9 July 2009
Another guest post up at The Millions, this one about the funny-ish experience of book jacket design for Long for This World.
Click here to read.
(If you happen to have any comments on it, please make them over at The Millions. Thanks!)
8 July 2009
Jacob Silverman has written a kind of “state of book reviewing” piece at the Virginia Quarterly Review. What I appreciate about this piece — i.e. what I agree with — is this notion of a literary landscape, a finite ecosystem, in which there is only so much review space, only so many books which will garner reviewer attention; it’s a closed and finite system in other words, and, thus, it matters.
Silverman implies that the brokers of book-review real estate are perhaps not taking their roles as seriously as they should. For example, he calls out Slate.com on its review of Lauren Conrad’s LA Candy, making the distinction between “the joys of mixing high and low culture” and “something else entirely—a respected publication digging gracelessly into the gossip-rag market.”
Read Silverman’s article here.
6 July 2009
A lot of ink spilled already over Sarah Palin’s resignation from the Alaska governorship on Friday. I’m honing in on this quote, from Maureen Dowd’s Sunday NY Times Op-Ed column:
And so it was, Todd Purdum learned, as he traveled Alaska reporting on Palin for Vanity Fair, that the governor’s erratic and egoistic behavior has been a source of concern for people there.
“Several told me, independently of one another,” Purdum writes, “that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — ‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’ — and thought it fit her perfectly.”
The “lack of empathy” part reminds me of the even-more ink that’s been spilled throughout the ages on the subject of the artist as moral leader / poet-king. I am one of these people who believes in the moral power of art, and the empathic, truth-seeking “eyesight” of artists; while at the same time one of the worst articulators/defenders of this belief. So here are thoughts from artists who say it better than I would:
“I’d like to believe that the ongoing invitation into art deepens our capacity for experiencing ourselves as well as others, thereby deepening our capacity for personhood, our achievement of humanity.” -Edward Hirsch
“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.” -Percy Bysshe Shelley
[Poetry nurtures in us] “a tenderness toward existence.” -Galway Kinnell
“Man’s capacity for evil is less a positive capacity, for all its horrendous activity, than a failure to develop man’s most human function, the imagination, to its fullness, and consequently a failure to develop compassion.” -Denise Levertov
Picasso would probably have made a terrible politician, but Chekhov might possibly have been an effective, say, mayor. Will we ever have a Vaclav Havel, or a Marcus Aurelius, in U.S. politics? Mostly we have actors and media personalities as far as creative crossovers — which makes sense, given the degree to which politics is the art of the public personality. Q: What makes the integration of art and politics more organic in non-U.S. contexts? Why, in other words, would the title of this post likely elicit tomato-throwing and cries of “elitist” from ardent Palin supporters?
(On a somewhat-related note, I’ve always wondered about Condeleeza Rice’s almost-career as a classical pianist and how her musical mind converged, or not, with her political one.)
4 July 2009
On this Independence Day, I’m thinking — no kidding — about freedom. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy has me thinking about the cost of independence and self-sufficiency; Dan Baum had me thinking about it a few weeks back when he wrote about life after the New Yorker; and now, this from DH Lawrence’s “Studies in Classic American Literature” (thanks to Sarah for passing this along):
Men are less free than they imagine; ah, far less free. The freest are perhaps least free.
Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfuilfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.
Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes.
Food for thought (after you’ve digested your hot dogs and hamburgers and potato salad).
The Word Count
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1 July 2009
Happy Canada Day! (A student writes from Toronto: “Today is Independence Day in Canada–although, I don’t understand who we got independent from, given that the Queen is still our Monarch.” I don’t know why these little connections to the Commonwealth — the idea of a Commonwealth — cheer me.)
I report to you on this auspicious day the word count for Sebastian & Frederick, my novel-in-progress: approx. 60,596 words.
A friend of mine used to regularly report on his word counts. I found that quirky and weirdly quantitative, given the deeply qualitative nature of fiction-writing (in fact, “less is more” is a mantra we hear a lot in the writing rooms). But now that I’m working on novel #2 — having had really no idea how many words makes a novel, even roughly speaking, the first time around — the word count carries a little more meaning. Long for This World came in at approx. 85,000 words. What this means is that it’s possible, and likely, that I am into the final third of this draft.
What this means is that the rubber will be meeting the road — or not — over the next 10-15,000 words. My experience as both a reader and a writer tell me that I am entering hard-hat territory. The vague-ish, piecemeal vision I’ve been following over the past year-and-a-half and 170 pages will begin to come together; or, more likely, will show its fatal fault lines.
I’m somewhat “ready” for it, though. Annie Dillard writes that there comes a moment in the writing of every book where an irreconcilable structural flaw makes itself known (I am paraphrasing; can’t seem to find my copy of The Writing Life). Entire sections must be rewritten or eliminated, characters as well. Perhaps this is where one realizes what she is really meaning to write about and must now go back to the beginning and do so.
It’s part of the process, and ultimately a productive one; it’s not as awful as it sounds. It can in fact be very energizing, and liberating, if embraced. If you are willing to begin again. (It’s also, you might say, the place where would-be novelists and actual novelists part ways.)
As I write this, I acknowledge the ridiculousness of my cheerful tone; like a mother who forgets the pain of childbirth. At least — because all pain is relative — it is summer. The last time around, I hit the final-third mark in the dead of winter. Those, I admit, were awful days indeed.
But today, the garden is growing; the dog is lying in a patch of sun; and Canada is (semi) independent!
