telepathic paranoia

The Elegant Variation has an interesting guest post by Marisa Silver on the short story, and its merits relative to the longer fiction narrative.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as I’m finishing up one class on reading the short story and another on writing them.

I once counted myself among the people Silver describes – the short story haters.  At the time, I had a lot of justifications for this position (short stories are unengaging? oblique? pretentious? I forget my specific grievances), but I’ve since concluded that I didn’t like the short story because I hadn’t read any good ones.  Thankfully, I’ve been cured of that ailment.

Still, that’s not to say novels and short stories are the same, or give pleasure in the same ways.  But what, precisely, is the difference?

One theory I’ve been playing with is that a (good) novel paints character so richly and distinctively, the reader feels as if he actually knows this person.  The short story simply doesn’t have time to offer such a deep and thorough investigation of character, so it tends to rely on recognizable character “types” that are instantly grasped and intuitively understood.  I don’t mean to suggest that short form writers rely on clichés or “stock” characters – rather that they make use of people who already feel familiar to the reader, because we run across them every day.

For example, even though it’s been years since I read Lolita, I still feel like I know Humbert Humbert as well as if he were an old school friend, or my next door neighbor growing up.  (Erm… maybe I shouldn’t have gone there.)  Whereas, even though I read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love a couple of weeks ago, I can’t name a single character in the collection – what I have instead is a vivid sense of the kind of people who inhabit Carver’s world.  I don’t need to know every detail about his characters, because their situations – crumbling marriages, alcoholism, anger and hopelessness – are universal enough to be instantly understandable.

So, I don’t know about this theory.  Maybe all I’ve really said is that Raymond Carver is not Nabokov, and Nabokov is not Carver.  But as I work on writing and revising more shorts (and, of course, writing and revising novels), I find myself thinking about which characters belong in which medium.

Anyone else who has dabbled in both forms – have you found any other crucial differences between them?  Or want to dispute this one?

Tags: authors, characterization, nabokov, novels, raymond carver, short stories, the mikado, writing

[Criticism] is not a profession and does not stand or fall with any particular business model. Criticism is a habit of mind, a discipline of writing, a way of life — a commitment to the independent, open-ended exploration of works of art in relation to one another and the world around them. As such, it is always apt to be misunderstood, undervalued and at odds with itself. Artists will complain, fans will tune out, but the arguments will never end.

YES. Yes, this. I admit, I have a special soft spot in my heart for A.O. Scott, based on the random fact that he went to my high school (though not at the same time as I did). But that aside, I feel like in all the recent debate about the future of criticism — whether blogs are killing newspapers or will newspapers turn into blogs, and why should anyone trust what some shmoe in a bathrobe* tells them about a book or a movie anyway — in all that hubub, I have been waiting and waiting for someone to express this take on the matter.

All I would add to Scott’s analysis is that criticism is a kind of writing — or, fine, let’s say a “mode of discourse”, so we can include critics who use tv or youtube as their medium. But either way, it’s like any other kind of writing/discourse — the only way to judge it is by how it performs. So I know that a lot of people are shocked — shocked! — that ordinary people are allowed to leave reviews of books and movies and other products on sites like Amazon or Librarything (—>), and worse yet, other innocent consumers who don’t know any better might read these reviews and, horror or horrors, believe them. But such horror misses the point of criticism entirely. Good critics produce interesting criticism, bad critics produce dull criticism. If a review on LibraryThing is well-reasoned, well-researched, eloquent, and fully engages with the material under review and its cultural context, can’t I, as a reader, be trusted to figure that out from reading the review itself? And why shouldn’t I incorporate that review into my understanding of the text, just because the writer doesn’t happen to have a syndicated newspaper column?

But of course, that’s not the real issue at stake. And believe me, I understand that people who write reviews for a living would like to continue to get paid, and thus feel threatened by e-reviews that are produced for fun, not profit. Hey, I’d like to get paid for writing reviews too! But I don’t see why the readers of reviews should be expected to care about such an issue. Let the cream rise to the top — if newspaper reviewers are so much better at this craft than bloggers, they should have nothing to fear from us.

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*and I mean… aren’t like 90% of writers basically shmoes in our bathrobes? Well, personally I wear a sarong to write, but still.

Tags: A.O. Scott, bloggers, nytimes, print vs. blog, reviewers, reviews

Okay, I don’t have quite that many. Yet.

I’ll admit, I have a bit of a problem with names. I’ve had a few — given names, middle names, nicknames, and the like — over the course of a lifetime, but nothing has ever quite felt like me. And so, pretty much as soon as I started writing seriously, I started thinking about trading up — what would I name myself if I could pick any name in the world?

Plenty of admirable writers throughout history have been known by names other than the ones their parents gave them: Anthony Burgess, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad, George Eliot, Molière, George Orwell, just to name a few of my own favorites. In days past, authors might seek to conceal their identities from fear of political repercussions, scandal, or prejudice. Nowadays, though, pen names aren’t so common. Indeed, the whole concept seems to have fallen into ill-repute — after all, why wouldn’t you use your real name? Are you ashamed of what you write? Or are you ashamed of who you are?

But what if you’re just not wild about your name? What if you just want something a little more glamorous? A little more literary?

There is one problem with picking your own name, though: there doesn’t seem much reason to hold onto it, once it’s lost some of its shine. When my first novel went on submission to editors, I decided to call myself Alma, after Alma Werfel, whom I knew and admired primarily thanks to the Tom Lehrer song. Her name was reasonably close to mine, but more distinctive — and who wouldn’t want to make all modern women jealous?

But when that book didn’t sell, I found myself feeling distanced from the name. I still had a fine future in front of me — Alma, however, was clearly a hack.

For my next novel, I went a different direction. I’d heard a rumor that, even in this day, there were certain books that sold better from male authors, and the thought struck fear into me — what if my brilliant novel was being ignored for no better reason than my sex? Not the most likely theory, but an attractive one, because that was a much easier problem to fix than a sluggish plot. In a nod to Sand and Eliot, I took on George as my new moniker, and sent the second book out.

And when that didn’t take? I’m not going to say it was George’s fault, but he certainly didn’t help, and I’d say we’ve grown rather less fond of each other since the ordeal. So — sorry, George! But it’s off to the pen name graveyard with you.

And now here I am, set to head back out into madness, and I’m trying to change things up a bit. For once, why not stick my own name on something?

Well, it turns out there is one modern reason why an author might want to change her name. My current name brings up 4,980,000 google hits, not one of which is referring to me; Amy Ross is just too damn common in this age of electronic searches. So I’ve solved the problem by rooting around in my family history: Introducing Amy Danziger Ross, who hopefully will have the modern magic combination of being easy to spell, easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and easy to google. (And hey, it wouldn’t hurt if she sold a book this time… I’m tired of coming up with new names.)

Tags: authors, books, noms de plumes, pen names, pseudonyms, what's in a name, writing

I’m a little late, but I’ve been meaning to make a few comments about the Guardian’s compilation of Ten Rules of Writing from a host of different authors.

Sure, it’s cute to see what advice various famous authors have, and it never hurts to get a few tips on how to make this lifestyle work. But rules? Don’t most of us become writers exactly because we can’t stand following rules? It’s hard for me to imagine that the world’s next groundbreaking work of fiction is going to come from someone who always colored within the lines.

There just seems to be a lot of hubris for authors to claim they have figured out the secret of writing well, especially when it’s stuff like

Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
Fine, as long as you’re writing hard-boiled mysteries. Even Hemingway occasionally has people “ask” and “reply”.

Cut (perhaps that should be CUT): only by having no ­inessential words can every essential word be made to count.
What’s an essential word? Take this too far and suddenly you’ve cut everything… We’ll be left with no literature beyond defibrillator manuals.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.
I suppose Truman Capote was a hack. (And believe me, the inverse is definitely not true — just because you think your writing is rotten doesn’t mean you’re a secret genius.)

Don’t have children.
Do I even need to comment on this?

Look, Mr. Important Author People, we’re all very impressed with your work, and we’re all very glad you’ve figured out a routine and system that works for you. But don’t assume this is a problem that only needs to be solved once, for everyone.

Oh, but I did rather like this one, from Margaret Atwood:
Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

Now that’s writing advice! And I’ll keep it in mind on my flight to Japan tomorrow. Of course, I hate pencils and I happen to have invested in airplane-proof pens, so I guess even this rule can’t be extrapolated to everyone…

Tags: authors, japan, Margaret Atwood, ten rules, ten rules for writing, The Guardian, travel, writing

Dave Eggers, Wyndham Lewis and Hate.

I have to share this link because it references many delightful things, from early twentieth century avant garde art to Bloomsbury bashing to a book called The Jews: Are they Human? (Though I mean really, being human is so overrated…) But my favorite part of the post was the author’s little google-powered (un)popularity test. Basically, she entered a bunch of authors’ names into google as part of the phrase “I hate _____” and compared how many hits each entry got. This is thought-provoking list:

Mary Karr: 0
Donna Tartt: 0
Ben Kunkel: 0
Marisha Pessl: 1
Ayelet Waldman: 1
Jonathan Franzen: 2
Michael Chabon: 2
Richard Powers: 2
Joan Didion: 4
Elizabeth Wurtzel: 89
Zadie Smith: 102
Jonathan Safran Foer: 120
Rick Moody: 374
David Sedaris: 774
Dave Eggers: 3880

Maria Bustillo’s point is that Dave Eggers is greatly despised by random people on the internet. But of course, what it mostly seems to indicate (as Mark Athitakis points out) is that Dave Eggers is more famous and actively talked-about than many other contemporary writers. Which is what intrigues me — can fame be measured in the number of people willing to publicly loathe you? It makes some sense — Donna Tartt (to pick a name from the list at random) is pretty famous, and probably has at least a few haters out there. But would anyone come out on a website and say specifically, in writing, that they hate her? They might be tempted, but then feel bad… how sad it would be for her to google herself one morning and be confronted with their pocket of vitriol. So people keep mum.

But someone like Eggers — you figure, if he googles himself (and surely he does three times daily), he will see a LOT of sites before he finds this one, and most of them will be saying very positive things. So even if he does eventually stumble across such a post, he can probably take the blow to his ego.

So in that sense, it’s sort of telling — at what point do you become famous enough not simply to have haters, but to have haters who believe that you are sufficiently famous that there can be no harm in bashing you on the internet? I’m not sure, but I’ve just decided that this is the level of fame I am going to shoot for. This is my new ambition.

(As it happens, there’s already one site containing the words “I hate George Ross” online, but of course, it’s not referring to me. Should I claim it anyway? Only 3880 to go until I’m more famous than Dave Eggers.)

Tags: authors, Dave Eggers, Donna Tartt, fame, hate, Marissa Pessl

So lately I’ve been hearing from a lot of frustrated writers (though most recently from literary enfant terrible Steve Almond) about how the current publishing model needs to change, and we should all look to the music industry for a system that allows non-mainstream talent to find its niche and gain success.

It seems like a good analogy, at first glance. After all, writers and musicians are about equally arty, and both art forms are distributed via mass-media (as opposed to say, sculpture or… beadwork).

But as much as I love the idea of being the literary equivalent of Built to Spill or Gravy Train!!!!, I’ve spotted some crucial differences between music and literature. Musicians don’t need a label to distribute their work because they can build buzz and sell albums at shows. And it’s relatively easy for a band to get booked for small shows, because bars and clubs are desperate for talent. They won’t always pay, but at least there’s exposure and a fairly captive audience. If you’re good, it won’t be long before people notice.

Already famous authors can work a similar angle by doing local readings. But the world isn’t exactly clamouring to hear unknown authors read. The temptation for many of us is to put writing on the internet to build buzz, but the internet is the opposite of a captive audience. Only the very grabbiest, pulpiest fiction has a ghost of a chance on the internet (if produced by an unknown), and that’s very limiting.

Does it have to be this way? I don’t think so. I think it might be possible to create a world in which unknowns could read a few pages of their stuff to a room full of drunks and maybe get a little recognition, if they’re good — kind of like poetry slams, or amateur night at the Apollo, or the Gong Show. I’d personally love to see such a thing in action, but so far… I haven’t thought of any good way to make it happen.

So… I’m putting the idea out into the internet. Maybe somewhere out there is an unpublished author more desperate/enterprising than I am, and I’d be glad to jump on his bandwagon.

Tags: built to spill, desperation, fame and fortune, gravy train!!!!, indie labels, music industry, publishing, self-publishing, Steve Almond, writing

Via Mark Sarvas, I’m getting a kick out of these Life Magazine photos of famous literary lushes. I have to say, the gallery is so big it makes you wonder if anyone in the world of letters wasn’t an addict of some sort. What do we think? Do altered states aid the imagination, or does the pain of creation require self-medication? Or were they all just doing it to be fashionable? (Or, perhaps more accurately, because it’s fun?)

And of course, the far more crucial questions:

Why does William Burroughs look so fabulous at any age?

And what the hell did Truman Capote think he was doing?

Tags: alcohol, authors, books, drinking, drugs, life magazine, literary life

Just finished reading Mark Athitakis’s energizing review of David Shields’ Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, and found it unexpectedly relevant to my last post. In answer to the question, whither contemporary fiction?, Athitakis gets this out of Shields:

The mash-up, the collage, the remix—this is the stuff of the future, and this is the stuff that Shields’ great fiction of the future must embrace. More Davis and Sorrentino, less Langer and Franzen. It will be brief, it won’t pretend to hide the author, and in its formal invention it will resist all efforts to assimiliate it.

So, there we are: back at begging/borrowing/stealing our material, either from other writers or from our own lives.

The thing is, philosophically, I’m pretty much behind this idea. But as a writer? I just can’t think of that much I really want to steal. In fact, I’ve tried to insert other writers’ words into my prose, but it always stands out, looking awkward — it just doesn’t flow right with the other stuff, the stuff I’ve actually written (probably to the credit of these other authors). Is it hopelessly regressive of me to even care about things like “flow”? Maybe I should boldly flaunt the seams in my writing! But I don’t know — although I’m sure it can be well done, I don’t really find anything inherently interesting about doing that.

And then there’s the other angle, the mixing of memoir and fiction to gloriously postmodern effect. Once again, I appreciate the idea, and I’ve seen it done marvelously well (I recently read Lauren Slater’s maybe-memoir, Lying, for class and was pretty much blown away). But as a writer… God, I’m just not all that interested in my own damn life (and so I hardly expect anyone else to be). Except for little slivers here and there, it’s not a story I feel compelled to tell, even with a fictional gloss over it.

So where does that leave us, as writers? I don’t want to write what Athitakis calls “more hackneyed novels with stale plots,” and anyway, I’m not hopelessly devoted to traditional narrative. But how do you write a non-traditional narrative that doesn’t sound just like all the other non-traditional narratives of your day? How do we make it exciting, and not just a gimmick? And just how exciting and original is this concept, anyway? Didn’t Joyce and the other modernists employ pretty similar techniques? In almost a century, haven’t we come up with any new tricks? If what we want is to create something fresh and new, is borrowing the best way to do that?

Um, yeah. I don’t know. But as I try to plot out my next novel, these are the questions that stress me out.

Tags: David Shields, Lauren Slater, Lying, Mark Athitakis, modernism, postmodernism, Reality Hunger, remixing, whither the novel?

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

Turned in my new story.  And actually, I’m heading out to turn the same story in again, this time as a writing sample to get into a class taught by Steve Almond.  I’m pretty excited about it (the class, not the story.  I have mixed feelings about the story.).

So now maybe I have a minute to work on the book, in between conjuring proposals for final papers.  Hey, remember when I used to go out and do stuff?  If not, check out some pictures I took from the top of Kamiak Butte, just north of Pullman.

You have to climb through these trees to get to the top.

I’m pretty sure this is a view of Moscow Mountain, as seen from Kamiak Butte.

It is an empty, empty land.

Tags: kamiak butte, landscape, MFA program, moscow mountain, photography, scenery, Steve Almond, the palouse, university of idaho, washington