A Meme Time For Everything

My very first meme here on the blog, inspired by Chicago writer David Schwartz:

One book that changed your life:
The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. I read it in Dublin, in a day, and discovered that men could write about women, of women, in their voices, and more than successfully. It stunned me right out of my trepidation and naivete, and the next day for one of our workshop assignments I basically riffed on the book, exploring a Mrs. Kitchen who lived in small town Iowa, in the desolation of her life: the better part of her youth behind, her marriage perfunctory, her children alien to her and it was like discovering a new world for me. The Hours ultimately set me down the course I'm on now, straddling this line between 'literary' fiction and more or less science fiction (something Cunningham did himself in his follow-up, Specimen Days).

One book that you've read more than once:
The Hours, for one, but also A Confederacy of Dunces. I very rarely read books over; it's the same with movies or TV, though. I can't abide reruns. I do lots of spot reading/watching though, sections or segments I go back to from time to time like I'm nibbling on it or something. The only thing I repeat over and over is music.

One book you'd want on a desert island:
The Lord of the Flies.

One book that made you laugh:
Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson.

One book that made you cry:
I could be glib and say one that I wrote, since it made my brain hurt so bad, but there are lots of books that made me cry, including some I've mentioned already.

One book that you wish had been written:
Dignity: How To Maintain It In 3 Easy Steps

One book that you wish had never been written:
This is kind of like saying someone should have never been born.

One book you're currently reading:
The Art of Hunger, by Paul Auster, and Pincher Martin, by Golding, which I just discovered.

One book you've been meaning to read:
I have a mountain of books in Waterloo I've been meaning to read.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirror, Mirror

Image
Recently I bought a copy of a pretty well reviewed and promoted speculative fiction novel.  About two chapters in, the main character looks in a mirror and describes themself.  I literally closed the book and stopped reading.  The novel had other issues, but this put me right out of the story.  This technique - being generous here - occurs a lot in first person narratives, about as often as a story beginning with the main character waking up from a dream.  The mirror device is best avoided, but not necessarily because it's so overused - it's best avoided because simply put, it's so easy.  A character, especially a protagonist, should never be described; they should be imagined.
Read more

Conversations With: Dr. Daniel Dahlquist

Here's what I hope is the start of a new weekly (or so) feature on the blog: a mini-interview with writers about the craft. My good friend and teacher Dr. Daniel Dahlquist inaugurates the series. Dr. Dahlquist is a wonderful poet; his poetry has appeared in respected literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Virginia Review, River Styx, Kentucky Poetry Review, and the Louisville Review. He graduated from the University of Iowa's storied Writer's Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Southern Illinois University. His first book, SPEECH TO THE DEAD PEOPLE, was published in 1997 by Cedar Creek Press. You can read an excerpt from the book (and my favorite of his poems) here . Without further adieu: Q: What poets or other writers do you consider influences? A: The apocalyptic poets appealed to me when I was very young. I started writing poems at age sixteen, on my grandfather's 1928 L.C. Smith typewriter, largely to impress my English teacher.
Read more

My Advice For Writers

More and more I get asked for advice from aspiring writers. Mostly this is because I have a book, not because I really know anything. I'm not good at giving advice. Actually, I'm pretty good at it, just not very good at following it myself. So take all of this with a grain of salt. Actually, you should probably just click away to some other website right now. If you're still here, or have just reached the end of the internet, seriously: I've given a lot of thought to what I say to a serious writer who is asking me for serious perspective, and in so much as I can give it, I usually speak to these things: Find your faults . You have them. We all do. One thing my day job has taught me is to actively seek out process improvement. Usually we wait for problems to come to us - it's how we know they're problems - but most often in business, this can get you in trouble. The same applies to your art. It is a process; you should actively seek to impro
Read more