Today was my early day at school, so I taught from 7am to 11 and was finally able to break away from the office, stop off for an H1N1 shot on the way home, and I arrived around 12:30 with half a carload of groceries. Chuck came out to help me with the bags and happened to say, "You have a Secret Santa box by the door!" Sooooo excited! I ripped into that puppy as quickly as I could, and the...
Ganked from Zer Netmouse (Anne KG Murphy), who ganked it from somewhere else (etc.) Bears repeating. "But that's the problem with sexism. It doesn't happen because people -- male or female -- think women suck. It happens for the same reason a sommelier always pours a little more in a man's wine glass (check it!), or that that big, hearty man in the suit seems like he'd be a better manager. It's...
What’s Best and What’s Sexist -- Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes After reading this (and some of the linked pieces) I'm persuaded that the answer is YES. There is a bias for novels that feature a male protagonist fighting against a culture/world where the rules are defined by women. A week or so back, Andrew Seal spent some time testing an argument by literary scholar Nina...
Rape a love story by Joyce Carol Oates It seems somehow wrong to put the words 'rape' and 'love' together in a book title. It is almost as if doing so undermines the horror with which which rape should be viewed. It is a testament to Joyce Carol Oates that she can do this, and when you read the book you know why. This is a short novel. I started it before dinner and sat reading until the middle of...
We reached the end of our Gilmore Girls marathon yesterday and it felt kind of sad. 153 episodes, many many hours of watching, often late into the evening, with far too much tea being drunk (on my part) and far too much time spent on Happy Aquarium (by the girls). It is one of those stories where you can really allow yourself to get attached to the characters and it has been a source of much heated...
The LA Times Blog asks whether this is art: In the U.K. next month, a dance artist who has epilepsy will attempt to induce a seizure on stage. Rita Marcalo has stopped taking her medication ahead of the event at the Bradford Playhouse, according to the BBC News . "If she has a seizure, an alarm will sound and the audience will be invited to film on their mobile phones," said the report. And...
A detour in recent reading veered away from the regimented non-fiction book diet. American Wife, a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld modeled on the life Laura Bush is reviewed here in the NYTimes by Joyce Carol Oates who does a better...
The Rumpus reprints Steve Almond's appreciation of Kurt Vonnegut . It's a long, long essay, much taken up by Almond's account of Vonnegut's uncomfortable appearance at an event called the Connecticut Forum alongside writers Joyce Carol Oates and Jennifer Weiner and then Almond's own autobiography, the measure of Vonnegut's influence on a young person learning to think, to write. It's funny, sad, risky...
In every narrative that is even remotely conventional, there comes a point of no return. A decision is made; destiny is sealed; there's no going back to undo the circumstances that drive the story to its (let's face it, often terrible) ending. This point is also one of great risk for the story's credibility. Because, as a writer, you may have a perfect ending in mind--a great image, or an event that...
Image Credit: Flickr User Jim Linwood Pot and incense. Although we could easily identify the aroma at the Dylan concert on Monday night, the show itself left us scratching our heads. Yes, we know the artist is aging. Yes, we know that his voice has drawn criticism throughout his career. But he is an icon. And he is constantly on tour. Wouldn't, then, his team know about the horrible acoustics at the...
All this week, Miami is celebrating the world of literature with its annual Book Fair. Running from November 8 - 15 and open to the public for a small entrance fee, the fair is already going strong in its 26th year despite a significantly reduced budget , and is celebrating authors big and small. Says the Miami New Times : The afterparties are nil and the fashions are more along the lines of smoking...
– David Kirby Once I got a postcard from Joyce Carol Oates, whose novel Unholy Loves I had reviewed favorably, and on it (the card) she wrote, "I think you must be a fellow Canadian," and I figured, well! That's me, all right: the Mounties, Wayne Gretzky, Margaret Atwood. . . . It wasn't until years later when I found the card again while cleaning up some old files that I saw she had...
I am always interested in what authors have to say about HOW they write and the craft of writing a novel. I found some interesting videos on You Tube which I hope you’ll enjoy! John Irving: On Writing Joyce Carol Oates: On Writing Characters Stephen King: How You Know When You are a Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger [...]
From "The Madness of Art," by Joyce Carol Oates: Those of us (how many of us!) who have given our souls to the activity of writing are obviously engaged in a lifelong quest. Perhaps, though we experience ourselves as individuals,...
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