May 2010
71 posts
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“And in the wild desert sun, we drove straight on through the night. We rode a...”
– Brian Fallon, “The Backseat”
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“I’ll love you like this until I’m dead. Well, until the pizza place...”
– overheard, elderly woman to husband, walking along Rt. 27
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fwriction on Facebook
Check out (and Like!) fwriction’s new Facebook page. fwriction ftw!
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David Foster Wallace's Undergraduate Thesis in... →
Not sure I love this idea, but, as always, I can never get enough DFW:
The book…is adapted from Wallace’s undergraduate thesis in Philosophy at Amherst, “Richard Taylor’s ‘Fatalism’ and the Semantics of Physical Modality.” According to an aside in a 2008 article about the paper in the New York Times Magazine, “The formal apparatus that Wallace...
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The Day After, by David Hollander →
Because I’ve been thinking about Long Island a lot lately, and perhaps even taking a trip there this weekend, today’s Story of the Day, from David Hollander:
“Summer. Blinding, blistering, suffocating summer. On Long Island, middle Long Island, west of the vainglorious Hamptons and east of any bonafide Manhattan affiliation, on this Long Island of housing developments and strip...
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Hungoverediting
Sometimes, when I wake up hungover from editing my own work, I grab a cup of coffee, sip it slow, let the natural oils coat my tongue and soothe my allergy-scratchy throat. Everything feels as if I’ve been drinking: nauseated, headache that jamming my thumbs into my temples won’t cure, swirl of wall and hardwood and desk into one massive piece of intangible furniture. It’s in...
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The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, by Fyodor... →
Because my dreams have been ridiculous as of late. Enjoy today’s Story of the Day, from Dostoyevsky:
I sat down at the table, took the gun out of the drawer, and put it down in front of me. I remember asking myself as I put it down, “Is it to be then?” and I replied with complete certainty, “It is!” That is to say, I was going to shoot myself. I knew I should shoot myself that night for...
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We're Firing the Wrong Teachers →
I want to believe there’s going to be some sort of positive that comes from all this malarkey. Sometimes, though, Joel Klein, it just sounds like talk:
“Teachers are professionals, and they deserve to be treated the way professionals in almost every other line of work are: evaluated based upon their work.”
Wouldn’t that be something?
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Stray Questions for: Hannah Tinti →
An interview with Hannah Tinti, author of Animal Crackers and The Good Thief, and editor of the fantastic One Story magazine:
I have a spot on the other side where I go to write, and One Story magazine, where I’m the editor, has an office in the Old American Can Factory on Third Street. The Gowanus was constructed in the 1860s, as a way for factories to ferry their products out to the harbor....
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Little Things, by Raymond Carver →
Happy Birthday, Ray. Today’s Story of the Day is one of my Carver favorites (the story appeared as “Mine” in Furious Seasons and as “Popular Mechanics” in WWTAWWTAL). This version, “Little Things,” was published in Where I’m Calling From.
I want to be this good.
“Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water....
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Tumblr Tuesday Cometh!
If you like what fwriction does, and I hope that you really, really do, please stop by the Directory on this fine Tuesday and recommend fwriction as a Creative Writing blog. If you do, I will have some Pinkberry later and think of you. Promise.
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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose... →
In honor of the “accept it-or-hate it” series finale of Lost last night, today’s Story of the Day, one that clearly inspired the Lost writers, utilizes a classic unreliable narrator, shifting time sequence, and a twist ending. In the second-season episode “The Long Con,” Locke browses the book containing this story while organizing the contents of the Hatch:
“A...
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Destinies Found and Lost in Julie Orringer’s... →
I don’t often post reviews, but I’ve been anticipating Orringer’s novel for some time. Grab this up, and enjoy her contribution to Story of the Day.
“In its powers of description, The Invisible Bridge is reflective and specific enough to wonder exactly when a tree dies once Andras is assigned to cut wood in a Subcarpathian forest. The true moment of death, this onetime...
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The 11 Greatest Literary Feuds →
When I picture a literary feud, I think of Ernest Hemingway jousting Jonathan Safran Foer, American Gladiators style.
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Novelist Junot Diaz Elected to Pulitzer Board →
A fantastic choice. Well done, JD:
Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz has been elected to serve on the Pulitzer board, which awards the most prestigious prizes in journalism.
Diaz, who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Friday that it was an “extraordinary...
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The Palatski Man, by Stuart Dybek →
Because Stuart Dybek’s writing should be read over and over, enjoy today’s Story of the Day this weekend:
“Then she would walk down the aisle between the lines of communicants, searching through half-shut eyes for her pew, her mind praying Jesus help me find it. And when she found her pew, she would kneel down and shut her eyes and bury her face in her hands praying over and...
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Teachers Facing Weakest Market in Years →
It would appear that I’ve graduated and begun seeking a permanent teaching job at just the right time. Epic fail:
“In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as California. The Port Washington District on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications...
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I'm Wide, by Gordon Lish →
Exactly a month ago today, I posted the first Story of the Day: Ray Carver’s “Beginners,” which was essentially “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” without the influence of Carver’s editor, Gordon Lish. The relationship between Carver and Lish is one that I’m eternally fascinated b, and has captured the imagination of many a student of the short...
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Burn Me Up, by Tom Piazza →
Sunday’s episode of Treme was written by Tom Piazza, and it was pretty rad. To celebrate, today’s Story of the Day features Piazza’s short fiction work, from the collection Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories. In addition, his novel, City of Refuge, is one of the best written about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. “Burn Me Up,” too, will stick to your gut:
...
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It's Tumblr Tuesday!
If you’d like to make me smile all week, please recommend fwriction as a Creative Writing blog. Thanks so much!
DG
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The Old Dictionary, by Lydia Davis →
Today’s Story of the Day is actually an “excerpt,” courtesy of NPR, from Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories. “The Old Dictionary” is one of my favorite all-time short stories, and it showcases why Davis is a master of “flash fiction” (as does “Losing Memory,” another story featured in this excerpt: it comes in at a cool twelve words). Enjoy...
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Mea Culpa: Another Raging Nonfiction Scandal →
A nonfiction brouhaha, brought to you by Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog:
“As a long-time committed nonfictionist, one who teaches his students not to lie, to select and shape their real experiences into literature, I feel so ashamed. I sincerely apologize to those readers who have been disappointed in my actions.
What’s perhaps most disappointing, to me at least, is that it’s been my...
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Andrew Ervin's Low Budget Book Trailer →
This was passed on to me by Nick Mainieri. Andrew Ervin’s first book, Extraordinary Renditions: 3 Novellas, will be published in 2010 by Coffee House Press. This is his awesome, low budget book trailer, which has been nominated for a Moby Award.
Enjoy.
(Lagniappe: Book Trailer #2)
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Memoir, Six Words →
Another shorty.
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The Two Raymond Carvers →
I love Ray Carver. I admire Gordon Lish. Their editorial relationship will forever fascinate me:
“On July 8, 1980, however, one year before his triumphant summer at Yaddo, Carver had written to Gordon Lish urging him to halt production on What We Talk About. He had just spent the whole night going over Lish’s edited version of the book and was taken aback by the changes. His manuscript had...
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Thoughts While Sitting On My Toilet, Which Is...
He flipped through several pages of Poets & Writers before realizing that he was neither a poet nor a writer and had erroneously chosen his magazine. He kept reading, however, as it filled him with a tremendous sense of proclivity. Or, perhaps, it was the Double Whopper with Cheese (extra onions) agitating in his stomach. Either way, he feared moving and remained still, pretending to read...
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French Artist Killed in Sunday’s Earthquake, by... →
From Cal Morgan, of Harper-Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories:
I have long been fascinated by the idea that an entire story—potential, conflict, joy, agony, completion—could be contained in a snapshot. In this story from his luminous debut collection, The Secret Lives of People in Love, Simon Van Booy proves not only that it can, but also that the snapshot itself is optional. Words are...
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Amber at the Window in Hurricane Season, by Justin... →
Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever is one of the quirkiest, strongest short story collections to hit the literary scene. Taylor’s style and particularity make reading his work a unique experience. This Story of the Day appears, in slightly different version, in the collection:
“When she smiles it turns her cheeks to waxed apples but she wasn’t smiling right then there at the...
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“In my heart, to this day, I am always sitting at a big table in a roomful of...”
– Michael Chabon, “The Losers’ Club” (from Manhood for Amateurs)
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Bistro
He perused the laminated pages of the menu and became disappointed with the selection. Then, something different, a beacon of intrigue at the bottom of page three: Baba Ghanoush Chicken Flatbread Sandwich. He ordered, along with a bottle of sparkling water. It was only later, while resting in the hospital bed, that he finally came to terms with his allergy to eggplant and decided, in the future,...
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Bad writing: What is it good for? →
Laura Miller explores the possibilities hidden within the unlimited resource that is bad writing:
“Bad writing can serve as a lesson of one kind or another, but can it ever be recycled into something approximating art?”
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Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's... →
Nathan Englander, author of The Ministry of Special Cases and For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, brings his own version of a family tree to today’s Story of the Day:
“My great-grandfather gave up on religion completely. And mygrandfather told me why he did. This is true, by the by. Not true in the way fiction is truer than truth. True in both realms.”
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“Afterward, they stroll the boulevards and the snow reminds Dorothea of a scene...”
– Steve Almond, “Anniversary”
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In New York’s Suburbs, Teachers Feel Budget Ax →
“Schools across New York State could lay off more than 15,000 teachers this summer, according to projections by union leaders and education officials; that includes 6,400 in New York City, where teachers have not agreed to salary concessions (but they also have not received any raises this year, because their contact expired in October). New Jersey is facing more than 9,000 layoffs, and...
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Flashback, or Why Nobody Won the Fight Between Our... →
Today’s Story of the Day comes from Sam Lipsyte, whose new novel, The Ask, is kicking some literary ass right now. This is a few years old, but well worth the read:
“I drove to my buddy Cudahy’s grave. Cudahy didn’t have a grave. I parked and walked the pathways of the tony boneyard where somewhere a sandwich-sized wedge of granite bore his name. We’d cindered him, after all, old...
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“row to hoe: As well as being dangerously close to cliche, the phrase is subject...”
– Bill Bryson, Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words
It's Tumblr Tuesday!
If you have some free time, and are feeling generous, recommend fwriction in the Creative Writing directory.
Thanks!
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In the End
And______lived______ever______.
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The Basement Room, by Graham Greene →
It’s a Graham Greene morning. Today’s Story of the Day is one I read as often as I can:
“It wasn’t hard for Philip to escape; they’d forgotten him completely. He went down the back, the servants’ stairs, because Mrs. Baines was in the hall. He didn’t understand what she was doing lying there; like the pictures in a book no one had read to him, the things...
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“Howard heard the shouting and came in to find her with her head on her arms over...”
– Raymond Carver, “A Small, Good Thing”
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Where has all the political fiction gone? →
The Guardian’s Books blog looks at two new novels, mostly dealing with the apolitical, in an effort to discover where all the powerful, decisive political fiction has gone:
“When reading, say, 1984, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists or Brave New World, it’s the politics that provides the living pulse of the story. In each, social systems act upon the characters: they cannot...
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Have I Earned These Cliches? →
Elissa Bassist gives a humorous, penetrating look at cliché, and our responsibility as writers to avoid all things unearned. Her discussion of Lorrie Moore, too, gives this article a heightened flair for the literary:
“I love you” is a cliché.
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The Mind Research Network and Charting Creativity →
Why does it come as a surprise to people that creativity cannot be mapped, charted, or organized into an Excel spreadsheet? We spend much time and energy in an attempt to explain the creative process, yet we continually remove the tools—particularly in high schools and colleges—utilized by students to explore the realm of creativity. The old-standard definition no longer holds enough weight: “the...
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“My mother always said ‘Don’t bother other people.’ I think...”
– Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
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WatchAs a Team Leader with Citizen Schools at the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jorge Gaviria (and two amazing CTs, Linda Fung and Taj Ajrawat) and these students during their Blog It! Apprenticeship. The energetic group of middle-school students have taken to the idea of blogging and embraced the opportunity to explore this new media. I feel honored to...
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“No, I can’t. I had a bad experience with poems.”
– RW (one of my high school students)
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Flying Foxes, by Casey Lefante →
For today’s Story of the Day, I wanted something both short and persistent. “Flying Foxes” is just that, and I hope you enjoy it. Reread it over the weekend, too. Let it marinate:
“When I was ten, I had an imaginary sister named Lulu who only appeared when I was sitting in the back seat of my parents’ Toyota. I’d peer out the window and watch as she ran alongside the car....