Richard Ford

After lunch at Dunbar's, [Richard] Ford climbs back in the Jeep to give a quick driving tour of the city; as he passes a particularly seamy-looking housing development, he declares, "There is no street in New Orleans that I wouldn't walk down." He pauses. "But that's not to say that I wouldn't get my ass kicked."

Ford talks a good deal about ass-kicking: He reminisces about the time he foiled a mugging by slamming the hapless thief in the face, and he remembers exchanging punches with a neighbor who refused to keep his dogs from barking, an episode that concluded with Ford in handcuffs and the neighbor in the hospital. At a later point during this interview, while taking a brief walk through the French Quarter, Ford gets into a shouting match with a guy, admittedly a schmucky guy, who is for some reason creeping his car along the sidewalk. The argument begins with Ford calling him a douche bag, continues with the driver asking the Pulitzer Prize winner to lick his balls and ends with Ford making some disparaging comments about the man's mother. "Richard goes directly to his emotions," says Russell Banks, the author of Affliction and Sweet Hereafter and a friend of Ford's. "He comes to full alert whenever anybody acts like an idiot."

from "Ford Tough" by Michael Kaplan, BOOK, March/April 2002

Definition of Story

“A story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves. (Jon Franklin, WRITING FOR STORY, p. 71)

Novel: The Outside World

The Outside World (Tova Mirvis) ***

Several years ago Tova Mirvis' first novel The Ladies Auxiliary was my runner-up for favorite novel of the year. So, when I saw the new novel at the bookstore, I picked it up and my wife and I read it on the drive to Florida and back.

Mirvis' gift is drawing a world that many of us will never see. Her representation is detailed and alive and the reader feels transported, and a part of this strange (to us) culture. At the same time, she captures the universality of individuals and relationships and we see ourselves reflected back from the pages.

The plot seems to unravel a bit at the end but this is common with a novel that has so many characters woven through 250 plus pages. But the plot is almost secondary and the time spent inside the orthodox jewish culture was time well spent.


The Outside World

Throw Another Handful of Characters on the Fire

I remember Virginia Woolf was reviewing a book. . .but one of her complaints was when the author lost his way, he would just throw another handful of characters on the fire. (Novelist/Essayist Joy Williams)

Intellectuals Make People Feel Alienated

"I think something horrible happened in American letters, which is that intellectuals started acting as if other people couldn't understand what they were talking about," adds Mr. Silverblatt, a grad-school dropout whose resume includes such unpoetic occupations as hotel desk clerk, publicist and screenwriter. "That's often true when they're talking about novels and poetry. These are the things we've made. They're our culture. And I think it's a crime when intellectuals make people feel alienated from what is the greatest treasure we have." (Joanne Kaufman quoting "Bookworm" host Michael Silverblatt in the article "A Bibliophile With a Hypnotic Gift of Gab")

Evoking Sensation

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it's raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." (E. L. Doctorow as quoted by Sol Stein in "Stein on Writing")

Seduced by the Language

"The best of good writing will entice us into subjects and knowledge we would have declared were of no interest to us until we were seduced by the language they were dressed in." (from Sol Stein in "Stein on Writing"--Chapter One)

A Writer Deals with the Unspoken

[Thornton] "Wilder taught me that what a writer deals with is the unspoken, what people see or sense in silence." (from Sol Stein in "Stein on Writing"--Chapter One)

Books are Potent Things

Walt Whitman called reading "an exercise, a gymnast's struggle." To me it is a creation, a lovemaking of small discoveries, hidden treasures, big dreams, I'm saddened almost beyond words when I think of what's being lost-what's already been destroyed-by people who are afraid of books.. . Books are potent things. . . Books and stories and reading are the meat of revolution and change, they can be dangerous and unpredictable.

Thoreau said, "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

Only those who already have power have an interest in censorship.

from "Censors and Sensibilities" by Sallie Tisdale
Mirabella, January 1995

Novel: Blue Angel

Blue Angel

Predictable. The plot had no surprises. Her female characters were strong and fully developed, but her male characters didn't make the grade. Swenson, the novel's main character was convincing in his bumbling paranoia, but totally unconvincing in his repetitious endearments for his wife. And the great novel the student was writing, spare me.

I never felt strongly enough about Swenson for me to be engaged in the book.

My favorite line in the book: ". . .Ruby says, "How's your novel coming, Dad?" . . . "Great," he replies. "It's going great!" And for a moment, he thinks it is. All he needs to do is write it."

I felt the confrontation at the end of the book, exploring language and its ambiguity and its openness to varied interpretations was excellent, although it fell short of what I felt was a genius interpretation of the same theme by David Mamet in OLEANNA.


Oleanna: A Play

Short Story Writing Tips

Why do some stories truly ring in the mind while others leave you with the feeling of 'what was the point?'. To make your short stories more effective, try to keep in mind these following points while writing:

1. Have a clear theme. What is the story about? That doesn't mean what is the plot line, the sequence of events or the character's actions, it means what is the underlying message or statement behind the words. Get this right and your story will have more resonance in the minds of your readers.

2. An effective short story covers a very short time span. It may be one single event that proves pivotal in the life of the character, and that event will illustrate the theme.

3. Don't have too many characters. Each new character will bring a new dimension to the story, and for an effective short story too many diverse dimensions (or directions) will dilute the theme. Have only enough characters to effectively illustrate the theme.

4. Make every word count. There is no room for unnecessary expansion in a short story. If each word is not working towards putting across the theme, delete it.

5. Focus. The best stories are the ones that follow a narrow subject line. What is the point of your story? Its point is its theme. It's tempting to digress, but in a 'short' you have to follow the straight and narrow otherwise you end up with either a novel beginning or a hodgepodge of ideas that add up to nothing.

Short Story Writing Tips (from shortstorygroup.com)

Trevor and Truth

. . . .reading Trevor, I feel that I am being told the truth--the melancholy, regrettable, unromantic truth, but a truth I recognize. In its quiet, offhand tone, with its beautiful, measured, clean sentences, Trevor's work tells us: Life is hard and frequently painful; people make devastating mistakes; acceptance and coming to terms with one's lot are more sensible and attainable goals than a blissful sojourn on earth and paradise thereafter. "Truth," Trevor has said, "is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end."

from "Comfort Cult: On the honest unlovliness of William Trevor's world" by Francine Prose in HARPER'S MAGAZINE, December 2002

Trevor and Characters

Asked about his [William Trevor's] unusual ability to "get inside" so many
characters, "regardless of their age, sex, or background," Trevor has described it as a matter of observation--a characteristically unassuming explanation compared with the depths of feeling and empathy, the soaring powers of the imagination that another writer of similar range might claim for himself. "It does seem to me that the only way you can get there is through observation. . . . I think there's something in writers of fiction that makes them notice things and store them away all the time. . . . Writers of fiction are collectors of useless information. They are the opposite of good, solid, wise citizens who collect good information and put it to good use. Fiction writers remember tiny little details, some of them almost malicious, but very telling."

from "Comfort Cult: On the honest unlovliness of William Trevor's world" by Francine Prose in HARPER'S MAGAZINE, December 2002

The Death of Long Articles

There is little evidence to suggest increased television viewership is killing off reading. When asked by Harris to describe their top leisure-time activities, Americans still regularly put reading at the top of the list (28 percent of those polled in 2001), outscoring even the boob tube (20 percent). Nor has increased television viewing sapped the time we spend reading, according to time-diary studies. While the average time spent reading a newspaper declined dramatically between 1965 and 1995, "all other reading, including books and magazines, is increasing," reports John P. Robinson, a professor at Maryland, who authored the study.

Long narratives, in the form of books, remain popular with young people. A separate 1999 Gallup poll found book readership rates essentially unchanged over the previous two decades. Fifty-six percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds read six or more books a year, compared to 62 percent of those ages fifty to sixty-four. Of adolescents ages twelve to eighteen, 56 percent reported reading ten or more books in the year, according to another poll by the National Education Association in 2001. Polls by the Pew Center for the People and the Press have come to similar conclusions. Young people read books and magazines at roughly the same rates as older Americans, though men in this category tend to lag behind women.

Rolling Stone traded its rock roots for bubble-gum pop just to keep its mass-market share, with four Britney Spears covers in the last three years. The new Rolling Stone seeks to solve that problem in another way, by increasing the number of stories it runs while decreasing their length, a tactic that more closely resembles the Internet than a book. This tactic, pioneered by Blender, offers more to a wider spectrum of readers, with 100 or 200 album reviews in each issue. In place of a long narrative, the readers create their own story as they pick and choose their way through the magazine. "It's not about your narrative," says Black. "It's about me."

Editors have been forced to design their magazines for an indifferent reader, according to Michael Wolff, media columnist for New York. "We've shoved magazines down the throats of people," Wolff said. "They flip through magazines because they don't really want them."

From "Does Size Matter?"
BY MICHAEL SCHERER
Columbia Journalism Review
October 2002

Jacket Copy

Judging by their fulsome endorsements on the jackets of so many novels, it's apparent that some critics don't get out much. To blurb-bestowers, no work is ever just moderately entertaining. Books are "captivating," "enthralling," "sprawling," and even "festooning." Maybe I'm just naive, but when I read a book that's billed as 'a masterpiece of savage comedy," I expect something like WISE BLOOD or THE LOVED ONE. "Riveting from first page to last" is a description that gets my hopes tip: it promises at least the intensity of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and a lot more than BABBITT. Obviously, I deal with some disappointment. I guess honesty doesn't make good jacket copy, or we'd see more blurbs like this:

"A dense book in which very little happens."

"A well-written but depressing novel, lacking in excitement what it makes up for in style.

As far as outward versus inward fiction, I think that introspection is here to stay. We're an inward-looking society, and despite what Tom Wolfe says, that's not entirely a bad thing, either for the culture or for the novel as an art form. Many of us. . .actually enjoy all the navel gazing.

from "Looking Up from the Navel" by Betty Smartt Carter, BOOKS AND CULTURE, July/August 2002.

Why Reading Matters To George Mason University Students

During spring 2000 undergraduate students were invited to reflect on why-or if-reading mattered to them. The following are a few student responses.

Heather Doerr
Reading is an art. It is more than just comprehending words on paper. It is an interactive and lively experience for the imagination and a respite for the soul. Characters and story plots come alive in the mind. An entire world can be created simply by letting the imagination digest the language. Society today speeds along so fast that it doesn't take the time to stop and soak in life. Reading lets one enjoy the world around, through personal experiences and point of view. All memories and senses are awake when reading and yet while the outside world is still, the mind and imagination run wild. Reading gives temporary reprieve from the pressures of life and creates a new identity and a new environment. It is about learning. New ideas and opinions are introduced. Theories are proven or disproved. Reading is discovery in its most basic element.

Rachel Donelson
Reading connects me to the rest of the world and helps me define who I am. If you are what you know, what I read is tightly intertwined with who I was, who I am now, and who I will become. I go through phases of what I like to read. When I was young, I liked to read about historical children's adventures, like Little House or Tom Sawyer. In high school I read a lot of mid-twentieth century novels, from the beatniks to the dystopian visionaries. Now I've finally expanded my world to include nonfiction. Reading helps me get out of my mental ruts; it helps me accept other people's ideas. It can also connect me to people of the past. There's something comforting about knowing that my questions and faults are similar to the ones St. Augustine struggled with when he was my age-even though he lived 1700 years ago. Reading makes the vastness of space-time smaller and more manageable.

Alessandra Gazzo
I believe that reading functions as a means of expanding your world. It is a way to gain new perspectives on your world as well as learning about things which are completely out of your everyday life. By reading you can experience things which would otherwise be impossible. We do not live long enough to see or do anywhere near all that we would like to. Reading provides an opportunity to get a glimpse of some more of those things we cannot do.

A Blank Mind Led to RAGTIME

It was not a blank page but a blank mind that led to RAGTIME-the emotional exhaustion that came inevitably after the completion of THE BOOK OF DANIEL. The blank mind, when it has no wish to think or improve upon existence, grants you a simple unreflective being that is very pleasant and peaceable. Fortunately it doesn't last. One day I was sitting in my study, on the top floor of my house in New Rochelle, and I found myself staring at the wall. Perhaps I felt it was representative of my mind. I decided to write about the wall. And then about all the walls together. "My house was built in 1906," I wrote. "It is a great, ugly three-story manse, with dormers, bay windows, and a screened porch. When it was new the shingles were brown and striped awnings shaded the windows .. . ." I then imagined what New Rochelle looked like when the house was new. In those days trolley cars ran along the avenue at the bottom of the hill. People wore white in the summer. Women carried parasols. I thought of Teddy Roosevelt, who was president at the time. And the blank page of my mind began to fill with the words of a book.

But wherever books begin, in whatever private excitement of the mind, whether from the music of words, or an impelling anger, or the promise of an unwritten-upon page, the work itself is hard and slow, and the writer's illumination becomes a taskmaster, a ruling discipline, jealously guarding the mind from all other, and necessarily errant, private excitements until the book is done. You live enslaved in the book's language, its diction, its universe of imagery, and there is no way out except through the last sentence.

from The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work edited by Marie Arana

The Difference Between What People Say and What People Feel

I don't know anything more interesting than the difference between what people say and what they feel. There's a whole universe there below the surface. I'm always interested in the way that feelings underneath leak out and shape behavior. People try very hard to have them not show up or change anything or affect anything. But our defenses leak. That's how we know they're there. I love that. (from an interview with Amy Bloom by Sarah Ann Johnson)

True or False?

In every volume of poems something good may be found.
--Quote from Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON

Writer's Block

Do not confuse writer's block with other emotional states that interfere with your writing such as anger, grief, illness, laziness, horniness, and so on. True writer's block has four primary causes: not knowing your characters well enough, trying to edit and write at the same time, fear of failure, and fear of success. . . .Trying to write and edit at the same time creates class-two writer's block. When you write, you have to first draft your novel without worrying whether every I is dotted and every t is crossed. The manuscript isn't going to be perfect; it's only a draft.

FROM James N. Frey on writer's block in HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD NOVEL