Cocktail Hour
Final Four Lit Mag Update
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VOTING FOR THE SEMIS WILL END AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT: SEMI RESULTS POSTED FRIDAY!
VOTING FOR FINALS WILL END SUNDAY MIDNIGHT: RESULTS POSTED MONDAY!
Bad Advice Wednesday:The Art of the Disclaimer
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The toxins from the snake bite from the Costa Rican jungle have briefly rendered Bill incapable of writing Bad Advice (and made him pronounce his Ss in a sibilant fashion.) So I, heroically, must step in at the last minute……I’ve already picked at the carcass of this essay for my cartoon piece on nonfiction and my Truth essay, but, meager as it is, it’s all I got……
The Art of the Disclaimer
Before I begin this short, insignificant essay (which I only dashed off this morning) I must first tell you that what follows is only partly true, and that though I have tried my best to make it interesting, my imagination is weak and my powers humble. Also, I tend to ramble.
The disclaimer or apologia or note to the reader, of which the above is an example, has a long, proud history in literary nonfiction, dating back to the cave no doubt, but best exemplified by Montaigne in the 1580s, whose rambling essays often read like one long disclaimer. Of course James Frey recently tried his hand at this sub-genre, and with the note to the reader that his publishers have attached to the front of A Million Little Pieces, has demonstrated that there is yet another way in which he seems entirely incapable of telling the truth. At best a disclaimer should be an eye-to-eye talk with the author before the story begins, an honest laying of cards on the table. Though historically some courtly bowing and scraping have intruded on the form, and some excessive humility have falsified it, the one thing the writer of a disclaimer can’t do, above all, is posture. Continue reading →
The Final Four Literary Magazines
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The Finals are set: The Georgia Review vs. The Paris Review. The voting has been extended to midnight Monday April9th. Please vote for the finals in the comments section on this page. You don’t have to be as witty as last time. (We expect a much lower scoring game.)
Our scoring system is simple. Each vote equals 2 points. No 3-pointers.
VOTING FOR THE SEMIS WILL END AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT: SEMI RESULTS POSTED FRIDAY
VOTING FOR FINALS WILL END MONDAY MIDNIGHT.
Every year here at Bill and Dave’s we have our own version of March Madness. We take 64 of the best small literary magazines and let them play it out, no holds barred, determining unequivocally the best small magazine in the country. I don’t know if you’ve been following this year’s satellite video feed over at LSPN, but things can get ugly, and last week after their big win over The Believer, the fans down in Athens burned their copies of the Chicago Manuel of Style. Their passion can be forgiven; it truly is mad when literary journals go at it. For instance no one who witnessed it will ever forget the bloody war in the Southern Regionals, when the Oxford American hung on against their bitter rival Garden and Gun.
OA will now take on another program with a shining pedigree, The Paris Review, in what promises to be a battle of titans. The surprises this year are all on the other side of the bracket. Many thought that the Georgia program had grown too old and could never return to its glory days under coach Lindberg, but their execution has been flawless, and they play a measured style that has everyone buzzing about the old days. The real Cinderella story of the tourney, however, has been Ecotone, a tiny program that, thanks in part to the recruiting pull of recent grad (and power forward) Edith Pearlman, has made a surprising run, littering the courts with higher seeds. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Wren Cam–Day 5
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Here’s the latest from the lives of the young Carolina wrens. They are basically all mouth. Mom and Dad fly into the shack, brandishing insects in their bills, and feed the maw(s). Then, briefly, the squeeze toy squeaking subsides. Beginning again soon enough……
Click here for footage of young wrens: 010
Has Spring Sprung Early?
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This morning the newborn Carolina wrens are busy begging for food. A hundred feet in front of me a mute swan has built a much larger nest. Meanwhile last week I heard (but did not see) a painted bunting, a bird aflame with color that has come back from points south far too early.
“Phenology,” writes Jack Turner, “is the study of the mature naturalist.” And what is phenology? The discipline of watching phenomena change as the seasons turn. I remember my personal highlight as a phenologist. It was fall and we were living on the beach on Cape Cod, and after a walk I said to my wife, “The seals should be back soon.” Each summer “our” seals migrated to the cooler waters of the Gulf of Maine, and each fall they migrated back.
The next day, walking again, I saw that the seals were indeed back, loafing on the offshore rocks. I couldn’t have been more thrilled by a promotion at work — and in a way, that’s just what it was.
Wren Cam: Day 2
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You asked for it and we gave it to you…..live from the shack. A Bill and Dave production. Day 2 in the life of the Carolina Wrens….
Click here: 003
Nature Photographer: Nina de Gramont.
Getting Outside Saturday: “Scioto Blues”
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The Scioto and Downtown Columbus
[This essay is from my book Into Woods and originally appeared in The Missouri Review. Later, Harper’s picked up an excerpt for their “Readings” section. It was written in about 1998, and since then I’ve developed a much fonder feeling for Columbus.]
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Scioto Blues
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If you move to Columbus, Ohio, from Farmington, Maine, you will not be impressed by the landscape. It’s flat around Columbus and the pre-prairie rivers move sluggish and brown. In Maine you pick out the height of flood on, say, the Sandy River, by the damage to tree trunks and the spookily exact plane made by ice and roaring current tearing off the lowest branches of riverside trees. In Columbus you pick out the height of flood on the Olentangy or Scioto rivers Continue reading →
The Wren in the Writing Shack III.
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I finally have some photos to post of the wren nesting inside my writing shack. Yesterday Kate Miles visited us here in Wilmington. Kate is the author of the essay, “Dog is my Co-Pilot,” that appeared in both Ecotone and Best American Essays, and of the book, Adventures with Ari.
Anyway, Kate had already seen the jelly bean-sized eggs that were in the nest, and we were sitting in the shack and sipping beers and staring out at the nesting swan on the marsh, when the wren flew in, landed on the stick that Hadley calls “the wolf’s leg,” checked us out, tilted its tail, and hoped into the nest. And the bird turns out not to be photo shy. Here are the results…..
Nothing But the Truth!……Or Maybe Not…..
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I swore I would not be drawn into the latest round of the “truth in non-fiction” debate, but as someone who makes their living teaching “creative nonfiction” it’s hard not to give in to the pull. The other day I wrote a comment on Brevity’s Facebook page: “The truth (!) is that if you have worked in this genre for a while it is really quite easy to be both artful and accurate. A simple introductory phrase, a framing, takes care of everything. It’s a joke really. Like listening to skiers on the bunny slope debating about what it might be like to go down the black diamond trail…….”
I have grown increasingly strict with myself when it comes to my work. But I’m not so strict with others. A few years ago I was on panel about just this subject with three other writers, Philip Gerard, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Bill Roorbach (aka Bill). Quite accidentally we sat ourselves down at the table in the order, from right to left, that we believed that nonfiction must be factually accurate. I believe Philip sat on the far right, John next, then me, and Bill on the far left. Philip is a friend and I just had the pleasure of reading his great new book of essays (The Patron Saint of Dreams, published by Hub City Press) but he was once a journalist and so doesn’t see why it’s so hard to be both artistic and accurate. And why not? My own position has moved steadily in the direction of fact, to the point where if the panel were held today I might be sitting on Philip’s lap.
But I still respect Bill’s refusal to heed the more strident orders of the fact police, and his insistence that this is a genre that should be subjected to standards of its own, not those of journalism. The most obvious example is remembered dialogue from childhood, which brings us right back into the hazy halls of memory.
That said, anything of that sort can be handled with proper framing, as I suggested in my Brevity comment.
