I imagine Hanya Yanagihara wandering the streets of lower Manhattan, stumbling upon a small alley-like street, called Lispenard. And in its tucked-away, hidden aspect, finding the beginning of a story. Two boys living in a rundown apartment. Maybe from that humble beginning, a network of relationships and places began to spiral out. Who are these boys? she asks herself. Oh, they went to college together, of course. And was it just them? Oh no, there were two others. A foursome, she thinks. But what happens to them? she asks. Lots of terrible shit, the story answers, because by now, the story is the one in charge.
I mean, my god. This book. The writing was so damn powerful. Insights so astute without being pedantic. The torture, so real. At times, too much. I had to skip, like, five pages where shit gets too upsetting to read. But because I also didn't want to miss any of it, I read two lines of each paragraph, just to assure myself we were still in the torture section.
Since I've abandoned my own recent book project and am trying to be open to new book ideas, I'm honestly not sure what to steal. If anything, I feel like I want to take for myself permission to have a book about characters. Obviously. But a book where the characters are the draw--not some "high concept," gripping pitch. A book that spirals out from a quiet alley into a tornado that does real damage. But real damage in a good way.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, Maya Angelou
In the gap between Stamps, Arkansas and San Francisco, California--separated only by a handful of years--these different cultures of self-determination and demand for what is owed.
Coming out of a revival meeting in a makeshift cloth tent, post-religious throes led by the minister: "They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden. Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly--mostly--let them have their whiteness. It was better to be meek and lowly, spat upon and abused for this little time than to spend eternity frying in the fires of hell. No one would have admitted that the Christian and charitable people were happy to think of their oppressors' turning forever on the Devil's spit over the flames of fire and brimstone" (129).
Then:
"My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drop s's from plurals and suffixes from past-tense verbs. We were alert to the gap separating the written word from the colloquial. We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with "That's not unusual." But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, "It be's like that sometimes" (221).
Coming out of a revival meeting in a makeshift cloth tent, post-religious throes led by the minister: "They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden. Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly--mostly--let them have their whiteness. It was better to be meek and lowly, spat upon and abused for this little time than to spend eternity frying in the fires of hell. No one would have admitted that the Christian and charitable people were happy to think of their oppressors' turning forever on the Devil's spit over the flames of fire and brimstone" (129).
Then:
"My education and that of my Black associates were quite different from the education of our white schoolmates. In the classroom we all learned past participles, but in the streets and in our homes the Blacks learned to drop s's from plurals and suffixes from past-tense verbs. We were alert to the gap separating the written word from the colloquial. We learned to slide out of one language and into another without being conscious of the effort. At school, in a given situation, we might respond with "That's not unusual." But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, "It be's like that sometimes" (221).
Monday, April 23, 2018
HOMEGOING, Yaa Gyasi
Someone sent me the manuscript of this book before it came out in print. It sat on my desktop for a solid year and a half before I finally got around to reading it. And ohmygod, I'm blown away. I picked it this time because I wanted to see how Gyasi treated the passage of so much time and the excerpting of stories from this massive possible narrative. How do you decide what makes it in and what doesn't when you're covering hundreds of years? I'm grappling with the same questions, so decided to turn to Homegoing for some answers. I couldn't put the book down, so addicted was I to the unfolding of these tragic and beautiful characters. Toward the end--in a truly satisfying moment of everything coming full circle--one character has this thought: "How could he explain to Marjorie that what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it--not apart from it, but inside of it" (296). It is this expansiveness and this unseeing (because how could one ever grasp the magnitude of such things) that I felt at every moment in the book, even as we zoomed in so tight to the very specific lives of each character. Much respect. So much to steal.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
THE BIG SLEEP, Raymond Chandler
Thought I'd be all over this book...it's about LA at roughly the same period as I'm working on in my next project. But there's something about the tone or the storyline or the way Chandler has him women behaving like children--even so far as sucking their thumbs--that left a strange residue for me.
But still plenty to steal--from the descriptions of opulence (a la Greystone mansion, where I went to summer camp as a small child) to details about the sounds of daily life (didn't know that traffic lights "gonged"), I'll be grabbing more from Chandler's setting than his narrative. In any case, a classic that I wouldn't feel right writing about LA without having read.
But still plenty to steal--from the descriptions of opulence (a la Greystone mansion, where I went to summer camp as a small child) to details about the sounds of daily life (didn't know that traffic lights "gonged"), I'll be grabbing more from Chandler's setting than his narrative. In any case, a classic that I wouldn't feel right writing about LA without having read.
Friday, February 2, 2018
PACHINKO, Min Jin Lee
Pachinko was at the top of every list for 2017, plus it dealt with the consequences of a single decision that has repercussions throughout the generations. From Korea to Japan, America and back, it follows a family that harbors a secret--unbeknownst to many of its members.
Jin Lee felt more comfortable foregoing certain scenes to simply tell the reader what happened. At first, it was strange, then refreshing. Major characters die with barely more than a cursory sentence. Something owed to V. Woolf's To the Lighthouse, perhaps.
A few things I'll be keeping in mind as I delve deeper into my own project.
1. I love how Jin Lee keeps her characters so tightly placed in the foreground and history, as it unfolds in all of its dramatic splendor, is mere backdrop.
2. The book doesn't belabor its losses. "History has failed us, but no matter," it opens. And the "no matter" deserves its own analysis.
3. Before this book, I had been struggling with the question of narration in my project. 1st person limited? 3rd person omniscient? I'm not 100% clear that 3rd is the right narrator for my book. I need that proximity to multiple characters and never complete unity with any one in particular.
Jin Lee felt more comfortable foregoing certain scenes to simply tell the reader what happened. At first, it was strange, then refreshing. Major characters die with barely more than a cursory sentence. Something owed to V. Woolf's To the Lighthouse, perhaps.
A few things I'll be keeping in mind as I delve deeper into my own project.
1. I love how Jin Lee keeps her characters so tightly placed in the foreground and history, as it unfolds in all of its dramatic splendor, is mere backdrop.
2. The book doesn't belabor its losses. "History has failed us, but no matter," it opens. And the "no matter" deserves its own analysis.
3. Before this book, I had been struggling with the question of narration in my project. 1st person limited? 3rd person omniscient? I'm not 100% clear that 3rd is the right narrator for my book. I need that proximity to multiple characters and never complete unity with any one in particular.
Monday, January 8, 2018
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, Erich Maria Remarque
Picked it up because my next project is catalyzed by an event in the Great War and already know that AQotWF will be the definitive guide to that experience. It gives shape to my wartime hero.
"We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer....We became soldiers with an eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe."
"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men."
"No doubt his wife still thinks of him; she does not know what happened. He looks as if he would have often written to her; --she will still be getting mail from him--To-morrow, in a week's time--perhaps even a stray letter a month hence. She will read it, and in it he will be speaking to her." I think about this all the time. I can't not include this. A voice from beyond the grave. Re-animated but entirely different, other-worldly because no longer of this world.
"We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer....We became soldiers with an eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe."
"It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men."
"No doubt his wife still thinks of him; she does not know what happened. He looks as if he would have often written to her; --she will still be getting mail from him--To-morrow, in a week's time--perhaps even a stray letter a month hence. She will read it, and in it he will be speaking to her." I think about this all the time. I can't not include this. A voice from beyond the grave. Re-animated but entirely different, other-worldly because no longer of this world.
Monday, December 25, 2017
SING, UNBURIED, SING - Jesmyn Ward
Among other things, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a book about closure--the desire for it, the impossibility of it, and the ultimate realization that the things we anticipate may not arrive as we expect, but that does not mean they fail to arrive altogether. The book was heavier to read than I thought it would be. Because I now have a child? Because the horizon of the book feels so bleak? ...And why shouldn't it, with this opening sentence: "I like to think I know what death is."
To steal from this one: the interruptive presence of the past in the form of ghosts. Already know who will be ghosting my next book. Waiting for more late night divinations to breathe more life into this story in my head.
Monday, November 27, 2017
LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, George Saunders
If George Saunders' humility is as genuine as it appears to be on the "Bookworm" interview with Michael Silverblatt, then I may be truly in love. Not only is he the most badass short-story writer and truly unique and experimental novelist, he's also...so....normal. Well, like a brilliant, understated, matterlightblooming version of a normal person.
So, Lincoln in the Bardo. I remember another badass influence in my life, Elissa Marder, challenging us to think about the signified in the title, Madame Bovary. In Lincoln's case, it isn't THE Lincoln, but THE Lincoln's son, Willie. And the Bardo is a word for purgatory that refuses to let the reader slip into the association-laden term we all know.
Told by ghosts and historians intermittently, the book is bizarre and amazing and worth the read. But the part that brought me to tears was the ode to life that it stages toward the end. In the voice of roger bevins iii, "Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain.....Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead" (335). It's all just so...human. So banal and ordinary and full of life.
So, Lincoln in the Bardo. I remember another badass influence in my life, Elissa Marder, challenging us to think about the signified in the title, Madame Bovary. In Lincoln's case, it isn't THE Lincoln, but THE Lincoln's son, Willie. And the Bardo is a word for purgatory that refuses to let the reader slip into the association-laden term we all know.
Told by ghosts and historians intermittently, the book is bizarre and amazing and worth the read. But the part that brought me to tears was the ode to life that it stages toward the end. In the voice of roger bevins iii, "Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain.....Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead" (335). It's all just so...human. So banal and ordinary and full of life.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Loneliness - WHITE OLEANDER
Hannah Arendt made loneliness the condition of totalitarianism, as well as its consequence. Janet Fitch knows loneliness to be the very wind that blows through existence. In Los Angeles, it goes by the name of the Santa Anas--the gust that opens White Oleander and continues to blow until you are immune to it, or it swallows you whole, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
Somehow I missed this book in 1999 when it came out. So, belatedly...like most good things in my life. Everything is steal-able in this book. But two lines I dog-eared:
"Save your poet's sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good" (349).
And,
"I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'd have had to change his whole philosophy.
The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain....The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am" (401).
Finally, back to my own writing after such a long hiatus...
Somehow I missed this book in 1999 when it came out. So, belatedly...like most good things in my life. Everything is steal-able in this book. But two lines I dog-eared:
"Save your poet's sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good" (349).
And,
"I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'd have had to change his whole philosophy.
The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain....The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am" (401).
Finally, back to my own writing after such a long hiatus...
Monday, September 26, 2016
Origin Stories - AND I DARKEN
Besides the addictive opening hook to this story--a gender-bending tale of Vlad the Impaler's history, re-imagined as the female badass, Lada the Impaler--the book does so many things well. Kiersten White is just a solid writer who tells a layered story. And neither the strong female protagonist or her brother, who questions his own sexuality as he discovers his love for another man, feel gimmicky. In fact, all the characters seem completely authentic, and their development is slow--in a good way--and considered.
But what I most want to steal from this book, besides the feel of something epic and gathering, like a storm, is the haunting presence of origin stories. Mehmed, heir to the Ottoman sultan's throne, explains to Lada why he must conquer Constantinople.
He says, "My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader--my ancestor--Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world" (370).
I want the entire tone of my next work to be that lush mythological imagining.
But what I most want to steal from this book, besides the feel of something epic and gathering, like a storm, is the haunting presence of origin stories. Mehmed, heir to the Ottoman sultan's throne, explains to Lada why he must conquer Constantinople.
He says, "My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader--my ancestor--Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world" (370).
I want the entire tone of my next work to be that lush mythological imagining.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Confessions - TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Ok, this is not something to admit out loud, but I'm in a confessional mood, so here goes... I never read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in school. Either we weren't assigned it, or I cliff-noted my way through it. In any case, I'm so happy I didn't, because I just got the chance to experience it for the first time--as an adult and an aspiring writer--and I'm just blown away. Besides amazing dialogue and a protagonist to make you weep, laugh out loud, and actually give a shit about the story, there are a few things I want to steal from this book.
1. Few adverbs. Maybe it's because I recently finished Stephen King's On Writing, which should be required reading for every writer (and he loathes the adverb with a kind of religious fervor), it's hard not to be indoctrinated. So I was on the hunt for adverbs in this book, and happy to find that they didn't clutter up the sentences like they're wont to do.
2. Bookends. The beginning and ending of this novel are in perfect communication with one another. Go back and re-read the opening after you finish the book, and you can see the work of a skilled storyteller. Everything feels necessary without being heavy-handed.
I have a feeling I'll be plundering the gems of this book for a while.
1. Few adverbs. Maybe it's because I recently finished Stephen King's On Writing, which should be required reading for every writer (and he loathes the adverb with a kind of religious fervor), it's hard not to be indoctrinated. So I was on the hunt for adverbs in this book, and happy to find that they didn't clutter up the sentences like they're wont to do.
2. Bookends. The beginning and ending of this novel are in perfect communication with one another. Go back and re-read the opening after you finish the book, and you can see the work of a skilled storyteller. Everything feels necessary without being heavy-handed.
I have a feeling I'll be plundering the gems of this book for a while.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
The Righteous Feeling of Being Wronged - BIG LITTLE LIES
Ignoring the fact that every book these days seems to have the words "Lies/Liars" or "Girl" in the title, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty was a super fun read. I'd never read anything by her before, but walking around with the book, I was shocked by how many friends said, "Oh, I read every single thing she writes." So, clearly, I'm late to the game.
One of the things Moriarty does so well - besides humor (and sentiment without being sentimental) - is cut to the chase of certain, fundamental human behaviors that feel familiar, even if you've never been in the exact position as her characters.
For example:
"He turned off the bathroom light. They both went to opposite sides of the bed, snapped on their bedside lamps and pulled back the cover in a smooth, practiced, synchronized move that proved, depending on Madeline's mood, that they either had the perfect marriage or that they were stuck in a middle-class suburban rut and they needed to sell the house and go traveling around India."
...and kinda just perfectly captures the pendulum swing that the mind is capable of depending on the vagaries of mood. So, yeah, I'll steal that.
And this one:
"It was over now. There would be no further recriminations about the party. In fact, the very opposite. He'd be tender and solicitous. For the next few days up until he left for his trip, no woman would be more cherished than Celeste. Part of her would enjoy it: the tremulous, teary, righteous feeling of being wronged."
The Righteous Feeling of Being Wronged. Yes, who hasn't milked that feeling for all it's worth at some point or another?! So, I'll take that one, too.
One of the things Moriarty does so well - besides humor (and sentiment without being sentimental) - is cut to the chase of certain, fundamental human behaviors that feel familiar, even if you've never been in the exact position as her characters.
For example:
"He turned off the bathroom light. They both went to opposite sides of the bed, snapped on their bedside lamps and pulled back the cover in a smooth, practiced, synchronized move that proved, depending on Madeline's mood, that they either had the perfect marriage or that they were stuck in a middle-class suburban rut and they needed to sell the house and go traveling around India."
...and kinda just perfectly captures the pendulum swing that the mind is capable of depending on the vagaries of mood. So, yeah, I'll steal that.
And this one:
"It was over now. There would be no further recriminations about the party. In fact, the very opposite. He'd be tender and solicitous. For the next few days up until he left for his trip, no woman would be more cherished than Celeste. Part of her would enjoy it: the tremulous, teary, righteous feeling of being wronged."
The Righteous Feeling of Being Wronged. Yes, who hasn't milked that feeling for all it's worth at some point or another?! So, I'll take that one, too.
Monday, August 8, 2016
Restraint - WE WERE LIARS
Thinking about my next book project, and the first ideas that come to me are not about plot, but about atmosphere. A book that is pared down. A book that makes inferences rather than hits you upside the head with information. A book that is closer to abstract painting than photorealism.
Something about We Were Liars by E. Lockhart captures this. There is an economy of language. Short sentences. Concise paragraphs.
"Next day Mirren and I take the small motorboat to Edgartown without permission.
The boys don't want to come. They are going kayaking.
I drive and Mirren trails her hand in the wake.
Mirren isn't wearing much: a daisy-print bikini top and a denim miniskirt."
And it goes on like this. Sentences that say more than they say. And that's important in order for the book to pull off its final reveal.
I'm hoping to channel just a bit of that quiet, confident sense of language that trusts the reader just enough so that the reader rises to the occasion.
Something about We Were Liars by E. Lockhart captures this. There is an economy of language. Short sentences. Concise paragraphs.
"Next day Mirren and I take the small motorboat to Edgartown without permission.
The boys don't want to come. They are going kayaking.
I drive and Mirren trails her hand in the wake.
Mirren isn't wearing much: a daisy-print bikini top and a denim miniskirt."
And it goes on like this. Sentences that say more than they say. And that's important in order for the book to pull off its final reveal.
I'm hoping to channel just a bit of that quiet, confident sense of language that trusts the reader just enough so that the reader rises to the occasion.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Into the Shuffle - THE PERFORMANCE
As my first novel, No Winter Angel, comes to a close, there is one outstanding debt that I have not written about here--in part, because I read it so long ago, but it has stayed with me, probably informing lots of things I don't even realize.
It's a short story by Arthur Miller called "The Performance," and actually, I discovered it by way of a song that I heard in 2003 by Erin Mckeown, entitled "An Innocent Fiction." She'd read Miller's story and wrote this beautiful homage to it.
"The Performance" is about a Jewish tap dancer from the United States who travels to Europe in the 1930s and winds up dancing in a private show for Hitler, who subsequently falls in love with the performance without realizing that the performer is Jewish. Just the idea itself is so powerful. And I was--and continue to be--struck by the "breathtaking idea of a government" taking interest in a dance. And how intoxicating that must feel to the dancer, even if the government is repugnant and vile.
I had to explore the complex way this must play out in the artist's mind. When you read the dance scene in No Winter Angel, this is the image I want to convey. The terror and the power and the intoxication that make any simple moral judgment suspect.
And this image of Hitler, almost childlike in his awe and carnal in his enthusiasm, stays with me: "The troupe went into the stomp, shoes drumming the stage floor, and Hitler seemed transfixed now, swept up in the booming rhythms, both clenched fists pressing down on the tabletop, his neck stretched taut, his mouth slightly agape. 'I thought we were looking at an orgasm,' Harold said." Indeed!
It's a short story by Arthur Miller called "The Performance," and actually, I discovered it by way of a song that I heard in 2003 by Erin Mckeown, entitled "An Innocent Fiction." She'd read Miller's story and wrote this beautiful homage to it.
"The Performance" is about a Jewish tap dancer from the United States who travels to Europe in the 1930s and winds up dancing in a private show for Hitler, who subsequently falls in love with the performance without realizing that the performer is Jewish. Just the idea itself is so powerful. And I was--and continue to be--struck by the "breathtaking idea of a government" taking interest in a dance. And how intoxicating that must feel to the dancer, even if the government is repugnant and vile.
I had to explore the complex way this must play out in the artist's mind. When you read the dance scene in No Winter Angel, this is the image I want to convey. The terror and the power and the intoxication that make any simple moral judgment suspect.
And this image of Hitler, almost childlike in his awe and carnal in his enthusiasm, stays with me: "The troupe went into the stomp, shoes drumming the stage floor, and Hitler seemed transfixed now, swept up in the booming rhythms, both clenched fists pressing down on the tabletop, his neck stretched taut, his mouth slightly agape. 'I thought we were looking at an orgasm,' Harold said." Indeed!
Thursday, July 28, 2016
The Game Is Never Over - READY PLAYER ONE
I could not put this book down. Ernest Cline is a kick-ass writer who tells one compelling story. A month ago, I got the chance to play with an HTC Vive virtual reality visor, and when I told the guys who owned it that I was doing "research" for my book, they said, "WHAT!? You haven't read Ready Player One!" So, off I went to read it in hopes of not being an ignoramus. And now all I want is a haptic suit, gloves, and my own private bay to explore the OASIS.
The cover says Willy Wonka meets The Matrix, and I was like, "um...that sounds ridiculous." Actually, it's kinda spot on and the scavenger hunt for James Halliday's golden egg has you turning pages like you're reading for your life.
Thievery for the day: keep the stakes high, folks. The book doesn't pull its punches. Players die. Avatars die. Love is found and love is lost and you hold your breath until the bitter end.
The cover says Willy Wonka meets The Matrix, and I was like, "um...that sounds ridiculous." Actually, it's kinda spot on and the scavenger hunt for James Halliday's golden egg has you turning pages like you're reading for your life.
Thievery for the day: keep the stakes high, folks. The book doesn't pull its punches. Players die. Avatars die. Love is found and love is lost and you hold your breath until the bitter end.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Read My Thoughts - THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO
I picked up this book because an agent who read the first draft of my manuscript said that there was a definite camaraderie between my work and Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy, the first book of which is The Knife of Never Letting Go.
So first things first, nicest compliment ever. If there's any resonance between our writing styles, nothing makes me happier.
As far as my usual plundering goes, however, I think I have to pass on stealing anything from this book. In part because there's already so much crossover. Not least of which is the similarity between Todd's home, Prentisstown, and Avie's, Perontess. But also the dogged secrets that follow the protags around like an undetonated bomb waiting to go off.
So instead, I'll just leave this book with my highest praise. The language, the Noise, the very play with typography itself was so unique and compelling, it just felt like something new and different.
Here's to hoping I follow in Ness's footsteps!
So first things first, nicest compliment ever. If there's any resonance between our writing styles, nothing makes me happier.
As far as my usual plundering goes, however, I think I have to pass on stealing anything from this book. In part because there's already so much crossover. Not least of which is the similarity between Todd's home, Prentisstown, and Avie's, Perontess. But also the dogged secrets that follow the protags around like an undetonated bomb waiting to go off.
So instead, I'll just leave this book with my highest praise. The language, the Noise, the very play with typography itself was so unique and compelling, it just felt like something new and different.
Here's to hoping I follow in Ness's footsteps!
Monday, June 6, 2016
Salivating - PROMISED LAND
My dad has always been a fan of my writing, but, he's drawn to a very different kind of narrative. Punchy sentences. Linear plot. Nothing mystical. Straightforward. Since he knows I'm writing a book, he wanted me to read one of his favorite authors--someone who "really knows how to tell a great story." He gave me Robert B. Parker, Promised Land (1976).
First off, I now realize that my dad's favorite kind of speech is basically a mix of W.C. Fields and Parker's Private Dick, Spenser (does he even have a first name? I've already forgotten it, if it's included in the novel at all). A kinda wise-guy, speak out the side of your mouth tone. Some beating people up (who obviously deserve it), some bending of the rules (whose violation only reinforces how misguided those rules are in the first place), some acts of restraint and a few bite-sized words of wisdom. All in all, not a bad read.
But the funny thing is, while I was expecting it to be a tough guy book through and through, it turns out to be so completely laden with gourmet food imagery ("My platter of hot hors d'oeuvres included a clam casino, an oyster Rockefeller, a fried shrimp, a soused shrimp and a stuffed mushroom cap"), you almost can't go two pages without getting a reference. In between thug encounters ("You wise bastard. I'm going to straighten you out right now"), you are practically bombarded with food. Entire paragraphs of it.
"I made a Greek salad with feta cheese and ripe olives and Susan set the table while I took the lamb cutlets out of the pan and cooked down the wine. I shut off the heat, put in a lump of unsalted butter, swirled it through the wine essence and poured it over the cutlets. With the meal we had a warm Syrian bread and most of a half gallon of California Burgundy."
And there are two things of which I'm almost 100% positive: my father would not remember or overtly notice those food references (believing the book to be basically ass-kicking and good sleuthing) AND that those passages dramatically increase the pleasurability of the book. They make your mouth water. They make you feel like you've participated in a good meal.
In the end, with writing it's not just what you do front and center, but what you smuggle in. Sometimes a well-described meal is exactly what is needed.
First off, I now realize that my dad's favorite kind of speech is basically a mix of W.C. Fields and Parker's Private Dick, Spenser (does he even have a first name? I've already forgotten it, if it's included in the novel at all). A kinda wise-guy, speak out the side of your mouth tone. Some beating people up (who obviously deserve it), some bending of the rules (whose violation only reinforces how misguided those rules are in the first place), some acts of restraint and a few bite-sized words of wisdom. All in all, not a bad read.
But the funny thing is, while I was expecting it to be a tough guy book through and through, it turns out to be so completely laden with gourmet food imagery ("My platter of hot hors d'oeuvres included a clam casino, an oyster Rockefeller, a fried shrimp, a soused shrimp and a stuffed mushroom cap"), you almost can't go two pages without getting a reference. In between thug encounters ("You wise bastard. I'm going to straighten you out right now"), you are practically bombarded with food. Entire paragraphs of it.
"I made a Greek salad with feta cheese and ripe olives and Susan set the table while I took the lamb cutlets out of the pan and cooked down the wine. I shut off the heat, put in a lump of unsalted butter, swirled it through the wine essence and poured it over the cutlets. With the meal we had a warm Syrian bread and most of a half gallon of California Burgundy."
And there are two things of which I'm almost 100% positive: my father would not remember or overtly notice those food references (believing the book to be basically ass-kicking and good sleuthing) AND that those passages dramatically increase the pleasurability of the book. They make your mouth water. They make you feel like you've participated in a good meal.
In the end, with writing it's not just what you do front and center, but what you smuggle in. Sometimes a well-described meal is exactly what is needed.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Agony and Anguish - RABBIT, RUN
For a while now, I've been struggling with a title for my book - and the two books that will follow to make up the trilogy. First mistake, give the title so much power that you can't help but buckle under its impossible edict.
Should you decide to do a search on "how to title a novel," hoping to find some bit of inspiration, you'll find the same vague suggestions over and over. Use the hero's name or the villain's name or aspects of their character or place or a metaphor. The list goes on. But for me, it failed to inspire.
So, Rabbit, Run. John Updike does so much here. So much to steal--from the richness of a protagonist that you simultaneously care about and despise, to the impending sense of claustrophobia that existence seems to usher in underhandedly ("As he closes the door he feels he has spent his whole life opening and closing this door"), to the impossibility of simple resolution.
But what I need most right now is title guidance, and here, at least, I have my first step forward.
Rabbit, Run. An imperative. Maybe instead of trying to pull a title intact from the narrative, I start with mood. Grammatical mood. A command. Run, hold, steal, breathe. That at least feels like a start.
Should you decide to do a search on "how to title a novel," hoping to find some bit of inspiration, you'll find the same vague suggestions over and over. Use the hero's name or the villain's name or aspects of their character or place or a metaphor. The list goes on. But for me, it failed to inspire.
So, Rabbit, Run. John Updike does so much here. So much to steal--from the richness of a protagonist that you simultaneously care about and despise, to the impending sense of claustrophobia that existence seems to usher in underhandedly ("As he closes the door he feels he has spent his whole life opening and closing this door"), to the impossibility of simple resolution.
But what I need most right now is title guidance, and here, at least, I have my first step forward.
Rabbit, Run. An imperative. Maybe instead of trying to pull a title intact from the narrative, I start with mood. Grammatical mood. A command. Run, hold, steal, breathe. That at least feels like a start.
Saturday, May 14, 2016
Tidal Imaginings - MOON PALACE
Pulled into this book so forcefully...a book where so little actually happens. Boxes of books double as furniture, time passes by virtue of books consumed (not so much read as felt with the tip of a finger), weight is lost, fathers are lost, money is lost, and all of it is ultimately found in one way or another.
There is so much to steal from Paul Auster--but first and foremost, the general ambiance of M.S. Fogg's narrative voice (which sounds like a boat name to me).
There is so much to steal from Paul Auster--but first and foremost, the general ambiance of M.S. Fogg's narrative voice (which sounds like a boat name to me).
A few lines that I will either steal verbatim (epigraph?) or at least, steal in spirit:
"My life had become a gathering zero, and it was a thing I could actually see: a palpable, burgeoning emptiness...The room was a machine that measured my condition: how much of me remained, how much of me was no longer there. I was both perpetrator and witness, both actor and audience in a theater of one. I could follow the progress of my own dismemberment. Piece by piece, I could watch myself disappear" (24).
"Byrne told me that you can't fix your exact position on earth without referring to some point in the sky. Something to do with triangulation, the technique of measurement, I forget the details. The crux was compelling to me, though, it's never left me since. A man can't know where he is on the earth except in relation to the moon or a star. ... We find ourselves only by looking to what we're not. You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky" (151-2).
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Elevated - ELEANOR AND PARK
Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park: a kind of brutal honesty--a not shirking from imperfection, from characters' own hangups over their imperfections. Which, by some strange alchemy, transforms them into something desirable, extraordinary, dimensional.
Too many great things to say about this book--the narrative voice(s), the awkward stumble-and-fall into love, the mounting anxiety that shit is going to hit the fan, the three-word postcard that narrows hope to a fine point.
What I'm stealing: a powerful self-consciousness about who one is that feels true. It ends up being the thing that makes us root for Eleanor and Park and fall in love with their love.
Too many great things to say about this book--the narrative voice(s), the awkward stumble-and-fall into love, the mounting anxiety that shit is going to hit the fan, the three-word postcard that narrows hope to a fine point.
What I'm stealing: a powerful self-consciousness about who one is that feels true. It ends up being the thing that makes us root for Eleanor and Park and fall in love with their love.
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