Cocktail Hour
The Four Easy Steps to Becoming a Writer
categories: Cocktail Hour
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We are thrilled to announce the publication of old friend Daren Dean’s novel Far Beyond the Pale. It was great years ago when I first read it and I know it’s even greater now. Click here to find out more from Fiction Southeast.
Bad Advice Wednesday: How Not to Write a Fan Letter
categories: Cocktail Hour
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As anyone who has ever been in a writing workshop knows, you say the nice stuff first and slide in the criticism in later. Apparently, this is not common knowledge in the world beyond workshop walls. At least not based on some of the letters I’ve gotten about my new book this summer. Purportedly these are “fan letters,” though some of them stretch that definition.
Here’s an example from a letter I got last week:
Dear David,
I recently bought a copy of “All the Wild that Remains.” Although I thought it got off-track and dragged a bit in spots (sorry!), overall I enjoyed it…”
How exactly should I respond to that? Well, I can tell you how I did respond: I stopped reading (sorry!). Which brings me back to my point about the workshop model being a good one here. If your real reason for writing an author is to criticize their work, then maybe at least Trojan-horse that in later and say some nice stuff first. It’s a Miss Manners kind of thing.
For the purpose of this blog post, which I know is kind of off-track and draggy in spots, I did go back and skim the Continue reading →
Lundgren’s Lounge: “Cloudsplitter,” by Russell Banks
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Russell Banks
Upon recently finishing Cloudsplitter, by Russell Banks, I began to think about who are the best living American novelists. My reflections led to the Internet where, surprise, surprise, there were endless and varied lists. There was unanimity only regarding the upper echelon: Pynchon, Roth, and Morrison. Russell Bankswas nowhere to be found on any of these lists, an egregious and inexplicable omission.
Night at the Movies: “The End of the Tour”
categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies
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Just came from “The End of the Tour,” the new movie based on a failed Rolling Stone story by David Lipsky, who joined the end of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” tour 12 years before Wallace’s terrible suicide. It’s movie of little movement, mostly two guys talking, one in the throes of huge new fame, the other not there or ever going to be, and jealous, and yet it’s more gripping than the thriller we saw next in our Monday thunder double header, no need to mention. It’s funny, charming, dark, and portrays two layered and unequal men jousting. As the decades pass, only one of them gets to live and tell the story. A great movie, especially for the writers among us, so much to think about, though no doubt aficionados of the late great savant will find plenty to complain about, while his haters will continue to hate. But that should be even more fun. Go see it. Continue reading →
Table For Two: An Interview with T.C. Boyle
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence / Table For Two: Interviews
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Debora Black: You always seem to be having a really good time writing your characters and their situations—even when the subject matter wouldn’t suggest a good time. But you like to toy with things, amp up a situation and play it out. In your latest novel, The Harder They Come, you transform sunny California, its middle-class inhabitants, and their American ideals into a war zone. What compelled you to write this story?
Good Advice Thursday: Authors, Keep your Copyrights!
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Most agents and many writers know to strike any clause in a contract that gives away copyright, but not all. Here, from the Author’s Guild (which you might want to join if you’re not already a member) is the straight poop on a terrible practice that seems to be growing. And ask your university press to cut it out. You can also read it here, on the Author’s Guild website. [Used by permission.]
Authors should not assign their copyrights to publishers. As our Model Contract emphasizes:
“CAUTION: Do not allow the publisher to take your copyright or to publish the copyright notice in any name other than yours. Except in very unusual circumstances, this practice is not standard in the industry and harms your economic interests. No reputable publisher should demand that you allow it to do so.” Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Once More to the Beach (a photo haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside / Photo Haiku
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Bad Advice Wednesday: Summer Writing
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Americans who weren’t rich started taking vacations before the civil war, and by the turn of the 20th Century, the middle class vacation had been perfected to an art form. Already at that time there were newspaper articles and library recommendations for summer reading, and already the summer reading recommendations were for fiction, preferably light, plot-driven, no “heavy biographies.” But let me propose something I’ve been trying to perfect into an art form: summer writing. Continue reading →
Guy at the Bar: Vince Passaro on the Passing of E. L. Doctorow
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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E. L. Doctorow
E.L. Doctorow departed from us this week, succumbing to lung cancer complications at the age of 84. It was my good fortune to meet him in the early 1990s and share a few brief conversations with him in the years that followed. There was an expression used among the elders on my Italian side: mal’ a visage, mal’ di cuore, buon’ a visage, buon’ di cuore, which means basically that the heart shows on the face. Doctorow – Ed to his friends – had that kind of expressive face; a moment’s engagement with him and you knew you were dealing with a thoughtful, polite, supremely gentle human being. A tall man, he never loomed, always stooped a little for those of us who couldn’t breathe the air up there where he was.
Lundgren’s Lounge: “The Brothers: The Road To An American Tragedy,” by Masha Gessen
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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The universal response to the Boston Marathon bombings was revulsion, horror and incomprehension. The media’s talking heads incessantly characterized the Tsarnev brothers as Islamic terrorists/jihadists. In her account of the circumstances leading up to and the emotional aftermath of the bombing, journalist Masha Gessen offers up a more thoughtful and nuanced perspective on the causes of the tragedy and its broader implications in, The Brothers: The Road To An American Tragedy. Continue reading →
