Cocktail Hour
The Downstream Dog
categories: Cocktail Hour
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When Nina and I first met, over twenty years ago, she had a dog named Zeke. Zeke was part collie, part Saint Bernard, and while fiercely loyal to Nina (and eventually me), he tended to be pretty ornery to others. In those days Nina and Zeke were always together, and it was only natural that when she set out to write a children’s book her subject was Zeke. I just cleaned out the garbage and found that old book, though she won’t let me re-print it here. But I will re-print the drawings I did to accompany the story of the day Zeke floated downstream.
Backwoods Jack!
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 3 comments
I have never been a fan of writing exercises. Back in school, I would immediately freeze up when asked to do one in class. I couldn’t write on demand, after all, I was a young genius and so I wrote when inspired or when alone in my study. Well, the other day I had the opportunity to sit in on a class where an exercise was given and I went ahead and did it. I won’t tell you what the exact prompt was, since that is the intellectual property of the teacher, but the prompt worked–it prompted. And I found myself beginning a short essay on a subject I have never written about: the history of my troubling teeth. Here is how it starts:
I stare at the hard, green apple and I think of my teeth. More accurately, of the history of my teeth. It is not a pretty history. Were I to bite into the apple’s shining surface, a full chomping bite, I would surely leave one of those teeth–likely my fake right front–in the fruit’s hard flesh.
Just the way I, by the way, left it many years ago in the skull of an ultimate Frisbee player who was guarding me. It was freshman year of college and we both went up for the disc. I went higher and when I landed came down right on top of him. We both found ourselves writhing on the ground. I, suddenly toothless, and he with a piece of tooth jutting out of the top of his skull.
Bad Advice Wednesday: Embrace the Dread!
categories: Cocktail Hour
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From Dave: On Monday I wrote a couple of sentences on Facebook: “The weather is beautiful and fall-like. And I full of dread.” (I forgot the “am” before dread by mistake, then decided I liked it.) John Lane, today’s guest poster, suggested I “embrace the dread.” I liked that, both catchier and more moral than “spread the dread.” All humans deal with that unspecified feeling that something unpleasant is looming, but maybe writers, sitting alone with their brains, deal with it a tiny bit more than most.
Here is John’s not-so-bad advice to me:
Dear David, you write to say you are full of dread. You say dread clings vaguely to the coming publication of your book on Ed Abbey and Wallace Stegner, for which you have recently turned in a final manuscript. Though the weather is pure and fall-like in Wilmington, you sense something looming, something darker than the mere passing of the task of preparing a manuscript for its final submission. I imagine you feel a little like coyote feels with that anvil hanging over the head.
Getting Outside Saturday: 5K!
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Hadley and I ran a 5k this morning. The good news is that I’m still alive. She couldn’t match her amazing time of the fall but still managed a very respectable 28: 18. I came stumbling in fifteen seconds later.
Nice rooster hair….
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “Euphoria,” by Lily King
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
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Lily’s King’s newest novel Euphoria, is an instance of a writer at the height of her creative powers. Based loosely on an imagined episode in the live of anthropologist Margaret Mead, what the artistry of King conjures up for her readers in Euphoria is a work of historical fiction that soars far beyond the limiting strictures of historical details to enter into the luminous interior life of an extraordinary individual. Continue reading →
Feeling Low
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Good old Cape Cod. Take a look at this picture and then take a look at this, Monday’s NYT piece on the scientific study of the melting of the West Antarctica ice sheet. (Then draw your own conclusions.)
Getting Outside Saturday: Where’s Bildo?
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Only Three Spots Left!
categories: Cocktail Hour
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My Harvard Summer Class is almost full. Don’t miss out on the pontificatin’.
Here’s the Sillybus. It’s rough so let me know if you see any typos.
David Gessner
ADVANCED CREATIVE NONFICTION
Office Hours:
This workshop focuses on writing and reading creative nonfiction, a genre which includes and often combines the personal essay, memoir, journalism, nature writing, and the lyric essay.
Books:
The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate
This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
Pulphead by John Sullivan
Requirements:
1. Two completed nonfiction pieces, one of which should be entirely new to this class and which will have been substantially revised by the end of the term. A cover letter detailing the process of revision should accompany the final revised piece.
The Carolina Follies Part XV: Highlights from the Primary
categories: Cocktail Hour
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