12 July, 2008 | 3 Comments

“Few men since Flaubert have offered such sympathy to women whose lives are hell.”

–Kurt Vonnegut on The Easter Parade

I stayed up until 5:00 this morning to finish reading this novel. This is a big deal, since I haven’t been able to read a novel since returning from my trip. I start books, then abandon them. I also haven’t been writing. It’s been a rough few weeks.

The Easter Parade affected me in a powerful way, which was a bit of a shock, actually. As I was reading it, I was pulled along, but the characters started to get on my nerves. It’s the story of two sisters, Sarah and Emily. Though it’s a short novel, it spans about 40 years, from the 1930s to the 1970s. Yates is a master realist and we mainly get various episodes of the sister’s lives, primarily Emily’s life. Sarah’s life is truly heartbreaking, though you don’t know it until you’re deep into the novel. The story is told mostly from Emily’s perspective and focuses a great deal on her heavy drinking and many love affairs. After a while, it was like — Okay, we get it. You’re a drunk and you like to sleep around! I was getting annoyed with the repetitiveness of it.

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11 July, 2008 | 1 Comment

It has a fabulous first line:

“Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.”

–The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

10 July, 2008 | 7 Comments

Literary blogs are buzzing this week with the news that Jhumpa Lahiri has won the Frank O’Connor short story prize — a major literary award worth £27,000. The fact that she won isn’t surprising, but what’s making news is that the judges announced they will not produce a shortlist of books that will compete for the top prize, as is the norm. No, they’ve bypassed the shortlist and just given the award to Lahiri for her new collection, Unaccustomed Earth. Apparently, no one could match her brilliance, so why bother having a shortlist. This means that the writers who would have gotten valuable media exposure from being on the shortlist will now get nothing. The judges claim they didn’t want to put other writers through the stress and suspense of being shortlisted, when it was a foregone conclusion that Lahiri would win. As if anyone on the shortlist would have been stupid enough to think they were going to win with Lahiri there. At least they could have gotten a little publicity for their work, which is important given that short stories are largely ignored by readers and the media nowadays — those short stories not written by Lahiri, that is.

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20 June, 2008 | 1 Comment

I finished reading Kafka’s “The Trial” a few days ago. The last line of that book is going to haunt me for a long, long time.

8 June, 2008 | 1 Comment

Deciding which books to take on holiday is a big decision. Here is what I’ve decided on:

The Diary of Anne Frank. This is one of my favorite books. I haven’t read it for about 10 years. Not only do I want to re-read it because I’m going to Amsterdam, but my novel makes reference to it as well and I need to revisit it. The last time I read this book it had a profound effect on me.

The Complete Novels of Kafka. This book is way too fat to take on holiday, but price-wise it was a much better bargain than buying all three novels separately. I am visiting Prague, so I want to read Kafka. I’ve only read his short stories. I want to read The Trial first and then I’ll decide whether to read the other novels now or later.

I look forward to reading these books while I’m traveling. I know this material is a bit dark for a summer holiday, but then…you know me.

29 May, 2008 | 1 Comment

..and other literary news presented here in this little round-up. I’ll save my own tragedy for last, thank you.

Formerly respectable literary writer Sebastian Faulks has penned the new James Bond novel, which is getting way too much media attention around here. The villain, who has a “Baltic accent,” is introduced like this: “To cut a long story short, he hated England because he felt it had laughed at him, and he decided to devote his life to destroying it.” I can’t wait to read the rest of this!

Much has been made of Hanif Kureishi’s “attack” on university writing programs (MAs in the UK, mostly MFAs in the US). If you actually read what he said, it’s not an attack, but that didn’t stop many literary bloggers from gleefully running with this story to suit their own purposes. Kureishi called creative writing programs “the new mental hospitals,” saying that, “When you switch on the television and a student has gone mad with a machine gun on a campus in America, it’s always a writing student.” Since when has sanity been a pre-requisite for being a writer? That bit of headline-grabbing hyperbole aside, Kureishi’s argument, as I read it, is that university creative writing programs may set up false expectations in students who think they are going to get published or get a teaching career out of their degree and that these students are bound to be disappointed. I agree with him completely on this point and it’s something money-hungry universities need to address. But I don’t think Kureishi was saying that creative writing has no place in academia, given that he teaches in a program himself. You cannot literally teach someone how to write fiction or poetry, but that’s not what writing programs aim to do. I should know — unlike many of those pontificating on the subject in the blogosphere, I have an MFA.

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5 May, 2008 | 5 Comments

I went to a conference recently called Narratives in Transition: Literary and Cultural Change since 1989. I only went because I needed to fill my quota of conferences and seminars for the year, but it turned out to be a fantastic experience. Not only was it super informative, but it felt good to get out of the house and mingle with actual humans. Now that I have become a full-time writer, I am essentially a recluse, which is a bit sad. Note to self: Attend more conferences. Did I mention there were lots of cute thirtysomething English professors there? By “English professor” I don’t mean “professor who is English” but rather “professor who teaches English,” even though they were all English anyway.

During one of the many coffee breaks (where I ate too much shortbread), one of these gents taught me how to pronounce Toibin, as in Colm Toibin, the Irish writer. The answer is: Toe-bean. Ahhh, one of life’s mysteries solved. [There was still, however, much disagreement over how to pronounce Coetzee. I'm getting tired of this debate. I suggest someone get Coetzee's phone number and call him. He'd either answer the phone (doubtful) or even better, his voicemail would pick up: "Hello, this is J.M. ---. I'm not home right now, please leave a message." Problem solved.]

Anyway, on to the substance of the conference. There was a lot of discussion regarding narratives of trauma. I am particularly interested in this, since the narrator of my novel has suffered a trauma and it’s difficult to portray this in a way that is not self-pitying. While the conference was primarily academic in that it was aimed at scholars, not practitioners of creative writing like me, I got many good ideas and insights into my own work.

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1 May, 2008 | 6 Comments

Someone please explain the appeal of Ian McEwan to me. Please. I beg you.

I just finished reading Enduring Love. I have never read a McEwan novel before, but I did see the film adaptation of Atonement (which I found to be problematic on many levels). I attended a conference recently during which someone gave a paper on McEwan and his name kept coming up in the ‘q and a’ discussion of other panels. Mainly, people where amused that McEwan’s name seems to be synonymous with “contemporary literary fiction” these days. Everyone was wondering how this happened, not so much as a comment on the quality of his work, but just marveling at his ascendancy to such a supreme place in the public’s literary consciousness.

After the conference, I was in a bookshop and decided to browse through a few of his novels. Enduring Love caught my eye because it has a first-person narrator. My novel is told in the first-person and I’m always on the lookout for good first-person novels. I hesitated, since I had seen the film version of Enduring Love and didn’t like it, but I decided I needed to read something by McEwan so I gave it a go.

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27 April, 2008 | 3 Comments

Do you have an account on LibraryThing? It’s a website for literary nerds where you can catalog all your books, then compare your library to those of your friends and other users, rate books, write reviews, etc. I’ve used LibraryThing to catalog my books, but I rarely use the other features. [See selections from my library floating over there in the left sidebar.] LibraryThing isn’t really designed in a great way. It’s nothing compared to a website like Flickr, for example, but I think it’s a work-in-progress. They should hire me to retool it. I’d make it much better.

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26 April, 2008 | 11 Comments

Jason Shinder was a poet who taught at Bennington College, where I did my MFA in creative writing. I didn’t study with him since I’m not a poet, but he was a really sweet and talented guy. One of my fondest memories of graduation from Bennington was when Jason, who was the faculty member chosen to read our names out as we came up to get our diplomas, actually pronounced my name correctly. No one ever says my name correctly at events like these, but he was intent on getting it right. I was so happy that I gave him a hug right there on the stage. For some reason, I’ll always remember that.

Too many people from Bennington have died. It’s really difficult to even comprehend. I wish Jason’s family and friends all the best during this difficult time.

Click through to read one of Jason’s poems:

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10 April, 2008 | 1 Comment

I’ve made a goal to finish my book by September. This will then give me a year to revise it and to write the critical material that needs to accompany it for my PhD. I am anxious to finish this book since it has been a part of my life for so long. But also, writing this book is a struggle and I will be glad to put it behind me. It deals with many difficult themes, some of which are very personal to me and very painful to think about. Other themes in the book, while perhaps not related to me personally, are still dark and depressing. I’ve often suspected that part of my resistance to this project over the years has been due to the fact that the subject matter is not pleasant and I simply don’t want to think about it. Given this, you can imagine what writing full-time and thinking about these themes all day is like for me on an emotional level.

I can only explain it like this: Imagine some painful memories from your past, things that cause you a great deal of pain, things you’d rather not think about because it’s too horrible. Now imagine dwelling on these issues intensely for five to six hours each day. Not only that, but even when you aren’t specifically thinking about them, they are always at the back of your mind. Any psychologist would tell you that this is not a healthy way to live. In fact, it’s probably a sure-fire recipe for going completely batty. Now I understand why so many writers go crazy.

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4 April, 2008 | 1 Comment

You know I quit my teaching job so I could write full-time. Well, I’m pleased to report that I am actually writing — and for hours each day. No one is more surprised at this turn of events than me. I worried that I would stare at the computer screen all day and have a complete breakdown (and admit it — you probably thought that would happen to me too). But no, so far I am kicking ass.

This writing full-time thingy is interesting. It certainly changes the writing process and my relationship to it. I am a very undisciplined writer and normally I would only write when I was “in the mood.” There are benefits to doing this — when you’re “in the mood” or “feeling inspired,” writing can be great fun, even exhilarating. Writing each day regardless of what mood you’re in is not great fun — it’s hard work. I spent most of yesterday working on two long paragraphs (about one page). It was a frustrating process and it gave me a headache and there were times when I thought I was going to die (perhaps by my own hand), but I kept working at it and by the end of the day I had something that’s pretty good. I used to feel that my best, most inspired work was the result of a visit by the muse, but now I think I can get the same results by just rolling up my sleeves and putting in the hours, even if it’s a painful process. This is a big realization for me. Now I understand why my supervisor suggested that writing full-time would boost my confidence. Perhaps as a full-time writer, I won’t be held hostage to the extreme ups and downs I experienced before. I’ll have more of a routine and this will be more like a job. I think the confidence will come from feeling that I have some control over this process.

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31 March, 2008 | 1 Comment

After hailing a taxi on Euston Road in the middle of the night, I said to the taxi driver while standing on the curb: “Excuse me! Can you take someone to hospital, please? It’s urgent!”

Taxi driver to me: “Not if there’s any blood I won’t!”

“There’s not any blood. Will you take him or not?”

“Yeah, get in.”

28 March, 2008 | 2 Comments

I am reading contemporary fiction by men these days. As part of my PhD, I have to write a critical commentary on my own novel. I have to start with what inspired me. So what was the inspiration for my decidedly feminist book? Fight Club. Yes, that’s right. In 1999 I was living in Brooklyn and one evening I went to see the movie adaptation of Fight Club. As I came out of the theater, I felt elated. I’d never seen anything like Fight Club before. I walked home through the streets of Park Slope (I can still remember this so vividly) and I knew that Gen-X women needed their own Fight Club — and I was going to write it.

By this I don’t mean that I wanted to write a book about women beating the crap out of each other. Fight Club very explicitly deals with notions of masculinity and what it means to be a man today. It does this in a bold, political way. The message of the movie and the book is convoluted and a bit of a train wreck, but I admired what it was trying to do. It was attempting to say something about the screwed-up world we live in and a man’s place in it. I wanted to write a book about what it means to be female with the same political in-your-face vigor that’s present in Fight Club. I just did not see any books by Gen-X women that were even attempting to do this. Nearly a decade later, I still don’t see any.

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16 March, 2008 | Comments

this story from the onion.

10 March, 2008 | 3 Comments

“I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.”

–from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

4 February, 2008 | 11 Comments

Tonight I feel like an unlovable hideous freak. I am starting to believe that I am actually unlovable, that I have some sort of defect, that I should return myself to the shop and exchange myself for a newer, better version. The universe keeps sending me this message. I think I’ve gotten it by now. Loud and clear. Thanksverymuch.

I don’t know why I bother.

Tonight I read some poetry. This is one of my favorite poems. It takes my breath away, always.

“Accidents of Birth”

–William Meredith

Spared by a car — or airplane-crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.
For I’ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I’ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world’s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
But it’s not this random
life only, throwing its sensual
astonishments upside down on
the bloody membranes behind my eyeballs,
not just me being here again, old
needer, looking for someone to need,
but you, up from the clay yourself,
as luck would have it, and inching
over the same little segment of earth-
ball, in the same little eon, to
meet in a room, alive in our skins,
and the whole galaxy gaping there
and the centuries whining like gnats —
you, to teach me to see it, to see
it with you, and to offer somebody
uncomprehending, impudent thanks.

25 January, 2008 | 4 Comments

One of the great things about doing a PhD in creative writing is that you can email your supervisor and tell him/her that you haven’t produced anything since Christmas because you have writer’s block. You can then add that you have lost all your confidence, that you feel your writing sucks and that you’re desperately unhappy about it.

If you’re going to law school or doing a PhD in economics or something like that, you’d never send such a note to anyone in your department. If you did, you’d likely never be able to show your face again. But that’s the great thing about being a creative writer — it’s acceptable to admit you’re filled with angst and having a meltdown over your work. Writers aren’t expected to be normal and well-adjusted. Plus, these people are reading my novel, which is filled with weird sh*t; some of it comes from my life and some of it is completely made up, but it still comes from my brain — it’s like my thoughts and feelings and fears and desires laid bare. Being a writer of literary fiction means being exposed in all sorts of uncomfortable ways.  It can be embarrassing.  Since they’ve seen me exposed already, why pretend that everything is okay when it’s not? It’s not like this is a normal professional/academic relationship. Being open about my state of mind is all part of the continuing humiliation I must endure as a writer.

Though I can admit I have writer’s block and joke about it, it’s really quite painful to go through. What I mean by writer’s block is not that I can’t write at all (obviously I’m writing this) but that I can’t access my creative self in any real way and that’s what I need to write at the level required by a novel. Writing a novel isn’t just about putting words on the page — it’s about putting a whole world on the page. It’s creating a world through words, a world that only exists in the writer’s mind. I was doing well before Christmas and I think the holidays were the problem. I got out of my routine and lost the spark I had. Also, it’s January and I never function well during this, the cruelest month. I know I’ll get through this drought, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with day by day. This morning I was curled up in a ball on my bed. Not being able to write feels like an ache, like a physical pain. I wish it would go away.

6 December, 2007 | 6 Comments

The Washington Post and the New York Times have both released their lists of the top books of 2007 (as if we wait all year with breathless excitement to see what these bunch of hosers will recommend). Neither newspaper chose a single novel by a woman. That’s right. In the year 2007, you had to have a penis to write a great novel.

The nation’s two most prestigious newspapers apparently had no qualms whatsoever about excluding women from their Top 5 “best of” fiction lists. Anyone who knows anything about the literary establishment knows that it is terribly misogynist. This is not news, which is probably why the female-free lists have not made news that I have seen. We just expect it.

Well, as a woman who is writing a novel, I cannot let this pass without comment. At least once a year I have to do a post on the sorry state of affairs in the literary world and since 2007 is almost over, voila.

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30 November, 2007 | 5 Comments

my desk (with my favorite pig mug)

I’ve had a long week. Last night I got very little sleep because…[content edited by Anglofille 2/01/08]…
It’s almost the end of term. As a teacher, this means essay marking and exam prep. As a student, it means working towards completing all that I can before the Christmas break. The past couple weeks I hit a rough patch with my novel. Like most writers, I vacillate between thinking I’m a genius and thinking I’m a talentless hack who will never amount to anything. That’s the writing life.

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