September 2010
57 posts
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“Where you just kept coming apart, right in my arms.”
– The Gaslight Anthem, “Old White Lincoln”
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Close Your Eyes and Think of England, by Heidi... →
I have adored this story for some time, and meant to post it as Story of the Day several times. Finally, it seems, today is the right day. Julavits is a killer writer: her books, The Mineral Palace, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Uses of Enchantment are worth your time (and, of course, there’s The Believer).
Enjoy this story, from Zoetrope:
“‘It’s the most...
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When I’m in the Mood for Fiction →
A great piece from Kevin Hartnett of The Millions about our appetite for fiction:
“The more I’m engaged with life—and particularly with other people—the more I want to read fiction. At the peak of a wedding reception or in the throes of a night out when the crowd has given itself over to celebration, I often want to sneak off and read a novel. It’s a contradictory impulse, to want to...
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10 Ways to Celebrate Banned Book Weeks, Beautiful... →
This Week, from Lit Drift.
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“‘I know you perfectly,’ she says.
‘Do you?’...”
– James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime
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Something Better Than This, by Mary Gaitskill →
Thanks to the delightful Fictionaut, an early Mary Gaitskill story is available for viewing. I cannot believe she was twenty-two when she wrote this piece. I feel incredibly inadequate; she’s so, so good:
“In the midst of all these Friday night leftovers, a newcomer emerges from the bowels of the subway, a girl named Susan with pale, oniony skin, long brown hair and wide hips in new...
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I Am In Love with The TNB Self-Interview
The Nervous Breakdown and its wonderful “Self-Interviews” provide me with a constant excuse to geek out, writer-style. Here are my favorites (chronologically):
Sean Ferrell (Numb)
Rosecrans Baldwin (You Lost Me There)
Ben Greenman (What He’s Poised To Do)
Marcy Dermansky (Bad Marie)
Molly Gaudry (We Take Me Apart)
Emma Straub (Other People We Married; Fly-Over State)
Steve...
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For sleepless nights, a poem
“Moles,” by Paul Farley
Within sight of the blue of the sky,
with meadow scents and the song of birds
as the gradient slackened, he looked back to find
more emptiness than he thought earth held.
In this version of the myth
we leave him there, helpless and blind,
skimming for worms in the topsoil, cursed
with shovels that can’t even hold a lyre.
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If you're feeling fancy...
…and you’d like to recommend fwriction, that would make me a very happy clam.
And, I’ll love you forever. I promise.
(photo by Three Skins)
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Marjorie and the Birds, by Emma Straub →
I cannot wait for Emma Straub’s collection, Other People We Married, to come out next year (from FiveChapters). In the meantime, enjoy this new piece from a Story of the Day favorite, thanks to Cal Morgan’s Fifty-Two Stories, and pre-order Emma’s collection, posthaste!
“Marjorie’s husband, Steve, had had a big personality and the kind of booming voice that often made...
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“Read a fucking book.”
– Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, Boardwalk Empire
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In Donoghue's 'Room,' A Mother And Child Make A... →
An excerpt from Emma Donoghue’s Room follows this great write-up from NPR. Also, if you’re in NYC, she’s reading tonight at WORD in Brooklyn.
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American Book Review: 100 Best First Lines from... →
My favorites, from this list:
“A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” —Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane…” —Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done...
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A Literary Map of Manhattan →
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Some Things Last a Long Time, by Karen Eileen... →
I’ve read this nonfiction piece, from the woman behind TrainWrite, several times over the past two days. It continues to resonate. Enjoy today’s Story of the Day, and if you’re in NYC, take a walk in the rain:
“Mid-September was just becoming cold enough for a hoodie, so I threw on my favorite over the striped, mod mini-dress I greeted him in because I’d promised...
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“What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying...”
– Franz Kafka, diary (August 6, 1914)
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Interview: Dinty W. Moore on essays, essaying &... →
Narrative interviews ridiculously insightful and hilarious writer Dinty W. Moore, whose new book, Crafting the Personal Essay, is a must for all serious writers of nonfiction:
“Left to my own mental devices, I only have one or two interesting thoughts a year, and that’s not nearly enough to sustain a writing career, but I find that I can increase the number of interesting thoughts that I...
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James Salter Week comes to an end
It’s been a week of James Salter stories, quotes, and interviews. I’ve certainly enjoyed it. Here’s some more Salter, which I am labeling Salterama 2010:
* Hamptons.com talks with James Salter
* On The Superiority of James Salter
* Sex, Seriously: James Salter Trumps the Great Male Novelists
* On The Hunters: Elizabeth Farnsworth interviews James Salter
* The Paris Review -...
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'Superman' Is Super →
Thanks to an invite from Citizen Schools (an organization I believe strongly in and had the pleasure of teaching for last year), I had the chance to see Waiting for “Superman” at a screening this week.
The film, written and directed by Davis Guggenheim (of An Inconvenient Truth fame), really takes a hardline look at all that’s f***ed up in our educational system (most notably...
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“Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit...”
– James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime
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For those that love engaging nonfiction: Three... →
This reads like the beginnings of a book-length memoir, unfolding in succinct, gripping vignettes. I cannot wait for more.
Three skins: Τρία δέρματα. Tres pieles. Three languages. Three cultures.
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“Maggie wakes and sleeps like an animal—quickly, with almost no warning. I want...”
– Barb Johnson, “The Invitation”
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Kafka’s Last Trial →
During his lifetime, Franz Kafka burned an estimated 90 percent of his work. After his death at age 41, in 1924, a letter was discovered in his desk in Prague, addressed to his friend Max Brod. “Dearest Max,” it began. “My last request: Everything I leave behind me … in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches and so on, to be burned unread.” Less than two...
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Am Strande von Tanger, by James Salter →
The week of James Salter continues, this time with a story in The Paris Review, taken from Salter’s short story collection, Dusk and Other Stories. God, he’s really, really good:
“She likes to do this. The building has a small elevator which rises slowly. When it arrives she steps in and closes the doors carefully behind her. Then, just as slowly, she descends, floor after...
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Is there a 'number one' writer today? →
I really do love the Guardian and their Books Blog:
“Who is number one?” asks Blake Morrison in his Guardian Review essay on Jonathan Franzen. Morrison was recalling the poet John Berryman’s question after the death of Robert Frost. Answer: (to Berryman’s chagrin) Robert Lowell.
Morrison goes on to write that since the deaths of Bellow, Mailer and Updike, the...
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BlackBook: Raymond Carver Mad Libs →
bbook:
1. man’s name 2. bad job 3. woman’s name 4. slightly better job 5. bad feeling 6. -ing verb plus activity 7. verb plus bad decision 8. smokable thing 9. alcoholic drink 10. a different bad feeling 11. question that’s a cliché 12. terse, uncommunicative response 13. another, different…
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An Excerpt...
“Sometimes, I thought we were a twinkle, Estelle and I. Over the years, we took turns vanishing, reappearing later to a bit of bewilderment, renewed somehow. We’d both had lovers, though this remained forever unspoken, and perhaps they, too, had something to do with the process. As we moved along our timeline, for the most part unchanging, our lovers were small black holes, of finite size...
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Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 133: James... →
The week of James Salter continues, with this interview from The Paris Review.
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2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist revealed →
A great list of writers here. My former thesis director (and hell of a friend and mentor), Joseph Boyden, was the 2008 recipient.
(UPDATE: The SHORTLIST has been revealed!)
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Survival of the Fittest: Lydia Davis's notes on... →
I’ve been immersed in translation lately, and Lydia Davis, so this is a wonderful combination. This will be a continuing series over the next two weeks, leading to Davis speaking at the 92nd Street Y on October 4.
“It happened several time while I was doing the translation that I would open a newly discovered previous translation of Madame Bovary and my heart would sink. I would say...
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Frank O'Connor Award Goes to...Ron Rash →
The world’s riches prize for the short story has been given to Ron Rash, for his collection Burning Bright. Congratulations, Ron!
(An exclusive short story, from the Guardian: “Hard Times,” by Ron Rash)
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Last Night, by James Salter →
I am tempted to make this the Story of the Week, rather than the day, so as to encourage repeated readings. It is truly worth it.
When I got to the end of this story, I found myself unable to move on. In fact, I was riding the subway at the time, and I allowed the N train to take me a few extra stops.
As a result of finishing this collection, I’m now reading Salter’s A Sport and a...
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“September. It seems these luminous days will never end.”
– James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime
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Lines for Creeley's Ear, by Allen Ginsberg →
This evening, I will be heading to Helen Mills Theater for a screening of Howl, a new film about Allen Ginsburg, written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. I am very excited. (Also, Jon Hamm. Yes.)
To celebrate, enjoy this Ginsburg poem, which I’ve been repeating over in my mind. He was twenty-nine when he published “Howl”; I’m feeling the pressure.
from...
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“I remember the afternoon, cloudy and quiet, and I remember, too, almost leaving...”
– James Salter, “Give”
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Die Verwandlung, von Franz Kafka →
The Brooklyn Book Festival was simply wonderful. It was my Disney World, really, despite the rain and long lines. One event that stuck with me in particular was the panel on Franz Kafka; writers Joshua Cohen, Francine Prose, and Matthew Sharpe discussed the influence of “Kafka-esque” on modern writing, as well as delved into some biographical history of the Prague-born writer.
...
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David Foster Wallace Papers Opening to the Public →
It appears I will be heading to Austin sometime soon.
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“Such a strange thing, to be satisfied.”
– Simon Van Booy, reading at McNally Jackson
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Attending the Tasting, by Sarah J. Sloat, and What... →
My week of celebrating Dzanc Books’s Best of the Web 2010 comes to a close, and I’ve saved some amazing pieces to read over this wonderful weekend (if you’re in NYC, head to the Brooklyn Book Festival, too!). Sarah J. Sloat’s “Attending the Tasting” makes me smile. Dan Chaon’s “What Happened To Sheila” makes me cry. Both are fantastic pieces of...
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What is a short story? →
An interesting piece on the short story from Jon Bauer and the fantastic LiteraryMinded:
Have you ever had that moment on a dance floor where, mid-boogie, you look around and think, what the hell are we all doing? I had a moment like that when I was thinking about tonight. All these have been designed, printed, bound, cut, driven thousand of kilometres around the country; put online, all for...
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Human Tongue Sauteed in Buttermilk, Things We Do... →
I love this piece from Kyle Minor in The Faster Times. He’s an original voice, and for that, I am appreciative to have found his work.
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The Sky as John Saw It the Night Kate Sparkled, by... →
I love these two stories, from Molly Gaudry and Brandi Wells. Since I came across them in the Best of the Web 2010, I’ve been rereading them. I hope that you do the same. Enjoy today’s Stories of the Day, our fourth look at the fantastic literary anthology.
from “The Sky as John Saw It the Night Kate Sparkled” (via Abjective):
“John was long gone by then but he had...
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“They stayed there. They held each other. They leaned into the door as if against...”
– Raymond Carver, “Neighbors”
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The Reckoning, by Leigh Stein, and Great White, by... →
Day three of Best of the Web 2010 brings some poetry to the mix: “The Reckoning,” by Leigh Stein, and “Great White,” by Julie Platt. I want to frame both of these and hang them on my wall. Enjoy today’s Stories/Poems of the Day, and somebody get me some Matzo ball soup, pretty please.
from “The Reckoning” (via The Scrambler):
“In the darkness,...
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Largehearted Boy: Book Notes - Andrew Ervin →
Andrew Ervin’s new book, Extraordinary Renditions, gets a music playlist, via Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes. I like everything that’s happening here:
Béla Bartók, “Konstrasztok”
If there’s any one piece of music that can explain how the three parts of Extraordinary Renditions fit together, this is it. Bartók completed his “Konstrasztok” in 1938,...
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Roald Dahl: The Storyteller As Benevolent Sadist →
I had the pleasure of reading some Roald Dahl this weekend (“The Landlady,” a story I’d never encountered), and this piece by New York Magazine made me happy:
“It’s been twenty years since Roald Dahl died, and in honor of that morbid anniversary (and maybe, just possibly, in an effort to boost book sales) September has been named “Roald Dahl Month”—a holiday publishers are...
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Letters, Characters, And Ten-Degree Shifts: The... →
Tobias Carroll interviews Ben Greenman for The Rumpus. Good things happen:
“Ben Greenman’s fiction is elusive stuff. His is a body of work that’s equally at home rooting narratives in history or playing textual games with the reader. Even his more historically-based work delves into unexpected societal corners, including post-Cold War Russia and the funk-rock scene of the 1970s. His recent...
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