telepathic paranoia

Oh, my poor, neglected blog.  Would you believe that they actually give us a fair amount of work here?

This past week should go down in history…  Before it even began, I had dubbed it “Hell Week” thanks to a week-long workshop with Distinguished Visiting Writer Steve Almond, held every evening for two and a half hours.  It was actually a lot of fun — Almond is a very entertaining fellow, who somehow possesses the magical ability to demolish your prose while simultaneously making you laugh at your own ineptitude.  It’s a neat trick, let me tell you — if you ever have a chance to be workshopped by him, take it.  If not, check out his new chap-book, It Will Only Take But a Minute, Honey, which is half shorts, half writing advice.

(Or on second thought, don’t, since apparently you can only get this book directly from the author?  An odd choice, but what do I know?  Maybe it creates demand…  heightens the mystique.  Well, I’m getting a copy, so you can check out mine, if you want.)

Oodles more to share, but for now, I leave you with a few shots of my favorite abandoned shack: October edition.

I got closer this time!

Wheatland. Yes.

Oh snap, a new angle.

Threatening sky.

Tags: authors I know, idaho, landscape, MFA program, photography, Steve Almond, the palouse, washington

Further updates from the University of Idaho Hemingway Festival…

Last night I went to hear Michael Dahlie, assorted U of I faculty, and a Hemingway scholar discuss their favorite Hemingway stories. It was a lively discussion, but one point they kept returning to was the whole “iceberg theory” of fiction… Hemingway’s idea that you can leave a lot of information out of a story, but as long as the author knows the info and has it in mind as he writes, the readers will somehow intuit this.

Dahlie made what was, I think, a somewhat unpopular comment at the time: that Hemingway could only get away with this because he was already known. I think there is a lot of truth to this. Not just that Hemingway was already famous and admired, but everyone knew what his favorite themes were: war, danger, alcohol, the impossibility of true understanding between men and women… So people knew what to look for. In my own writing, I gather that people rarely get the unseen thing I’m talking about; indeed, they rarely even try. Or possibly there’s a trick to it I haven’t figured out yet? But Hemingway says it requires only confidence. Ha.

I have a story to turn in on Thursday, anyway, and while I certainly wouldn’t call it “Hemingway-esque”, there is a lot going on in it that remains unspoken. We’ll see what the smart readers here in Idaho make of it.

Also, just because I hate posts with no images, here are some pictures I took out of car windows.

Broken barns, man. This country is full of them.

Tags: barn, Hemingway, heminway festival, idaho, landscape, photography, scenery, the palouse, university of idaho

Just got back from a question and answer session with Michael Dahlie, the winner of the 2009 Hemingway Foundation/PEN award and author of A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living. I have to say, I really enjoyed the session. Mr. Dahlie showed an tremendous skill for answering all the various questions about process and getting an agent and working with an editor, etc. (which obviously is what MFA students really care about), while at the same mentioning his novel frequently enough and in such an engaging way that I wound up really wanting to read it.

I’m going to have to remember this trick in case I ever win an award and get invited to something. Right.

Anyway, he made the book sound sort of fabulous, and I’m not sure if this copy is doing it justice:

Arthur Camden’s greatest talents are for packing and unpacking suitcases, making coleslaw, and second-guessing every decision in his life. When his business fails and his wife leaves him—to pursue more aggressive men—Arthur finds that he has none of the talents and finesse that everyone else seems to possess for navigating New York society.

Arthur tries to reinvigorate his life with comic and tragic results: He dates women with no interest in him, burns down his Catskills fly-fishing club, runs afoul of the law in France, and disgraces himself before family members. Just when Arthur hits the depths of despair, an eccentric suitor (a woman who happens to resemble the model on Arthur’s vitamin bottles) helps him take a leap into a wonderful unknown.

Michael Dahlie’s novel digs into the consciousness of a self-doubting everyman—a man who, with a little inspiration, just might become something of a brilliant success.

Tags: A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living, authors, books, Hemingway, hemingway/pen, idaho, Michael Dahlie, university of idaho

Teenage wunderkind Hannah Moskowitz’s novel is finally out!  And I’m not kidding when I call her a wunderkind: not only Hannah is starting school at Brown University this fall, she wrote Break in six days (yes, that’s days), and already has two other novels on submission.

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Jonah is on a mission to break every bone in his body. Everyone knows that broken bones grow back stronger than they were before. And Jonah wants to be stronger—needs to be stronger—because everything around him is falling apart. Breaking, and then healing, is Jonah’s only way to cope with the stresses of home, girls, and the world on his shoulders.

When Jonah’s self-destructive spiral accelerates and he hits rock bottom, will he find true strength or surrender to his breaking point?

“[F]or those with a taste for the macabre and an aversion to the sentimental, it’s hard not to be taken in by the book’s strong central relationships….[Break] is like a one-man Fight Club, and it could find nearly as many ardent followers” –Booklist, starred review

Tags: authors I know, bones, books for boys, break, cutting, hannah moskowitz, Jackass, self-injury, SI, YA lit