January 8, 2012
A Warning
This is a purely fanciful tale, a little nightmare produced by the unaccustomed high living of a brief visit to Hollywood. Readers whose pleasure in fiction derives from identifying the characters and scenes with real people and real places will be disappointed. If in the vast variety of life in America there is anyone at all like any of the characters I have invented, I can only remind that person that we never me, and assure him or her that, had we done so, I would not have attempted to portray a living individual in a book where all the incidents are entirely imaginary.
As I have said, this is a nightmare and in parts, perhaps, somewhat gruesome. The squeamish should return their copies to the library or the bookstore unread.
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#Evelyn Waugh #The Loved One #A Warning #fiction
May 17, 2012
STOKED
as much as we love finding beautiful pictures of Tasmania and info on mixers via the tumblr search tag for “Hobart,” this is pretty cool, too:
Just found out that Hobart, one of my favorite lit mags ever, accepted a short story of mine.
Dancing, squealing and singing ensued. YEAH!
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#hobart #SQUEEEEEEEEEEE #art #fiction #literary journal #literary magazine #short story #writing #LIT
May 29, 2012
When things get too comfortable and things get too safe, I get the feeling like I’m smothering. It’s like somebody’s burying me in feathers.
Writer Harry Crews died on Wednesday at the age of 76. He had a hard life and didn’t made it any easier for the characters in his novels. (via nprfreshair)(via nprfreshair)
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#harry-crews #writing #lit #fiction
June 28, 2012
“One time, while I was writing, I happened to sniff my armpits absentmindedly. Several people saw me do it, and thought it was funny—and ever after that I was given the name ‘Snarf.’ In the annual for my graduating class, the class of 1940, I’m listed as ‘Kurt Snarfield Vonnegut, Jr.’ Technically, I wasn’t really a snarf. A snarf was a person who went around sniffing girls’ bicycle saddles. I didn’t do that. ‘Twerp’ also had a very specific meaning, which few people know now. Through careless usage, ‘twerp’ is a pretty formless insult now.
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#kurt vonnegut #interview #fiction #writers at work #writers on writing #snarf #twerp
July 9, 2012
someone smarter than me should try to decode the semifinalist books they eliminated
A ravishingly beautiful, original novel went down when one of us pointed out that, lovely as the book was, Toni Morrison had already told a version of that particular story, to similarly powerful effect, in a single chapter of “Beloved.”
I lobbied to eliminate another because its language was sometimes strong and sometimes indifferent. At one point I said to Maureen and Susan, “Please don’t make me read you a dozen limp, lifeless sentences taken from the book. I don’t want to be that guy.” But I insisted that although there were plenty of good lines, there were simply too many slack, utilitarian ones. And, in that case, the language crank got his way.
A third fell under the wheel (and this one was particularly heartbreaking to all of us) when we reluctantly acknowledged that although it was wonderfully written and fabulously inventive, its central love story, while moving, was insufficiently complicated and a bit sentimental; that it failed to depict the body of darker emotions that are integral to love: moments of rage, disappointment, pettiness, and greed, to name a few.
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#fiction #lit #michael cunningham #pulitzer #page-turner #the new yorker
September 4, 2012
I remember when I found out Pat was gonna do some of the Dollar Store Tour and I was like, “Holy shit, the dude that wrote ‘Trouble and the Shadowy Deathblow?!?’”
“The Deathblow: Sometimes I think about my life in two phases: Before I knew about the shadowy deathblow, and after I knew about the shadowy deathblow. I do not want to give away too much of this ingenious creation, but there is a spectacularly surprising sentence halfway through this story that involves the deathblow and a certain appendage. I still think about that sentence, whenever I believe I have written something smart and humorous. Is it as funny as that? I ask myself. Usually the answer is no.”
Hannah Tinti, editor-in-chief of One Story, writes in the editor’s note of Recommended Reading that there are 5 reasons to read Patrick Somerville’s story “Trouble and the Shadowy Deathblow.” Read the other reasons (and the story) tomorrow morning at Recommended Reading.
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#patrick somerville #trouble and the shadowy deathblow #lit #prose #fiction #short story #one story #hannah tinti
September 8, 2012
∞ :: ‘fast machine’ by elizabeth ellen
I think I’m too old or just not cool enough or something to understand… well, any of this, but I think it’s positive and they’re essentially telling you that you need to buy yourself a copy right now, or if you already have it, you should buy it for at least two of your friends as a gift?
‘fast machine’ by elizabeth ellen // short flight long drive books, 2012
∞
books like this one and we realize the spectrum is wide & huge and our stupid ‘framework’ for ‘judging’ books or art or whatev seem ‘contrived’ when we compare something like a ‘90’ or ‘100’ to like Borges or something, what is going on, this is an impossible task, when authors create #QS at such a rapid rate, and then you get these short story collections, and then you get dense Cloud-Atlas-novels, taking on ‘big things’ and we’re just writing about the iNternet,
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#elizabeth ellen #fiction #reviews #alt lit #lit #hobart
November 26, 2012
This Wednesday in Iowa City!!
DYLAN NICE - OTHER KINDS
November 28, 2012 - 7:00pm
Live at Prairie Lights
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#dylan nice #books #fiction #Live from Prairie Lights #readings
December 3, 2012
Dylan Nice on Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains: the surreal and remote beauty of the place, the region’s influence on his work, and what it’s like when Google Maps kills your hometown.
Full interview: http://www.litshow.com/archive/season-06/dylan-nice-interview
haven’t even had a chance to listen to this yet, but i’m excited to! (hope he doesn’t shit talk us. i’ll have to un-tumbl…)
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#dylan nice #fiction #iowa writers' workshop #other kinds #podcast #soundcloud #lit
