Hey gang,
I've had to put the blog on hold of late, but I wanted to dip back in to deliver some exciting news. My y.a. novel, GIRL PARTS, will be published by Candlewick in Fall 2010! I am, of course, deliriously happy about this. So happy that I had to invent a word (or at least a new usage) just to describe it...
Friday, July 17, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
From Facebook to Facebook
1) What author do you own the most books by? Nabokov.
2) What book do you own the most copies of? I am currently in possession of three copies of Raw Shark Texts, none of which belong to me.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? I don't know what you're talking about.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Maria Wyeth, from Play It As It Lays. This should come as a surprise to no one.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life? Lolita. Five times.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin. Apparently, he wrote it while on meth.
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year? Castle in the Forrest. Shut UP Norman Mailer.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year? The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Though On Her Majesty's Secret Service brought me the most pleasure.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? Girl Parts.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature? Jesus, I don't know. Who cares? Probably someone who wrote an unreadable tome featuring an unlovable, selfish white man who inexplicably has sex with with broken, hot geniuses.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It deserves another shot. I want David Fincher to direct it, though. And no Americans.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Something like House of Leaves.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character: I once had a wonderful dream in which I had a beer with Douglas Adams (speak of the Devil), in which he said nothing but laughed at all my jokes and gave me a fatherly pat on the back when I asked if I should keep writing.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? I did coverage for a real p.o.s. when interviewing at Little, Brown, but it's since been published, so I'll keep the title to myself.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read? Ada or Ardor. Specifically, the first ten pages.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? As You Like It, though that's not very obscure. And I saw a really bizarre version of the Tempest once. Ariel was smokin' hot, though.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Russians.
18) Roth or Updike? Updike is my cookie baking grandmother. Roth is my uncle with the roaming hands.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Don't mention them in the same sentence.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Shakespeare.
21) Hemingway or Fitzgerald? Tough one. I guess in the end Hemingway, because I'd rather write like him than Fitzgerald.
21) Austen or Eliot? I assume you mean George. In which case, Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Modern "good" books. What passes for literary these days gives me hives.
23) What is your favorite Hemingway novel? Short stories only, please. The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
24) what is your favorite novel? More importantly, why is this question not capitalized?
24) Play? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Show me to the, um, euphemism.
25) Poem? I think it's called "Winter Syntax."
26) Essay? "10 Moments in the Life of an Artist" by David Sedaris.
27) Short story? The Brigadier and the Golf Widow by John Cheever.
28) Work of nonfiction? What's that?
29) Who is your favorite writer? Vladimir Nabokov.
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Philip Roth.
31) What is your desert island book? The one with "Don't Panic" on the cover.
2) What book do you own the most copies of? I am currently in possession of three copies of Raw Shark Texts, none of which belong to me.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? I don't know what you're talking about.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Maria Wyeth, from Play It As It Lays. This should come as a surprise to no one.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life? Lolita. Five times.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin. Apparently, he wrote it while on meth.
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year? Castle in the Forrest. Shut UP Norman Mailer.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year? The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Though On Her Majesty's Secret Service brought me the most pleasure.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? Girl Parts.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature? Jesus, I don't know. Who cares? Probably someone who wrote an unreadable tome featuring an unlovable, selfish white man who inexplicably has sex with with broken, hot geniuses.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It deserves another shot. I want David Fincher to direct it, though. And no Americans.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Something like House of Leaves.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character: I once had a wonderful dream in which I had a beer with Douglas Adams (speak of the Devil), in which he said nothing but laughed at all my jokes and gave me a fatherly pat on the back when I asked if I should keep writing.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? I did coverage for a real p.o.s. when interviewing at Little, Brown, but it's since been published, so I'll keep the title to myself.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read? Ada or Ardor. Specifically, the first ten pages.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? As You Like It, though that's not very obscure. And I saw a really bizarre version of the Tempest once. Ariel was smokin' hot, though.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians? Russians.
18) Roth or Updike? Updike is my cookie baking grandmother. Roth is my uncle with the roaming hands.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Don't mention them in the same sentence.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Shakespeare.
21) Hemingway or Fitzgerald? Tough one. I guess in the end Hemingway, because I'd rather write like him than Fitzgerald.
21) Austen or Eliot? I assume you mean George. In which case, Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Modern "good" books. What passes for literary these days gives me hives.
23) What is your favorite Hemingway novel? Short stories only, please. The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
24) what is your favorite novel? More importantly, why is this question not capitalized?
24) Play? Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Show me to the, um, euphemism.
25) Poem? I think it's called "Winter Syntax."
26) Essay? "10 Moments in the Life of an Artist" by David Sedaris.
27) Short story? The Brigadier and the Golf Widow by John Cheever.
28) Work of nonfiction? What's that?
29) Who is your favorite writer? Vladimir Nabokov.
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Philip Roth.
31) What is your desert island book? The one with "Don't Panic" on the cover.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Killer Queries
We underlings (we call ourselves Gatekeepers in private - yes there's a secret society, with hoods) are very particular about query letters.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Kindle 2: This Time...It's the Same
The Kindle 2 has arrived. Hooray, I guess.
Just two months after an Amazon rep swore to my face there was no new Kindle on the way, it's here. I guess they whipped it up over the holiday season - a statement which would be a joke if it weren't so plausible.
The new Kindle, at least according to its own promo-video, is exactly the same as the old Kindle. The improvements are
A) more space
and
b) longer battery life
These are the only two things, apart from the e-ink, that nobody complained about. The ergonomics on the old version are a problem - a problem they've addressed by making it longer (meaning more unwieldy). It's still that awful dingy white color, too. Somehow, what works for Apple just doesn't cut it for Amazon.
The slogan they've chosen is "Still amazing...only better." Um, what? So it's improved in its still-amazingness? That 'only' rings pretty loud to me. It makes 'better' sound like a let down. Another option might have been " 'Better' - it's better than the same," or "Still amazing...sorry."
My verdict - don't buy this model. There will be another in six months, and that version will have fins.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
John Updike
Okay I'm gonna do that thing where I get serious.
There's been plenty said, and I won't add to the rabble. I'm not as familiar with Mr. Updike's oeuvre as his obit writers. Like most, I was initially enamoured of his fiction and grew more interested in his reviews as I got older.
However John Updike's short stories are seminal, for me. The happiest I have ever been as a writer was Sophomore year of college, when I would wake up, hit the button on the one-cup coffee maker (which was then on the bed table), snooze for ten minutes, and then read from an enormous blue tome borrowed from Olin Library (and heinously overdue) - the collected short stories of John Updike. His attention to lavish detail, at times at the cost of story, resonated with me. As a fellow Massachusetts resident and Catholic high school boy, I felt he was writing not just my childhood, but my life up until that moment. Then, at 7:30, I would shower, sit down at my Smith-Corona Electric, and write a ten page short story that was, I realize now, an imitation Updike. So completely absorbed in his world was I, that reading an excerpt in the Times of "A Sense of Shelter," my first reaction was, "Wait, wasn't that one of mine?"
Now, after being officially at this for four years, writing can feel a mire. People have read my work (not true back then) and I've lost that veneer of possibility - that maybe, just maybe, I'm a genius (a veneer which I think everyone needs in order to get started). Characters and plots are unwieldy as card houses - and just as impossible to build. Writing is a horrific balancing act, arranging fluttering memories into a structure that someone else might recognize. I'm no longer content to let them tumble to the carpet and see what funny pattern they make.
In other words, I miss pretending to be John Updike. He was the purest pleasure. But sooner or later all writers have to make a decision. Do I want to have fun or do I want to be good? Meaning and pleasure - life's task is to balance the two. The hope is that the height of one is pregnant in the other. In the end it's still a game, but every good builder of card houses knows, you can't make the Taj Mahal without learning 52 Pickup.
Monday, January 26, 2009
1,000 Books You Have to Read.....RIGHT NOW
The Guardian has compiled a list of 1,000 titles to read before you die. I wonder what sort of letter they wrote to the people who didn't make the list. "Sorry guys, this was a really tough call, and there are only so many slots to fill..." Reminds me of when VH1 did "Top 100 Hair Metal Bands of All Time." Are there 100 hair metal bands? Let alone 100 top ones?
Here are a few books that didn't make the Guardian's list:
1. The T.V. Guide, August, 1967.
2. Operating Instructions for a BM 6-87 Soviet Power Plant Control Panel
3. "The Making of Myst."
4. "Who Moved My Cheese?" 2003 Calender Companion
5. "The Early Poems of Jewel."
6. "How To Succeed In Business By Seriously Busting Ass"
7. Hallmark Flower-Print Journal w/ Inspirational Quotes
8. "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" the novelisation
9. "Just Me: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Jaramillo of 221 Caper St., Springfield, MA."
10. "Normal Mailer, a Life in Photographs"
Here are a few books that didn't make the Guardian's list:
1. The T.V. Guide, August, 1967.
2. Operating Instructions for a BM 6-87 Soviet Power Plant Control Panel
3. "The Making of Myst."
4. "Who Moved My Cheese?" 2003 Calender Companion
5. "The Early Poems of Jewel."
6. "How To Succeed In Business By Seriously Busting Ass"
7. Hallmark Flower-Print Journal w/ Inspirational Quotes
8. "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" the novelisation
9. "Just Me: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Jaramillo of 221 Caper St., Springfield, MA."
10. "Normal Mailer, a Life in Photographs"
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