Rejection Collection - CutBank

This tasteful rejection from CutBank for my story "Those Afternoons" arrived in the mail yesterday (9 mos. after it was submitted) to remind me that it is time to send out another round of submissions. Most of the lit journals are back in action and accepting submissions again, so I'd better put some fiction in their hands. I came close last season, I felt, with some very positive rejections. Hopefully I will have some success this go around.

Man leaves dead mother in armchair for two years

Man leaves dead mother in armchair for two years - Yahoo! News:

"The man told police he could not bear to move his mother and said he never again entered the room where she was seated."

Back to Nature

We're crazy to do it with two young children, but we're going camping this weekend. I'm looking forward to that sort of escape, but since the whole house was up last night at three in the morning after strong thunderstorms passed over, I'm thinking I'm going to get much rest.

It has been a slow month, I realize. I pledge to get back into the swing of things by next month. It's only right that we slow down some in August, and things have been quiet overall, but I have some posts coming on novel revision and the idea of revealing secrets in non-fiction when your potential audience includes your wife and children. And I'm close to finishing "the project."

Litblogger on NPR

The Millions' Max Magee made an appearance on NPR last weekend identifiying his summer reads. The blog is one of my daily stops. So congrats, Max.

Sylvia Plath, artiste

One should wonder if this is really a good thing.

Sylvia Plath's unseen art, discovered in the attic

Paintings and drawings by Sylvia Plath, many of which have never been seen before, are to be published in October to mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of the American poet and novelist.

So, are they vultures simply looking to cash in, as some might say? Will they bring out her underthings for auction next?

'On the Road' Again

Viking is reissuing Kerouac's On The Road and the NYTBR felt the need to again reexamine the book, the beats, all the associated crap. But I swear that I read this article not six months ago.

I was under-whelmed when I read it (late) in my early twenties, and I'm not guessing I would think any more of it if I read it today. And who would really think the unedited 'scroll' version would be any better?

Presidential Candidates as Authors

Now if we were to judge them on their literary merits, who would we have to vote for?

Running for President Through the Bookstore - NPR

Pity the Adverb

I've never been one to follow that rule about eliminating adverbs. Sure, they sometimes describe too much. Especially when it comes to dialogue. But am I really to believe that they shouldn't be used elsewhere. What if I want to describe how someone walked across the room?

He moved vigorously towards the bar.

He moved towards the bar with vigor.

He moved towards the bar.

Which works better? Maybe if the last sentence had been set up with something about his general haste then it would be the best one. I think, though, that there are times when the first sentence is not only accurate but when it is the right sentence.

The blog at the Oxford University Press (via Ed) writes the adverbs epitaph:

The adverb is an endangered species in Modern English. One should neither wring one’s hands nor weep on hearing this news.
...
During his visit to Minneapolis after the collapse of the bridge, President Bush said: “We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible.” This is not a Bushism: few people would have used quickly here despite the fact that my computer highlighted the word and suggested the form with -ly.
...
Individual cases are hard to explain, and valid generalizations are hardly earned, but the tendency is obvious: adverbs are on the retreat in Modern English. Do it real quick has become the norm. We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible is a borderline case (quickly seems to be more appropriate). But it is enough to listen to the people around us, to observe adjectives replacing adverbs. A boy of ten comments on the speech of a person with an accent: “You are talking funny.” As ill luck would have it, the adverb funnily is rare, so that the boy had little choice. To a conservative taste he did it real good is a bit too much, but I fully realized what odds adverbs are facing only when I read in an undergraduate paper: “She sings beautiful.” On the same day I heard: “She is fragile and walks slow.” Another century or so, and the difference between those who speak good and those who speak bad will disappear. When that day comes, what will happen to the following exchange between Lady Bracknell and her nephew? “Good-afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. –I am feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. –That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.” It looks as though adjectives and adverbs also prefer to part company.

Maybe someone who has studied the way language changes over the centuries can appreciate that dropping the old -ly suffix is not necessarily a bad thing, but I've spent time as a tutor and misuse raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Of course, things are flexible in creative work, but I will defend the use of the adverb in writing and in speech. And I'm likely to correct you when you are wrong.

The Summer Reading of our Sec. of Ed.

Now, I have to admit that I went to the NPR story on the Secretary of Education's summer reading choices looking to make fun of her. As the picture above exemplifies, Bush has the hots for Sec. Spellings and I suppose I should have remembered that he likes 'em smarter than him. Look at Laura. Of course that's not really asking too much.

So, I expected fully chick-lit or plot-driving, substance-deprived thrillers, instead she smartly identified books being read in many book clubs this summer: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. And she gets extra points for also including The Master Butcher's Singing Club by Louise Erdrich.

It turns out she might be a little better than the last education secretary who called teachers' unions terrorists. I'll just have to save my ridicule for the other hundred incompetent people that surround our President.

Hitchens, the Great Literary Critic

Inspired by the absurd choice by the NYTBR to have Christopher Hitchens review the new Harry Potter, Ed Champion gives us Hitch on "Green Eggs and Ham."

I was in the children’s section of a Barnes & Noble in Stanford, Calif., shaking down the dregs from my flask and firing up a cigarette for fortitude when I was kicked out by the employees. They told me that I could not smoke or drink and that I was an evil man for practicing my habits in an apparently sacrosanct section of the store. They didn’t know I was a writer of some note, that I was the Hitch and I could write them all under the table. Literally and figuratively. I then proceeded to berate the idiot behind the counter because it amused me. He could not identify Khruschev, even when I tapped the sad sod repeatedly on the head with my heavy shoe to help him get the hint. He called the police. An arrest and a court appearance later, and I was on the phone with Sam Tanenhaus, seeing if I could write a piece that would pay my bail. He told me that I should write about Green Eggs and Ham. I could write it completely drunk if I liked. I wouldn’t be edited.

Hitch is a parody of himself and, as absurd as it might be that NYTBR might would choose this caricature to give us his self-righteous and self-aggrandising take on the cultural phenomenon of Harry Potter, I find some humor in it. And of course Ed just exploits it all.