Cocktail Hour
Against a Literature of Fact (Part I. Dave’s Take.)
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 5 comments
One phrase that I’d like to bury for a while is “the literature of fact.” Though I’m a fan of John McPhee, I think those words he created have now done more harm than good. They do a disservice to all the exciting things going on in nonfiction, and they say, “Okay, you fact guys line up on one wall and you James Frey-types line up on the other.”
In the limited sense that the phrase it is too often taken, it just means a newer, shinier type of journalism, the sort of nonfiction you see reviewed in the Times. What am I suggesting in its stead? Not memoir per se. As a teacher, too much of what I see all day is some variant of “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” (or, sometimes, “What I Did on My Cancerous Summer Vacation.”) No, what I’d like to see and read is nonfiction that Continue reading →
A Goodbye to Porn
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 6 comments
I will not go as far as to make the outrageous claim that sometimes fiction is based on real events. Nor will I, as a middle-aged, respectable professor, admit to having anything but a theoretical knowledge of pornography. But….
But let’s assume for a moment that there is a boy—let’s call him George—who when he is young stumbles upon a stack of magazines in his father’s underwear drawer, and, being visually stimulated in the manner of most male homo sapiens, decides that he likes what he sees. Later George, out on his own now, will collect these magazines, though he will also be involved in relatively healthy relationships with young women, women whom he will talk to and listen to and have sex with. In his mind the pictures of naked women that he Continue reading →
Message in a Bottle
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 7 comments
Freshet
[How do your writing projects grow in conception? What have you heard back, and when? I’m looking for stories, as always. And I’ve got one to tell, as always, as always…]
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I often get emails and even letters from people who’ve found my books in libraries or summer cabins or on remainders tables years down the line, one of the great pleasures of writing, like you’d sent a message in a bottle out into the impossibly vast hitherto and gotten a reply. Okay, and recently I got a reply to a literal message in a bottle, not the first one, either. Back in the fall of 1999 I had this idea to put messages in Newcastle Brown Continue reading →
Cartoons (Minimal Reading Required)
categories: Cartoons / Cocktail Hour
comments: 5 comments
So here is the second installment of my cartoon serial, Talking to Ghosts. I hope you like it, because, frankly, it kicked my ass. I’ll never whine about how hard writing is again. At least with writing the process, even to some extent the revision process, is electrified by thought, by the fact that your mind is connected to the marks you are making on the page. With cartooning, you have the idea and sketch it down but your work is just getting started. Inking in and crosshatching, for instance, are about as scintillating as cleaning someone’s teeth. In fact, the whole process reminds me of practicing dentistry (no offense, dentists.) Continue reading →
Make My Day
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 17 comments
Annabel
What am I missing? What’s the best new reading? What’s the best old reading? Doesn’t have to be books, I suppose, though it should be portable. No—I leave it open. Books, Magazines, Websites, Books on CD or what do you call ’em, Podcasts. I’m capitalizing them all in equal respect.
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I’d like to generate some lists here. Let’s start with the twelve or so books and articles and anything else you think I should be reading this summer. Twelve weeks, is what I’m talking about.
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My favorite recent reading was Edward Hoagland’s essay in Harper’s last month: “Last Call: Old Age and the end of Nature.” It’s a lyrical and joyful and yet slightly depressed look at Continue reading →
A No-Hitter on Acid
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 3 comments
Dock Ellis
I feel good about Dallas Braden pitching only the 19th perfect game this week (especially because he hates A-Rod.) By coincidence I have been thinking recently about another astounding baseball feat, one that I consider even more impressive–more perfect–than Braden’s. I am referring, of course, to the day that Dock Ellis threw his no-hitter on acid.
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What started me thinking about good old Dock again? Oddly, it was skiing, or, more specifically, Bode Miller’s performance at the Winter Olympics. One of the oft-repeated (and increasingly irritating) story lines of those Olympics was that this was Miller’s moment of redemption, after an erratic career and the disaster of the Torino Olympics, where he famously drank too much beer and didn’t Continue reading →
Land of Giants!
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
comments: 22 comments
[Update: May 12. Some good title ideas coming in. How about the Giant Side? No–sounds like a rib restaurant. It’s still The High Side for now… That’s the name of the vast mansion and estate in the book–If I could think of a great name for a vast mansion and estate that would also be a great novel title, I’d happily make all the changes–any more ideas out there?] [Update: May 11. Land of Giants turns out to be what they call San Francisco… Just isn’t quite gonna work… How about just GIANT? No, it doesn’t work at all the same way… Okay, back to The High Side for now… And off to ten editors tomorrow with a great note from Betsy, framing it as I never could… Whatever happens, Later in the summer, cocktails with all you New York readers… Alaska in June.] [Original Post: May 10]: I’ve recently finished a new novel—four solid years worth of drafting and revisions and moaning and groaning trying to make it look effortless, characters I love. The working titlehas been The High Side, but I’m not terribly happy with that. Land Continue reading →
Bird People
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 5 comments
I sent Jonathan Franzen the link to my last post, and he sent along a nice note, saying my piece had been “even-handed,” and he made only a couple small digs at me for taking thorough notes on our birding excursion. He claimed to have never read the vicious Times reviews before—hard to believe but perhaps he was warned– which made me the bearer of ugly news. One other afterthought on the piece: a few people said it read like a defense of
Franzen, and I suppose it is, but I should add that one of my favorite essays in the last decade (and one that I would include were it my job to Continue reading →
In and Out of the Audience
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 4 comments
Rick, Billy, Tommy, 1967
Late to the game, I’m fascinated with the level of collaboration a service like Facebook promises, and more and more I’m pleased with the prospects of new kinds of audiences and new kinds of art the Internet promises in general, new experiences for me as both reader and writer, and new definitions of reading altogether. And my vision is changing, and I don’t only mean these reading glasses: my artistic vision is changing. I did an interview a few years Continue reading →
Jonathan Franzen and the Great Swamp Warbler
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
comments: 9 comments
(Roorbach, Gessner, Franzen)
My brief relationship with Jonathan Franzen began, like his own rise to fame, with a triumph and a blunder. In March he flew down here to our southern University to give a talk, and as our creative writing department’s token nature writer, I was drafted to fulfill his one unusual demand. His request was not to be picked up at the airport by a limo, or to have six down pillows on his feathered bed, though what he asked for would be considered by many equally if not more eccentric: He wanted to see a brown-headed nuthatch. Really. He had done his homework and knew that the pine forests near our school were the perfect habitat for Sitta pusilla, the tiny good-natured bird that has the odd habit of working its way down trees upside down while pecking at bark. And so I did my homework, too, calling Continue reading →
