April 2008 Archives
Road trip!
Woo-hoo! My dearly beloved James and I are headed out in the wee hours tomorrow morning for a three-week road trip.
Our first stop will be in Austin, Texas, to celebrate our nephew Indigo's third birthday. (Indigo is the irresistibly cute progeny of Tony and Cool Julie from The Truth Book.) Apparently, his heart's desire is an overnight camp-out with his buddies, so we'll be roughing it with a gaggle of toddlers.
Then we'll head east to stay with James's folks, who live across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans--where I'll be doing research for a new book. I can't wait. We finally broke the bank and purchased a digital camera, our first, and I'm excited about putting photographs on the blog.
I'll be posting from the road, so check back! Take good care, everyone!
Our first stop will be in Austin, Texas, to celebrate our nephew Indigo's third birthday. (Indigo is the irresistibly cute progeny of Tony and Cool Julie from The Truth Book.) Apparently, his heart's desire is an overnight camp-out with his buddies, so we'll be roughing it with a gaggle of toddlers.
Then we'll head east to stay with James's folks, who live across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans--where I'll be doing research for a new book. I can't wait. We finally broke the bank and purchased a digital camera, our first, and I'm excited about putting photographs on the blog.
I'll be posting from the road, so check back! Take good care, everyone!
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Juicy literary stuff
Gentle Reader, there's an auction happening. Novelist Tayari Jones, moved by the plight of the Dunbar Village gang rape survivors, decided to raise funds for the woman and her son by auctioning off such delectables as manuscript critiques, signed first editions by writers such as George Saunders and Pulitzer winner Natasha Trethewey, an author-photo session with a wonderful photographer, and other lovely perks donated by her circle of literary friends and acquaintances.
If you have a story, some poetry, a personal essay, or even an entire novel sitting in a drawer, you can get personal feedback from one of the terrific authors Tayari has lined up. They're all gentle and respectful, so no worries about getting your hard work savaged. I'm one of the donors, too, so if you've written a personal essay and want my feedback on the cheap--I'll provide line editing and overall comments--check it out.
The bidding started at 99 cents for many of the items, so it's a regular K-mart blue-light special right now. The auction ends tomorrow (Sunday), so if you're interested, check it out now! Get cool stuff and support a great cause.
If you have a story, some poetry, a personal essay, or even an entire novel sitting in a drawer, you can get personal feedback from one of the terrific authors Tayari has lined up. They're all gentle and respectful, so no worries about getting your hard work savaged. I'm one of the donors, too, so if you've written a personal essay and want my feedback on the cheap--I'll provide line editing and overall comments--check it out.
The bidding started at 99 cents for many of the items, so it's a regular K-mart blue-light special right now. The auction ends tomorrow (Sunday), so if you're interested, check it out now! Get cool stuff and support a great cause.
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Visiting Mount Mercy
Tomorrow morning, I head out to Cedar Rapids, Iowa! The delightful Carol Tyx, a former colleague at Wabash College, invited me to come give a reading from The Truth Book at the institution where she now teaches, Mount Mercy College.
Isn't it lovely? I can't wait to meet everyone.
Isn't it lovely? I can't wait to meet everyone.
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"A kind of low-level bottom-feeding life in a parallel world of your own invention"
And that's just the beginning:
Writing novels is an exciting and challenging and somewhat surreal job whose cyclical nature causes an enforced manic-depression. After months or years of interior, self-doubting, tunnel-visioned, antisocial, obsessive labor, a kind of low-level bottom-feeding life in a parallel world of your own invention, comes the bright light of publication, if you’re lucky. The world seizes your book, if you’re lucky, and sometimes ignores it completely or turns it into something you might not have intended it to be. You trundle along in its wake, trying to be articulate in interviews. It’s all very exhilarating and daunting.For her whole blogspot, go here.
~Kate Christensen, winner of the PEN/Faulkner award
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What Bush's invasion could have bought
In case you missed this piece (as I did), here's a link to a New York Times piece that puts the $1.2 trillion spent on the Iraq invasion into real terms: the health care, education, medical research, a global immunization campaign for children, reconstruction funds for New Orleans, the implementation of the 9/11 Commission's security recommendations, etc., that this administration could have used our money for. Instead, tens of thousands of Iraqis & Afghanis and 4,000+ US citizens are dead, tens of thousands more people are severely damaged, the US's standing in the world is an embarrassment, and the US economy is tanking.
Somehow, a $600 check so I can go out and stimulate it doesn't make my day.
Tonight, my husband and I are going to a reception for UNL's visiting writer-in-residence Tim O'Brien, who's been here for two weeks teaching a master class to our grad students, and I'm curious to hear his take on what's happening now.
And here's Jason Furman in Slate with some budget recommendations for the next administration.
Somehow, a $600 check so I can go out and stimulate it doesn't make my day.
Tonight, my husband and I are going to a reception for UNL's visiting writer-in-residence Tim O'Brien, who's been here for two weeks teaching a master class to our grad students, and I'm curious to hear his take on what's happening now.
And here's Jason Furman in Slate with some budget recommendations for the next administration.
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Great blog for writers!
Because of the Vanderbilt symposium, I've just discovered a blog I now love. I am so turned on by my fellow panelist Heather Sellers' blog, Word After Word. It's positive, smart, sane, pro-pleasure. (And she's big on writing by hand, as I am.)
I recommend it to anyone who's writing, wanting to write, trying to write, dreaming of writing, etc. Look at the sections "Writing" and "Teaching The Practice of Creative Writing" (which is the textbook Heather wrote). They're full of guidance, kind self-talk, and good sense.
I recommend it to anyone who's writing, wanting to write, trying to write, dreaming of writing, etc. Look at the sections "Writing" and "Teaching The Practice of Creative Writing" (which is the textbook Heather wrote). They're full of guidance, kind self-talk, and good sense.
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"A little bit unplugged"
As a serious admirer and teacher of Jhumpa Lahiri's work, I was happy to read a recent interview with her in The Atlantic. I was particularly interested in her response to a question about whether she was interested in writing criticism. She replied, Not so much. I don't like to judge. I don't feel comfortable doing that. But by saying that, I don't mean to judge people who do. A critic is an extremely valuable thing in art or literature or music, but I don't feel it's what I want to do. Before I wrote a book, I wrote some reviews and it was great fun. I'd get free books and write up a little something and I was into it. But then something changed. I think it was writing my own book. To be honest with you, and maybe this is shirking my duty in some way, I like to try and stay as disconnected as I can from the world of contemporary writing because I just think it's best for my writing. I want to be a little bit unplugged.I so connected with that. I need to think some more about why that hit home.
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Wright or Wrong
Nation, I have to confide: My husband and I were driving in the car when a radio news show sound-byted the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor. Prepared by the appalled newscaster's build-up for something truly horrific, we both just sort of looked at each other, like, "Yeah, so?"
But then it became a national issue, and it sparked Obama's thoughtful speech, and I kind of forgot about my initially underwhelmed response. So how grateful I was today to be reminded of it by Gary Kamiya in his Salon article, "Rev. Jeremiah Wright Isn't the Problem." Kamiya first writes:
But then it became a national issue, and it sparked Obama's thoughtful speech, and I kind of forgot about my initially underwhelmed response. So how grateful I was today to be reminded of it by Gary Kamiya in his Salon article, "Rev. Jeremiah Wright Isn't the Problem." Kamiya first writes:
The great shock so many people claim to be feeling over Wright's sermons is preposterous. Anyone who is surprised and horrified that some black people feel anger at white people, and America, is living in a racial never-never land. Wright has called the U.S. "the United States of White America," talks about the "oppression" of black people and says, "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11." Gosh, who could have dreamed that angry racial grievances and left-wing political views are sometimes expressed in black churches?But then he goes on to the meat of his argument:
Wright isn't the problem. Stupid patriotism is the problem. . . . Today, after five years of a catastrophic war driven by patriotic vengeance, it's still not acceptable to disturb the myth of eternal American innocence.Moving into his main points, he holds accountable not patriotism itself (though my post-nationalist friends might take issue w/that), but stupid patriotism: knee-jerk, blind, rhetorical hails to the chief, right or wrong. Is it more important to wear a flag pin or to value the lives of others (national others in Iraq, class others in our own military) as we do our own? The essay is short, nicely put together, and well worth a quick read; the Susan Sontag quotation alone is worth the price of admission.
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