If Loving You is Write

Knowing When to Say When

2009-08-16T12:04:00.002-06:00

From today's Washington Post
_____________________________________________________
Knowing When to Say When: In which a writer of crime novels contemplates killing her ace PI.
A Conversation with Laura Lippman

Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris.

But the beginning writer requires ignorance, too, especially when it comes to the long odds of a long life in publishing......

To read the rest of this story, click here

It really does get better

2009-08-11T15:19:00.001-06:00

New Thomas Pynchon -- Trailer

2009-08-11T15:09:00.001-06:00

2009-08-09T22:21:00.002-06:00

I forgot where this came from. Possibly the Total Dickhead blog.

PKD was also an influence on some of my earlier writing -- specifically the book VALIS, but moreso for the ideas in the book, the leaving you wondering where truth left of and fiction began.

2009-08-09T21:48:00.001-06:00

Some of the great ones...

2009-08-09T21:37:00.003-06:00

Hughes and Plath. Back when writers were somehow above us all.

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
~ Sylvia Plath

"Most writers of verse have several different personalities. The ideal is to find a style or a method that includes them all."

"What happens in the heart simply happens."
~ Ted Hughes

2009-08-09T21:35:00.000-06:00

2009-08-09T21:23:00.001-06:00

2009-08-09T20:50:00.001-06:00

From This Isn't Happiness blog

The Chelsea Hotel

2009-08-07T21:47:00.002-06:00

At various times, home to home to many great writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Herbert Huncke, Dylan Thomas, Dale Beran, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Arnold Weinstein, Leonard Cohen, John Patrick Kennedy, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, K. Charles Graham, Jack Kerouac (who wrote On the Road there), Robert Hunter, Jack Gantos, Brendan Behan, Richard Collins, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Oppenheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bill Landis, Michelle Clifford, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Kennedy, Matthew Richardson, Stephen Mooney, Jan Cremer, and René Ricard. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room at the Chelsea on September 21, 1968.

The Chelsea was also immortalized in Leonard Cohen's song "Chelsea Hotel No. 2":
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.

Ah but you got away, didn't you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don't need you,
I need you, I don't need you
and all of that jiving around.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And then you got away, didn't you babe...

I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can't keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that's all, I don't even think of you that often.

Photo found at This Isn't Happiness

Ooohhh! SNAP!

2009-08-07T09:19:00.003-06:00

Of course, I'm sure the literary crit folk think the same about the writing crowd. (Their lit heroes excluded, of course!)

From the ever-brilliant xkcd webcomic.

One of the Greats

2009-08-05T13:35:00.005-06:00

I still love Kerouac. "On the Road" and "The Dharma Bums" are really wonderful reads.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

"I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down."
Letter to Ed White (5 July 1950) as quoted in Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (1996) by Steve Turner, p. 117

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass." From The Dharma Bums

Mapping the F#@% Out of a Sentence

2009-08-05T12:29:00.000-06:00

7/29/2009 5:26:18 PM

by Bennett Gordon
Tags: Science and Technology, linguistics, curse words, Language Log

At a recent concert, Van Morrison uttered the vulgar phrase, “Fucking shut the fuck up.” The sentence presents a challenge to the linguistic minds at Language Log. The different uses of the word “fuck” don’t affect the meaning of the sentence, since the sentiment could be conveyed simply as “shut up.” According to the blog, “The main syntactic problem is to determine whether the fuck is being used as an pleonastic (semantically empty) direct object of shut or as a pre-head modifier of the preposition phrase (PP) headed by up.” The author concludes the latter.

My Source: Utne Reader

Original Source: Language Log

Who is John Galt?

2009-08-01T16:09:00.000-06:00

No. Really. Who is he? I never finished the book.

Some of the Greats

2009-08-01T14:09:00.001-06:00

Jerzy Kosinski, Nikki Giovanni and Kurt Vonnegut

A building for writers and readers

2009-08-01T13:54:00.001-06:00

Seems like it would be a good place to write...

Photo courtesy of Village of Joy

One of the Greats

2009-08-01T13:48:00.001-06:00

"Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic."
~W. H. Auden

Photo from "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats"

One of the Greats

2009-08-01T13:41:00.001-06:00

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
~Flannery O'Connor

TAship

2009-07-29T09:33:00.000-06:00

As I may or may not have mentioned on the blogspot version of this blog, I'll be starting in the MFA program at UNM this fall. I was awarded a Teaching Assistantship, which means I'll teach a couple of sections of English classes each semester in exchange for tuition remission, health care, and a paycheck. Basically it is like getting paid to go to school. Not too shabby.

For the first semester, I'll be teaching one section (one class) of English 101. I'll also be taking "Teaching Composition," which is a pedagogy class that one takes concurrently -- a sort of "learn as you go" process. The teaching composition class counts as teaching a second class. The following semester, theoretically, one would teach two sections of English 101 and/or 102. I have a possible Graduate Assistantship lined up which would get me out of teaching one of those sections.

Part of the reason I started the blog was a request from a friend who wanted to know more about the process and what it was like. You can read about some of the early bits on the wordpress version of the blog.

My TA contract had gotten stalled for a while -- panic striking!! -- because, as an undergraduate, I had been employed for a semester by UNM. The problem was that they never officially terminated my employment. Even though I hadn't drawn a check from them in 6 months, they felt that that job plus the TA position would put me over .75 Full-Time Employment, which is a no-no. I got it straightened out though and now my TA award is showing on my financial aid.

Kind of stressful to say the least.

sage advice

2009-07-06T22:36:00.000-06:00

"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."

~Dorothy Parker

Advice to writers from Susannah Breslin

2009-07-05T14:16:00.000-06:00

“Fuck the pyramid, fuck j-school, fuck writing for a living. Fuck your computer, fuck your rent, fuck whatever your parents said. Go and live. Go be in the world. Go push yourself until you cry and then go back for more and then write about it. Because that’s what real writers do. They don’t just write about it. They live it.”

- “Letter to a Young Writer”

The Writing Life

2009-07-05T14:14:00.000-06:00

I just met a wonderful new man. He’s fictional but you can’t have everything.
— The Purple Rose of Cairo

From Luminol

The Writing Life

2009-07-05T14:10:00.000-06:00

Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again.

~V. Woolf

Most certainly

2009-07-05T13:32:00.000-06:00

This photo came from elsewhere. I don't know who she is, but the picture reminded me of a certain smell of a certain brand of cigarette (perhaps Players?) on a certain day of a certain humidity and a certain lighting and there was a certain hopefulness in the air, a certain feeling that life might just turn out alright.

Review: A Poetry of Remembrance

2009-06-27T09:30:00.000-06:00

A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works by Levi Romero
Foreword by V. B. Price
Preface by Rudolfo Anaya
Afterword by Genaro M. Padilla

¡iii, este vato! “A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works,” part of the Paso por Aqui Series on the Nuevomexicano Literary Heritage is the latest (published last year) collection by Embudo Valley native Levi Romero. This 45+ poem volume is a must read for locals. It took me a while to get around to reading it—I couldn’t afford the hardcover edition (which sold out quite fast) and even after the trade paper edition we released, times were tough. But on a trip to the UNM bookstore one day, I came across it, and laid out the twenty dolares. Well worth it.

I have to admit to having a wee bit of prejudice in favor of the poet, as he was the instructor for my 300 level poetry class at UNM a few years ago. Levi is a laid back vato whose laidbackedness sometimes belies the intelligence, knowledge, and passion for poetry that dwells in his soul.

As I said, it is must reading for locals, and despite the beauty of the words, much of it might be lost on someone not familiar with the Southwest. Or maybe, more fairly, it might not sink as deep. Even a pinche gringo like me, who has lived in Burque since 1973—rarely setting foot in Dixon or Española or, even, the South Valley, got it, got the meaning, felt a part of the culture, and understood the mystique that is familia y vida en Nuevo Mexico.

In “Unemployment Lines,” Romero relates a trip—in his hands, an extended stay—to the unemployment office. He gives us the snippets of overheard conversations that, we might not really want to hear, but are pulled into anyway.

“and Leonard, is he still in prison?
yeah, he’s still doing time
well, that’s good, I guess, means he’s still alive”

“Lowcura: An Introspective Virtual Cruise Through and American Subculture Tradtion” is a collection of recollections and remembrances told in prose and poetry, in English and Español. Here we get stories of bottles of vodka shop-lifted from an Allsup's, a trip to an Albuquerque swap-meet, lowriding of an evening in Chimayo, or trying not to sound too excited when that firme ruca you gave your number to gives you a call and wants you to bring some Easynights wine and a pack of frajos.

A Poetry of Remembrance is like the smell of the bosque on an early autumn day and it’s like going home to visit your mom for some pintos and tortillas and it’s like a road trip with a friend, a case of beer in the trunk and bag of something fine in the glove compartment.

The book is available from UNM Press and other sources.

James D. Houston: in memorium

2009-06-27T08:55:00.001-06:00

(photo: Greg Pio/Alfred Knopf)

James D. Houston is dead and it came as more of a shock than to hear of the deaths of Jackson, Fawcett, and McMahon combined…. And you’re looking at me like you don’t know who James D. Houston is.

I was flipping through the most recent issue of Poets & Writers and their “Memorium” column caught my eye. It seemed longer than normal, but that may have just been an illusion. Of the 26 or so names, there were three I’d heard of; J.G. Ballard, Phillip Jose Farmer, and Houston.

There are names I think of when I list my writing influences. Names like Hemingway, Cheever, Updike, Carver, Proulx. It wasn’t until I saw Houston listed among the dead that I recalled what an influence he actually was.

Back in the mid-1970s when I was in the Army, I came across a little paperback novel titled “A Native Son of the Golden West.” It was the story of Hooper Dunlap, a surfer, who traveled to Hawaii. It was really a great novel about the westward movement of our country, telling how Hooper’s forbears had travelled a little further with each succeeding generation until Hooper himself ended up going as far west in America as one could.

The story was told in a wonderful manner, with generational flashbacks and cinematic vignettes interspersing the main story. But, honestly, for me, it was the characters who made the story. Hooper Dunlap and his friend reminded me so much of my friend, Vance, that, as I wrote in a letter “I could just shit.” Hooper and friend have an ongoing contest with one another on who can have the rattiest beater truck, the one that could go the farthest with no air-cleaner, or on 5 cylinders, or 3 tires. It was never a blatant competition, nor one spoken about. It was a silent attempt at eliciting awe through the hippest/shabbiest, and a silent expression of that awe. And that was kind of Vance and I—always trying to outdo one another but without making a big show out of it. Even years after we (temporarily) parted company, there was something of that competition in all that I did.

It was that book though, as a whole, that really influenced my future writing. The beautiful characters, the author’s treatment of setting, his intricate weaving of the historical into the tale, it was all amazing and it MADE me want to write, to be a writer.

I lost my copy, I think somewhere in Germany. I may have lent it to someone who left town with it. I’ve searched for another copy for years, though until about a year ago, I could find nothing on it—or the author. Eventually, through the magic of Google, a copy surfaced. I didn’t get it then and I regret it. (It's now $25 to $100 online.) I have to admit a fear of going back and reading it again—what if it’s not as good? Very little of what I considered good literature, cinema, or music has passed the test of time.
Still, can one let go of something that had such an influence? Even if it just sets on my desk as a type of touchstone, I think it will continue to inspire my writing. I just need to find the shabbiest copy there is.

Houston died in April from complications resulting from Lymphoma. He was 75.
___________________________________________
A blurb on the book from his website:

A NATIVE SON OF THE GOLDEN WEST
The Dial Press, NewYork, N.Y., 197l. Ballantine Books, New York, N.Y., 1972
The native son is Hooper Dunlap. Born on the coast of California, he has inherited a restlessness that kept the generations of his forebearers leapfrogging west, first across the Atlantic, then across North America. For him the next step is out into the Pacific and to Hawai'i of the l950s before it was a state. There he falls for an island woman, but in this young man's adventure story his deeper love is for the sea itself. Both comic and tragic, it interweaves fearless surfers, oldtime song lyrics,brief prose poems, and ancestral flashbacks. (Out of print)

James D. Houston's Website
NY Times Obit
LA Time Obit

UPDATE: I picked up a copy. It's a withdrawn library copy and I got it for $20. I've read just a few bits and pieces, and it's every bit a good as I remember it being.

David Foster Wallace reads from Brief Interviews

2009-06-26T21:39:00.001-06:00

A room of one's own.

2009-06-26T21:26:00.000-06:00

What sort of room do you have to write in? Is it a formal, set-aside for that use space? Do you plunk down your laptop (or notebook and pens for you old-schoolers) on a kitchen table or a booth at a restaurant. What type of area/space/environ helps you to get creative and -- more importantly -- productive?

The London Guardian online has an ongoing series on the rooms of writers. Most are contemporary authors, though others are not quite so. Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Darwin are among the older representatives. The living authors provide their own descriptions of the rooms and usually add a bit about their work habits. Very interesting as well as inspiring.

The following example shows the room of the late J.G. Ballard along with the accompanying article.

Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

My room is dominated by the huge painting, which is a copy of The Violation by the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux. The original was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940, and I commissioned an artist I know, Brigid Marlin, to make a copy from a photograph. I never stop looking at this painting and its mysterious and beautiful women. Sometimes I think I have gone to live inside it and each morning I emerge refreshed. It's a male dream.

There are photos of my four grandchildren (one, along with a picture of my girlfriend Claire, is just out of shot). The postcard is Dali's Persistence of Memory, the greatest painting of the 20th century, and next to it is a painting by my daughter, which is the greatest painting of the 21st century. On the desk is my old manual typewriter, which I recently found in my stair cupboard. I was inspired by a letter from Will Self, who wrote to me on his manual typewriter. So far I have just stared at the old machine, without daring to touch it, but who knows? The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.

I have worked at this desk for the past 47 years. All my novels have been written on it, and old papers of every kind have accumulated like a great reef. The chair is an old dining-room chair that my mother brought back from China and probably one I sat on as a child, so it has known me for a very long time. A Paolozzi screen-print is resting against the door, which now serves as a cat barrier during the summer months. My neighbour's cats are enormously affectionate, and in the summer leap up on to my desk and then churn up all my papers into a huge whirlwind. They are my fiercest critics.

I work for three or four hours a day, in the late morning and early afternoon. Then I go out for a walk and come back in time for a large gin and tonic.

I recently built a new "workshop" space, finishing off a portion of our garage. I was happy to just have a little plain space, but my wife insisted on something nice -- and I'm glad she did. The room is not huge -- maybe 9x7 feet of working space, plus a hallway -- making it hard to get back for a decent photo. The size is perfect for me. The white shelf area with the plants on it is actually a built-in bookshelf.

What sort of space do you have?

John Updike Speaks

2009-06-26T21:01:00.001-06:00

I've long been a fan of the late John Updike, and I've noted his first two Rabbit books as major influences--not necessarily on my writing style, but on my approach to my subject matter. Here are two videos featuring Updike. The first is from an interview with Charlie Rose, and the second, a farewell to the great writer by CBS's Charles Osgood.

Great writing's secret formula

2009-06-24T22:22:00.000-06:00

If you're eager to write mystery, here's a winning plan!

Great Writing: The Best Imaginary Books of the Summer

2009-06-19T19:49:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure what Utne would think about me posting this here, but frankly I don't give a rat's ass. It's pure laziness on my part, and if I'm driving traffic their way, what's the diff.

I get regular emails of this sort from Utne on a variety of subject matter. I think that the books and literature ones apply to this site, so I'd like to share them.

Did your e-mail system mangle this e-newsletter? Click here to see it online. Please add info@utnedaily.com to your address book to ensure delivery.

Forward to a Friend
Utne Daily | In the Magazine | Salons | Shop

June 19, 2009

The Best Imaginary Books of the Summer

Just in time for summer, The Believer recommends eleven essential nonexistent books for your reading lists. Where will you find the time?
Read More >>

Introducing: Uncle Andy's Giggle Shack
Andrew Leland, managing editor of The Believer, holds forth on what he calls "impressionistic internet searches" over at our Alt Wire blog.
Read More >>

Literary Categories are So Last Century
A literary journal searches for new possibilities in form and content. The results are just plain beautiful.
Read More >>

The Glut of Abstruse Perorations at the New York Times
What is this, a GRE exam? The New York Times dials down the vocab assault.
Read More >>

Chronogram's Summer Reading Roundup for Kids
A delightful smorgasbord of intriguing suggestions for children. Enjoy.
Read More >>

Birders Duke it Out!
It's every man for himself! Like the object of his fascination, the male birder is both competitive and highly territorial.
Read More >>

In Praise of the Balcony
A little ode to the "lost art of balcony culture," with some lovely observations.
Read More >>

Creative Non-Fiction

2009-06-19T19:25:00.000-06:00

Is that your bag? I'm really a fiction guy, but I dig the hell out of good CNF. Nieman Narrative Digest is a great resource for those who are. It's run by the Ivy League folk at the Nieman School of Journalism at Harvard, or some such nonsense.

It has postings of "notable narratives," as well as craft essays, author interviews, and book recommendations. There is an email subscriptio (I think it's more of just a notification)and an RSS feed (which, I swear to god is the way to go) if desired.

Really excellent top-quality stuff -- like that gets printed in The Times.

updates and downbeats

2009-06-19T19:15:00.000-06:00

We're in transition. Seems like most folks migrate from blogger to Wordpress, but I'm heading the other way. Wordpress is a fascist sack of shit and I've had enough.

I'm having to do it manually though, because nothing else seems to work -- so it may be a while. If you want to see the older shit, go on over to this site to see what's what.

We're sort of a waddayacallit literary blog, but we're about the MFA process and about being a resource for writers and shit. Sorry for the tone of this post, but I've just been reading a Lebowski Fansite and I'm in that mode, man.

our greatest fear

2009-06-17T19:43:00.000-06:00