nyjb
A review of Is Life Like This?
truth in advertising
The best ad ever. Makes me want to buy a double-wide.
"A bouncer in Birmingham hit me in the face with a crescent wrench five times and my wife's boyfriend broke my jaw with a fence post. So if you don't buy a trailer from me, it ain't gonna hurt my feelings. So come on down to Cullman Liquidation and get yourself a home. Or don't. I don't care."
dania beach boulevard
Missile by the fireworks store.
working habits
Friedrich Schiller drew the red curtains in his study, occasionally submerged his feet in cold water, and kept rotten apples in his desk drawer to sniff while writing. Here's how some other artists got the work done.
"Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing." --F.S.
purvis young
Miami outsider artist Purvis Young has died. More here. And here. "I'm trying to sweeten up the world. Spray it with honey."
dania beach, intracoastal
from the Dania Beach Boulevard Bridge
"how can there be a wrong way to make good art?"
"When a literary critic such as James Wood twists himself into a pretzel explaining exactly why the novel he has under review is the wrong kind of good novel, he sounds like nothing so much as a Railtrack official railing against the wrong kind of snow."
David Hare has a lot to say about art and life, fact and fiction.
"Art frequently reminds us that things are never quite as simple as they seem. Nor are people. Journalism is life with the mystery taken out. Art is life with the mystery restored."
william shakespeare, 1564 -
Happy Shakespeare's Birthday!
Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
gulf stream #3
FiU's literary magazine features Connie May Fowler, B. H. Fairchild, Steven Barthelme, Lisa Tucker, Dan Chaon, and more!
commas
(thanks to Kim, Phoebe's mom, in St. Augustine)
gonzalo barr
La Bloga has an interview with our friend Gonzalo.
bad books?
At the American Book Review booth at AWP.
orlando book festival
I sat on a couple of panels about secrets, subterfuge and plot building, and I hung out with Phoebe. The festival was well-attended and well-organized. We had a wonderful time, and we think the RaceTrac gas station on Alafaya is more popular than Disney World. Phoebe's feet seldom touch the ground when Cindy and I are around.
andres montoya poetry prize
My friend and FIU MFA grad, Emma Trelles has won the Montoya Prize and her book will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press. We flew home from Denver on the same plane, and she didn'teven mention the honor!
writers on writers
For Esme With Venom and Snark. Writers not playing nicely.
Mary McCarthy on J. D. Salinger: I don't like Salinger, not at all. That last thing isn't a novel anyway, whatever it is. I don't like it. Not at all. It suffers from this terrible sort of metropolitan sentimentality and it's so narcissistic. And to me, also, it seemed so false, so calculated. Combining the plain man with an absolutely megalomaniac egotism. I simply can't stand it.
James Dickey on Robert Frost: If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes....a more sententious, holding-forth old bore, who expected every hero-worshipping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on his every word I never saw.
Click the link above to read forty-eight more.
plot as ritual
Another take on our AWP panel from Tamara Linse.
the trojan horse problem
Speaking of plot, here's a thoughtful essay on novels by Emily St. John Mandel.
"(My major criticism of Ayn Rand is that I find Objectivism sociopathic, but that’s beside the point.)"
