Exile on Ninth Street

As always, Richard Gilbert provides some insight into currents in creative nonfiction. As I note in the comments to this post, I haven’t read Shields’ book, but a cursory glance reminded me of a literary theory — intertextuality — I studied in grad school. Those theorists, in general, were enthusiastically obsessed with the death of the author to the point it seemed to me that they would’ve delighted in chopping authors into little unidentifiable pieces. What was to replace the author, then?

As I repost this post, I wonder if I’m committing my own intertextual appropriation. Am I claiming as my own this post?

Lincoln Michael at The Rumpus has written one of the most interesting and compelling responses to Reality Hunger, by David Shields, that I’ve come across. And that includes my three blog posts stimulated by the “manifesto.” Michael writes: [W]hile Shields praises the same qualities I look for in my art, the book is framed by a somewhat inco … Read More

via NARRATIVE

Updated my Published Works to include my latest review on my freelance site:

Published Works

I think I my ambitions may have been greater than my commitment. I’m thinking about going Jack Kevorkian on my writing workshop blog before I’ve posted anything, or made any attempts to see if it works. Right now I’m having a hard enough time maintaining this blog. What do you, loyal readers, think?

I’ve set up an About page on my writing workshop blog. Any comments, questions or suggestions would be appreciated.

You may find the About page here.

As you can see, I’ve changed themes here. Let me know what you think of the new look.

Also, I’m putting together a new blog, tentatively titled The Exile’s Writing Workshop. No posts are up yet, but the idea is to create an online writing workshop/critique group. Comment here if you are interested.

I hope to work on the new blog further in the next few days.

It’s a quiet Christmas Eve at my grandmother’s house sometime more than a quarter of a century ago, and I’m in the den surrounded by gold shag carpet, an enormous flocked artificial Christmas tree towering above me. I’m flopped over a brown chair, and for the first time I’m reading a wholly remarkable book about a wholly remarkable book, “a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible  catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by an Earthman.”

It was also a funny book, an irreverent book, a science fiction novel full of spaceships and aliens — what’s more reprehensible than a Vogon? — and superintelligent computers and Kill-O Zap ray guns that was a satire of science fiction, the space opera sort that was popular at that time because of that little movie known as Star Wars.

It was also an absurd book with strange narrative blips like the story of Veet Voojagig, the philology student, who after a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government,  “became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the ballpoints he’d bought over the past few years.” The ballpoints, apparently sentient life forms, theory has it, when left unattended,return to their planet of origin “where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpoint-oid life-style, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent to the good life.” 

That theory, of course, was no more absurd than the theory that my family and I would find diamonds in a plowed field in Arkansas. Which we tried to do — unsuccessfully — one year on summer vacation, when, sitting in the back seat of our Ford LTD, I also read the four-part Hitchhiker’s trilogy (another absurdity) as we drove through the splendors of Arkansas. Hunting for diamonds in a plowed field in Arkansas was about as absurd as the idea my father had that Arkansas was a great place to go on summer vacation. (Although we did pass through Texarkana, Texas, which, as it turns out, is where my wife is from, though it’s highly improbable she knew she would marry a geeky kid reading a highly remarkable science fiction novel while passing through her hometown on the way to hunt diamonds.)

Read more…

Just a quick note to say I’ve added The Yokota Officers Club by Sarah Bird to my hundred-novels list. I won’t be giving a full review today, but it is a worthwhile novel to read. I especially liked the picture of post-war Japan it presented.

Sometimes you find the right book to read. Or perhaps it finds you. However it happened, Tell It Slant by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola became for me the right book at the right time to read.

As you know,  I have recently hit a dead zone with my writing. While my passion for writing isn’t fully revived, it’s getting resuscitated by attempting  Tell It Slant‘s writing prompts. In the past, when I’ve been stumped by the blahs, I’ve turned to exercises, but the prompt and exercises I tried were from books on writing fiction. This is the first time I’ve ever tried creative nonfiction prompts, though in the past year or so I’ve made attempts at the form.

Switching genres when the passion for writing wanes is one thing Miller and Paola recommend in the book’s brief but inspirational Epilogue “Regaining Passion”:

Sometimes when you’re in a writing class or studying writing intensively, it’s easy to lose, temporarily, the passion that brought you to writing in the first place. It’s easy to feel as if you’ve taken all the magic out of it, and you sit at your desk, bored or resistant, unable to find one single thing worth writing about.

. . . .

When this happens (and it happens to all of us), you must do whatever it takes to “refill the well.” This might mean just taking some time out to roam the city or spending a week on the couch with your favorite books and comfort food. It might mean making a date with your writing group or deciding to write poetry or fiction for a while instead. The important thing to remember is that your passion for writing will come back. Your passion for writing will always return, doubled in force, after a period of dormancy. The writing life is one of patience and faith.

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