Biting the Error

A good part of yesterday was spent writing a review of the Kim Dorland exhibition. Lots of work for 800 words.

Reading: Well I'm into Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative -- what a read. Really great stuff, and it won't surprise me I post quotes from it time to time. Today's quote is by Lynne Tillman -- terrific thinker, someone I definitely need to read more of.

"The most bedevilling question for writers, I think, is whether any of us can turn our unconscious and conscious desires and our historically and psychologically determined limits, our necessities, into virtues, and whether our vices can become our books' virtues."

Put that one in your pipe and smoke it.

Neary, Barely, Maybe as strange as fiction Friday

Well if you've ever wondered what the impact of a meteor on the earth will be check this out. Fun pictures too. I'm sure the careful painting was done by the artist last time the meteor hit.

For those who might not have guessed, Vadim is a character in a Nabokov novel.

On Process

A line from Reading Lolita in Tehran in part goes, "...the instinctive urge to struggle with the 'wrong shape of things...'" And Zadie Smith has said what attracts her to great novels is their messiness and the way great writers fail. It's all related, the more we take risks, the more we grow. No stress, it's natural.

Breaking the Writer's block

Do you believe in writer's block? The artist abandoned by the creative muse and all that yadda yadda? I have to say I never fell prey and therefore think it must be easily remedied. (I did fall prey to about every other artistic trap along the way.) What I've observed is those who cannot work, do not work. They prejudge ideas, they criticize themselves, they bombard their motivations with logic. For them I believe the best route is to just work, just keep working, every single day. In fact I'm not the only one who apparently believes this. Here's one guy who is blogging about writing his novel in a month. Is it John Irving??!! -- nope, just another writer named Jay Benjamin. Good luck guy!!

Illusion

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to perceive...


Check out the Rotating Snake for one of what I consider to be the most amazing visual illusion on the net.
If you print it out it still works!

Ummm.... contradiction?

So author Mark Helprin who considers himself a conservative republican has come out thrashing: "The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works." I guess he hasn't been around graduate programs lately that are focused on contemporary politics, semiotics, historiography, etc. I wonder why this right winger doesn't include "writing" in his list of liberal pursuits. Could he possibly believe that only his fiction writing or form of art links him to the real world? Oh wait a minute, I forgot, the republican dictionary does not include the word "contradiction."

In other news, I keep hearing from people across Canada and the US about how much they are loving Garbage Head -- one woman wrote: "Congratulations -it was fantastic! I loved it. It was so witty and some of the references to pop culture were so over the top, yet eerily recognizable."

Almost as strange as Fiction Friday

Back to Reading Lolita in Tehran, lots of nice writing here, I'll have more to say next week.

Start your weekend off by taking a look at the longest web page on the net. It is long, 1010.08 kilometers long, in fact. Have a look.

Smoke-- but no Fire

Let me be clear: I hate trying to enjoy a piece of art and getting bombarded by dumptrucks full of flaws. Example at hand, the novel Smoke by Elizabeth Ruth. I tried, really. But then, oh then. Narration flips viewpoints for no reason. We are told the emotions the characters feel even before they can react and show us. Hackneyed word use screams from every page, coats are slipped on, hot stares fall upon necks, car door handles are cranked, songs end abruptly, legs are tightly crossed, scents waft, people worry themselves sick, sun filters down. People never walk up stairs they mount stairs, so often in fact that I was waiting for the stairs to get pregnant. Even verbs do not correlate. Three sentences in a row start: 1.) B. is wearing... 2.) He stuck a red blow... 3.) He intends to give.... Time sequencing is a mess. In one part the character goes to the school, skips school, takes a 20 mile hike, hikes back, spends a couple hours at a doctor's house, walks to a field, lays in the field for hours, and then we find it's only early afternoon. The final blow is what is probably designed to be the plot-- a boring, dull, rambling, repetitive rehasing of teen discussions and a vague question about price setting and tobacco. It's full of characters whose motivations, goals and problems are completely undeveloped and meaningless. At the halfway point I skimmed the remainder of the book. Of course the Globe and Mail praises Smoke. Have they misplaced (to use a nice cliche) their shit-detector? Well, we are all suspicious of their critical ability, especially after they stood alone (against all other reviewers) in praising Irvings most recent.

Problems of Representation

I spent yesterday looking at the works of fifteen students. Two main problems: 1.) They don't produce enough work. They try to create masterpieces from the get-go. They just don't have the knowledge base to provide the fludity and voice needed for a decent work. So rather than learning to develop their vision and craft through lots of work, they spend time trying to justify what they did on one picked-at piece.

2.) It's not so much what you write, it's how you write it. It's not so much what you paint, it's how you paint it. Most of the students have yet to figuure this out. And so do many more-mature writers. I started reading Reading Lolita in Tehran -- exactly this problem. If you want a good story, Watch Maury. There's a deep couplet. If you want good literature look for an author able to get beyond the mere representation (plot) and into the way the words work and flow on the page (syntax). Note I'm not talking rules, but sensitivity to and emphasis upon patters, structure, flow, etc. And since Lolita was mentioned, Nabokov did not succeed because of the story. Similar news stories appear daily. Nabokov's novel succeeds because he understood and focused upon just these syntactical elements.

untitled

Write a wise saying and your name will be famous forever.

anonymous

Correction!

Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections and How To Be Alone better don the flack-jacket. He's attacked new and experimental writing, saying it is killing independent publishing, and is in turn getting it back. Ben Marcus in Harpers magazine has come out with a lengthy article in which he defends new fiction. And Franzen is taking hits all across the net for this one. Here's one.

Nearly as strange as fiction Friday

Harold Pinter wins Nobel prize...but the decision was delayed one week. I want details. My guess is some were worried about pissing off the US by choosing him. He's been very outspoken against US might and the invasion of Iraq. I'll let Pinter speak:

"I found that to emerge from a personal nightmare [cancer] was to enter an infinitely more pervasive public nightmare — the nightmare of American hysteria, ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest of the world," Pinter said in 2002 when he accepted an honorary doctorate at Turin University in Italy. For more including interviews and recent poetry head to his site.

Want some even more hard hitting controversy? Check out this horrific addition to etherspace~

Sloppiness x 30 or more

Back to Irving's Until I find You. The New York Times gave it an F (see site) How the Toronto Globe and Mail could possibley say it's his finest book is absurdity. I doubt the reviewer cracked the cover. When will Canadian newspapers and publishers stop genuflecting to whatever comes from the States and start really supporting Canadian writers?

At one point, Jack, the main character, heads to the funeral of his mother. In front of the church are her biker friends' motorcycles. Irving writes there were too many to count, but probably about 30. Then he goes on to name each member and where they rode from, and how so and so met up with the group from such and such. If you count them up there are already more than thirty by far. He is just so sloppy, so uncaring, so descriptive in the wrong places -- I'm really beginning to hate this book. Mr. Irving just where was your editor? The publishing house editor? Any editor? Freelancers please apply.

Durang Durang

Christopher Durang has been on the plate lately -- funny writer, fun plays. Take this line from his play Beyond Therapy where a woman is telling her therapist why she wants to end their affair:
Prudence (with some hesitation): You have problems with premature ejaculation.
Stuart [the therapist]: Listen, honey, there's nothing premature about it. Our society is paced quickly, we all have a lot of things to do. I ejaculate quickly on purpose.

As for Irving I'm still shoveling. More on that one tomorrow.

They Carried His Psychological Baggage?

Well, I attempted to read all of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (No link provided because it's not worth any recommendation) over the weekend. I finally canned it with about 80 pages left. It just isn't compelling. The first story is OK, needs some editing, once in a while he finds a decent line. O'Brien writes for therapy, but not for readers. As the book progresses OB falls prey to the illusion that his heart-felt obsession becomes more moving when he tells readers to feel it, or when he repeats certain phrases often enough. He's the party bore who obsesses on his life's story, crying along the way to make sure you share his emotion. In one section he tells us the punch line, then at the end of the story re-presents the punchline as a punch -- ahhhh, doesn't work buddy. The Vietnam experience is better captured in many other non-fiction and fiction books, and O'Brien's subtle but persistent pro-war, war makes a man stance is offputting. That this book was a finalist for the Pulitzer is an insult to devoted writers.

Stranger than noitciF Friday.

Here are the worst of the worst Romance novel book covers.
Care to see a cover of a grotesque bride -- that way because of a talentless artist? Or check out "Moment of Truth" where a woman stands next to a man with her hand in his, yes his, pocket. And scroll down to see the facial expressions on the faces of the cover for "To Dance Again." Terrifyingly bizarre.

Hey creeps, yeah we're talking to you

Here's nasty link brought to you by PABBIS -- Parents Against Bad Books in Schools. You can click to see their database of all the "bad" parts of many books. Just how do these people survive in the real world?

Cloud Formations

Off literature, I know, but fascinating: It's been twice now that I've observed Kelvin Helmholtz cloud formations out here.

Check out this link and scroll to the bottom of the page. Today I have to write a tight-deadline review of Ron Moppet's paintings for the Calgary Herald.

How Nobel an endeavour

"...academy members may be locked in fierce debate as to who should take home this year's prize... or so says the speculation.

Nobel Prize for literature delayed a week. Ya don't think Garbage Head suddenly dropped across their desks do ya?

Feeling Creative?

I've been doing some reading on creativity (again) especially the theories of stages in the creative process. Osborn's model is one I like better than others.

For most people I find many artists get initial blocks because they don't gather enough information. I'm one who believes you have to know what everyone in your field is doing.