly, that might be too much of a stretch.
If you attempt this book, realize that you will be depressed both during and some time after reading this book. When I walked away, I saw more clearly the beauty of what I had in my life. The cold hard world of The Road showed me the beauty of my own especially of the relationship I have to my beloved wife.
The Road is a moving, depressing, and simultaneously hopeful book. It is unlike any post apocalypse novel I have ever read, and it made me look at my world with more appreciative eyes. The book should be read, and I actually agree (surprisingly!) with the Pulitzer committee and all the reviewers who have so highly praised it. The Road is a work of literature greater than its genre.
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What does fiction do?
tags:
Fiction
At the Now What blog, carried over from Chiasmus Press - the question: What should fiction do? Two of the answers:
Lance Olsen: In The Middle Mind, Curtis White maintains that the narratives generated and sustained by the American political system, entertainment industry, and academic trade have taught us over the last half century how not to think for ourselves. Essentially, those narratives shun complexity and challenge; avoid texts that demand attentive, self-conscious, and self-critical reading; and embrace The Middle Minds thoughtless impulse toward the status quo. In a phrase, what we are left with is the death or at least the dying of what I think of as the Difficult Imagination. What writers can do is attempt to revive the Difficult Imagination by exploring various strategies that call attention to, reflect upon, and disrupt the assumptions behind conventional narratives, thereby challenging the dominant cultures that would like to see such narratives told and retold until they begin to pass for truths about the human condition. “Our satisfaction with the completeness of plot,” Fredric Jameson once noted, is “a kind of satisfaction with society as well,” and I would add much the same is the case with our satisfaction with undemanding style, character, subject matter, and so forth. My orientation, then, rhymes fairly closely with those posed by Viktor Shklovsky for art and Martin Heidegger for philosophy: the return through complication and challenge (not predictability and ease) to perception and thought.
Brian Evenson says: I dont think that writing should be doing anything in particular, but I do think it should be doing. Its easy for writing to slip into old tired patterns where it doesnt have to do, where its follow the same groove in the same record, where its covering the same tired ground, where its one of the millions of cars on the same superhighway, inching along with everyone else. How much better if the writing is traveling down disused back roads getting knocked by branches and trying to make it around places where the road has been washed out. Or threading itself thinly down an animal track. Or hacking its way deep into the thicket of being without having decided in advance what itll find there. The more effort, the better
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One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz
tags:
dean koontz, fiction, paranormal, thriller, utilitarian bioethics
Synopsis:
Young Leilani has a deformed hand and a brace on her legand shes just told her alcoholic ex-con neighbor that her differences are why her deranged doctor stepfather and whacked-out druggie mother are going to kill her unless shes abducted by aliens when she turns 10.
Review:
I read this book because it was recommended by Wesley Smith, a leading voice against utilitarianism bioethics, which is the concept that death is the optimal choice for anyone living a less-than-perfect existence, physically speaking. Rather than first do no harm, doctors are succumbing to a growing trend in believing that many lives are simply not worth living, regardless of the will to live of the patient or patients family. These philosophers differentiate themselves from Nazi eugenicists by arguing that their standards for determining who lives and who does not are betterbut the end result is the same. Death to the physically and mentally disabled, and to the terminally ill.
read the rest
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Kill All the Lawyers? No, Kill the Fiction Writers
tags:
fiction, literary fiction, process
In the last six weeks, Ive read comments by established writers declaring that bad fiction writers be stopped.
As a diligent and widely unknown fiction writer, I beg to differ. The inherent quality of fiction, the pronouncement that its good or bad, is entirely subjective. Beyond that, fiction requires shelf-life. Many of our best writers finish a piece and put it away to rewrite only when time has brought them to a different vantage point. Then, too, whats bad today; could easily be judged good tomorrow. Or the oppositewhat was considered breakthrough literature twenty years ago bores us now. Fiction is an art. While many might agree that fiction with an indifference or ignorance of structure, grammar, narrative, character, and/or story arc qualifies as despicable writing, others might know some of the writers other work and declare the same piece experimental. Any writer, afraid to risk writing badly, will never manage the daredevil feats unique fiction requires.
Of course, not many people care much about unique fiction, or any fiction until its transformed into a movie or TV series. That development may not disturb me as much as it should. What does disturb me is the idea that bad fiction writers are an assault upon society. Why fiction writers?
Why not bad guitar players or bad sculptors? Its not much harder to toss out a bad short story or dump a boring novel than it is to turn away from a bad painting or photograph. Bad drummers may not be as popular as I imagine, but I wouldnt be surprised if they werent tolerated with a great deal more sympathy than the struggling, searching, over-reaching fiction writer. Even though bad drummers, if theyre experimenting in your apartment building or garage, intrude on your privacy much louder than any fiction writer sweating to find a line of angry, screaming dialog ever could.
One commentator expressing anger toward bad fiction writers referred to the MFA writers programs popular throughout this country and what a waste of money and energy they are. I dont know, being a self-taught fiction writer. But I would no more want to put writers programs out of business than dance schools or fledgling theatre groups or even a garage band with more attitude than chord changes.
Speaking for myself, youre apt to find my penchant for writing fiction is among the least of my obnoxious qualities. Years ago I gave up almost all hope of publication. But I would no sooner give up writing fiction than Id give up my life. Honestly, my plea here is not for myself alone. Tolerate me or notI know quite well how little difference Ill ever make. But earnest young writers determined to master their art? Are they really so abominable? How hard is it to say, Keep at it. They work alone, in silence, and dupe you into spending your money about as often as they win the lottery. The very worst fiction writer might someday become the best. No one knows. It costs nothing to say, Work hard enough, long enough and youll eventually become the writer you were meant to be.
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Hair Trigger
tags:
fiction, short stories
Nates accountant convinced him to declare bankruptcy on The Gallery and sell the inventory. A lovely Indian girl just out of college made the telephone calls. Luckily, feeling as bright and intuitive as Nate usually did during the day-time, he remembered that he should retrieve Alisons drawing cabinet. The Gallerys demise would leave Alison more adrift than ever.
After the accountant he rode in a hired car for an appointment with his source. He had just read about a popular sleeping pill that occasionally compelled people to eat in their sleep. Like sleep walking, except it was sleep eating. It sounded like the answer for Alison. She needed more sleep and healthy food.
His cocaine connection lived in the suburbs along Lake Michigans north shore. The security system fed directly into the local police station; thats how confident the man was, rich beyond suspicion. Cocaine dealer or not, nothing rattled the man. Handsome and urbane in soft, understated casual clothes, he impressed Nate as the most comfortable, efficient person on earth. Nate hated to ask him for sleeping pills, but no one else would meet the request so graciously. And over the years Nate had proved a consistent, tactful, and ever more successful dealer.
Afterwards, the driver, whom Nate paid in cash and tipped with a vial, dropped him off in front of The Gallery. When he told Alison the store was bankrupt, her eyes brimmed.
Its for the better, honey, youll see. This weekend we can take a vacation.
Her eyes grew round. A vacation!
I mean, at home, just you and me. But I promise, next month, Ill arrange things so we can go away for a week.
He had already stopped at the apartment, arranged his supplies, and locked up. He had parked his truck in front of The Gallery, by a fire hydrant but so what. He hauled the drawing cabinet into the back. Alison remembered James guitar; the rest was for the bank.
At home, Nate thought that since Alison was chronically sleep-deprived, she might want to try a sleeping pill. But she jumped up and wrapped her legs around him to kiss him. She said that as long as she slept at night, she wanted to play all day. Then she dressed in a pale T-shirt dress, with ruching along the hips that added to her shape, and matched him line for line. Nate removed his pants and socks but left on his boxers and shirt.
They romped around the place, snorting up too many lines to count, clutching at each other and laughing. Nate said, Wait a minute. Lets up the ante, and he retrieved his gun from the drawer in the dining room.
Put that down. Only guys think guns are sexy. You want danger, lie down here. Alison jumped on top of his swollen body and tried to wrap her hands around his neck. He tore her hands loose and bent the fingers back. He slapped her face until tears formed at the corner of her eyes.
*
At Trevors Cycles, James was asking Wardell what he should do next.
Were looking good. Go home.
Wardell would say, Looking good, no matter what he was looking at. But the store was looking great and after tomorrow it would look better than it ever had.
Turning right on to Halsted and racing several blocks, James stopped short. The Gallery was dark. Rolling his cycle up to the front window, he peered inside. From the nearby streetlamps, he could tell the store was empty.
Before he stepped inside the kitchen he called, Hello! Nate, Alison! Its James! He called as loudly as he could, but to compensate for his speech problems, his shout was kind of soft. He wheeled his bicycle into his room and could hear Alison crying. She was saying, Dont, you bastard. Stop! Youre hurting me.
He heard Nate say, You love it, bitch. You love it and Im not letting go until you admit it.
James sidled into the dining room quietly. Nate was pulling Alisons long hair from the nape of her neck so hard she was bending backwards. She fell and he hauled her up. After pressing her into a corner, he slapped her. First her face, one side and the other, then her body. When he grabbed her neck in one hand and she gasped, pounding his chest, so that he bellowed even as he was smacking her, James noticed the Glock on the dresser. The safety mechanism was not where he could find it. The gun was nothing like Wardells forty-five.
Still, Nate was butting his head into Alisons thin body and she was screaming. James pointed the gun low, at Nates feet, and pulled the trigger. He stumbled on the carpet, which was askew and uneven. A fold he didnt expect caught his toes, throwing him off balance so that he pulled the trigger again.
Simultaneously with the explosion, blood blossomed from Nates lower backside. Alison shifted to the side, screaming at James. Dont you know anything? She swore and wept and shrieked. James glanced back as he hurried away, seeing blood pooling as Nates hand slid down the wall. Halfway out, hopping on his cycle, he could still hear Alison screaming, Murder! James, you murdered him!
Tears blinding him, he raced back to the cycle shop. Wardell was working at the computer still, utility lamps burning.
Before James reached the door, Wardell had already hurried outside, taking the boy by the shoulders as he extricated himself from the bicycle. What is it? Whats happened?
Whatever it was, Wardell could not understand a word Jim said. He flew apart, scattering like a tray of beads on cement. Deep breaths, now. Take deep breaths.
Before long James managed to explain what hed done. Chances are, Jim, you did not kill him. And if you did, there are different ways to consider it. My own bias is that you did a favor to humanity. Objectively, theres self-defense, Alison-defense, one mans life or two othersYou know what? Call your father. Get yourself under control and call him up.
James splashed cold water on his face. He felt surreal, as if he had left his body and was floating around, free of the world. But he did what Wardell said.
He called his father. Hello. This is James.
Hello James.
Im in trouble.
What kind of trouble?
I might have killed someone.
So you need a lawyer.
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Breather
tags:
experimentation, fiction, writing
I am taking a breather this weekend (in case anyone notices the pause.)
Writing James Walsh’s story not only exhilarated me, it pushed me to a new limit. No exaggerationin all the years Ive been writing fiction (25, and so consistently its staggering to contemplate), I have never experienced a story taking over my daily life and consciousness the way this one did.
Many nights I could not sleep after writing all day, and when I did, my dreams arrived as relentless, hyper-realistic outtakes. The characters would not fade. For six weeks, they never shut up. The whole endeavor was overwhelming. Sadly, I know too well that does not mean it will ever captivate anyone else.
Knowing this did not protect me from believing, while it was happening to me, that some of the story would surely captivate anyone who read it. Its energy was too great to go unnoticed. When that fantasy ends, the crash involves real psychic injury. So this weekend I am licking my wounds.
Creative writing is a habit though. Ive admitted before Im addicted to the adrenaline. Monday or maybe Tuesday, Ill be back at it. My plan is to write little vignettes for a while. But you never know. The James Walsh bender started out as an imaginary snippet of dialogue matched with a vague image.
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Literary Memory
tags:
biography, fact, fiction, memoirs
I just started reading The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. Ive been curious about it ever since my Wordsmiths Project photo shoot and interview with Frank Wilson, the books editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Frank had told me that he was enjoying the controversy of having given a good review of a novel that his respected peer, Laurie Muchnick (the books editor of Newsday), definitely didnt like. Using it as an example of how the Internet now gives readers the opportunity for greater dialog, Frank said, Im hoping that Laurie writes a review of The Thirteenth Tale that I liked so much and she didnt. Because the minute that she does, Im going to link to it and mine [from his blog, Book, Inq], so that people can have both points of view. Remember the Life of Brian, when he tells people Youre all individuals, you can think for yourselves? Well, people can, and its very good for their minds to think for themselves.
But what the first few pages of The Thirteenth Tale sparked for me was a very different controversy the current obsession with memoirs that contain inaccurate, often invented accounts. After all, arent memoirs, and their literary cousins, biographies, supposed to give us the facts about a life?
The Thirteenth Tale centers on an aged best-selling author, Vida Winter, who would invent different histories for herself, whenever she was interviewed. At various times, she was the secret daughter of a priest and a schoolmistress the runaway child of a Parisian courtesan an orphan raised in a Swiss convent, a street child from the backstreets of the East End. Now, at the end of her life, she summons a biographer, Margaret Lea, and promises to tell her the truth. The novel slowly unfolds the story of Vida Winters childhood, through her storytelling and Margaret Leas investigations.
But what are the facts of a life fully lived, though not documented minute by minute, recording every days events and encounters until later if at all? And what is the truth contained in those half-remembered facts? (Im not talking about inventions or out-and-out lies. Those belong in a different discussion about why people choose to distort or completely make up their stories rather than try to recount what they remember.)
Vida Winter, in The Thirteenth Tale, says, All children mythologize their birth. But I would go further than that. I consider my own memory, and I cant help but reflect that it is a personal mythology of my life the moments I have chosen to remember because, in hindsight, they have become meaningful to me, to the person I have become since then. Are they accurate memories? Of course not. Ive filtered them, filled in what Ive forgotten with what might have been, and embellished them with each retelling.
However, should I choose to write a memoir something I certainly dont expect to tackle in this or the next decade I cant help but feel that the facts wouldnt matter so much as what I choose to tell. Thats where the truth of me would be, in the telling. Not necessarily the truth of who I was when whatever event I would be relating occurred, but who I am when I would recount it.
I must admit that I havent read the memoirs that stirred the recent controversies. So, I can only speak in general terms. But I know from my own family and friendships, that even when memories are shared, they are seldom the same. Of course, the classic example of this is Akira Kurosawas movie Rashomon, in which the witnesses of a murder (including the ghost of the victim) all give conflicting versions of the murder.
But what about verifiable facts? I have made my living as a non-fiction writer for two decades. As such Ive had to check any fact Ive written, making sure it came from more than one source. If that werent possible, and the story still required that I include the information, I would use modifiers such as he says, she claimed, the indications are, etc. I would struggle with all the details, information and facts I could find and try to prove, until I would end up with a story that I felt told the truth of the matter not my personal truth, but, hopefully, a neutral, unbiased truth.
However, as a photographer, I know that every story and every picture interprets the facts, presenting them in one manner or another. One example I often give is taking the photograph of an island resort hotel. If I angle my camera in one way, I will show you an idyllic, pristine beach with charming bungalows, and a beautiful couple sharing a delicious breakfast on their patio table. But if I angle my camera so you can see the trash dumpster and the shanty town in the distance, the story becomes something completely different.
Is it any wonder that I now prefer to write fiction? When I strip my tales of facts, then I can finally tell my own truths, rather than other peoples truths
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The Subtle Art of Logical Reasoning
tags:
brain teaser, fiction, standardized testing
If you are someone who likes to wrap your head around mind-teasers and puzzles, the story below offers you a game to play. Please read this argument: All Xylophones are not Ukuleles. Zorra plays a Ukulele. All women who do not answer to the name…
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