“With more than 40 works, five Man Booker nominations and a win under her belt, does she consider herself prolific? She scoffs at the word. “Joyce Carol Oates is prolific; I’m just old,” she says, drawing out the last word for laughs. At 75, she says writing hasn’t become any easier, listing her main distractions as laundry and emails. She sets herself a “schedule of pages rather than a schedule of times” aiming to write three to five pages a day. “You can cheat by increasing the type size,” she says. “Then you get really motivated and feel like you’re really speeding along.””
MAPPING
Narrative method, mythical shapes, hysterical realism, literary maximalism, codified things, unauthentic representation.
2 minutes and 11 seconds.
Remembering Spalding
reblogging sundancearchives:
“Today, June 5, would have been Spalding Gray’s 74th birthday. Known for his monologues–funny, sad, neurotic, and deeply human–his influence at Sundance Institute remains strong, even eleven years after his death.
“Spalding served as the emcee of the 1992 Sundance Film Festival’s award ceremony, the same year that the film version of his one-man show Monster in a Box, about his experience writing his first novel, had its US premiere at the Festival. The top photo, from a shoot by @thatrickmcginnis two years prior, captures Spalding with the enormous manuscript that was at least one of the monsters in his life. (Rick’s blog post about the shoot is itself a great portrait of Spalding’s persona.)
“Several other Festival films featured Spalding in some role; one that seems particularly fitting is Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon’s documentary Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud, in which Spalding read the writings of his fellow iconoclast. And Spalding’s influence extends to alumni, as well; he became friends with Steven Soderbergh after Soderbergh directed his 1996 film Gray’s Anatomy; Soderbergh would go on to direct a 2010 documentary about Spalding’s life titled And Everything is Going Fine.”
“Spalding continues to inspire new works for Sundance artists. Sheila Tousey’s Ghost Supper (Spalding Gray, You’re Invited, Too), supported at our 2014 Theatre Lab, is a solo show that explores how a woman comes to terms with her brother’s suicide through humor, grief, and storytelling. We think Spalding would have approved.”
Here is a clip from Spalding’s incredible 1987 film, Swimming to Cambodia.
Books are Sharks
“We were talking about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was something which resembled an iPad, long before it appeared. And I said when something like that happens, it’s going to be the death of the book. Douglas said, No it won’t be. Books are sharks.
And I must have looked baffled at that because he looked very pleased with himself. And he carried on with his metaphor. He said, Books are sharks … because sharks have been around for a very, very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs. And the reason sharks are still in the oceans is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark is.
He said, Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in them in microseconds. They’re really good at being books, he said, and books, no matter what else happens, will always survive. And of course he’s right.”
– Neil Gaiman, giving the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture 2015
Frank O’Hara reading from Lunch Poems
“He reads them exactly the way you imagine them, or even read them aloud yourself: conversational, matter-of-fact, and incidentally just touched with Boston. He’s who you’d cast to play him.”
reblogging parisreview
Crash
“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.”
Slaughterhouse Five
“There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”
To critics of BBC’s Margaret Thatcher story broadcast
“There is no need for me or any writer to justify or explain herself to people who have no interest in fiction except when it feeds their dim sense of being injured in some way.”
Reading in Late Summer.
I have several books on the go at once. I like print best, but these days it’s good to have a Kindle book on the phone for emergencies and an audiobook in the car. I read a lot of comics as well, it should be noted, though I can never get enough of them.
Recently finished:
Boxers/Saints by Gene Luen Yang (x) – I have mentioned this here before. Wonderful, beautiful, simple, complex. A very personal, magical realist take on the horrific events that unfolded in China at the turn of the century. It’s in two volumes so he could present a story from either side. The cross over like Moon Knight and Hulk. It made me want to read the Bibliography. Yes, basically.
The Mighty Avengers, Vol.5: Earth’s Mightiest (x) – I’ve been getting these superhero collections out for my son and pre-reading them to see if I approve. This was a bit complex for him, and not because the plot was difficult, but they’re using this form where each image is like an oil painting, but with huge amounts of text per panel. I would say it took me about twice as long to read a page of this as it would to read a page of prose. But, you know, I’m probably not in the target demographic. Also, someone needs to go back to Drawing Ladies school, sorry. Jeez.
Essential Avengers, Vol. 9 (x) – Again, proof reading this for the younglings. This is the era of stuff I probably read when I was their age. They both found it difficult to read. The removal of the colour destroys a lot of the composition, and flow, if these had been draw in black and white they would’ve used more black. Also the attitudes and culture in them is far too antiquated for a 10 year old. Why is everything like this? Makes you realise the world is making progress. But again interesting from my perspective, this contains the origin story of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and the Vision just cracks me up. They really need to think about that colour thing when they reprint though. This stuff is meant to be for kids. HELP THEM.
The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi (x) – Interesting from a technical point of view of layout and story structure, execution of plot in short form etc. But, yes, content bleaker than bleak. the violence, hatred and misogyny drips off the page and kinds of nullifies any benefit mentioned earlier. Wasn’t prepared to recommend it to anyone I know. In the preface Tatsumi asks not to judge him on these early works alone. Almost interested enough to see what else he did, maybe.
My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse (x) – Ashamed to say this is my first Wodehouse. It’s taken me a while to get past the poshness. But worth it. Very pleasant. Although I felt slightly mugged by the stories about some other dude who also happens to have a butler.
Currently reading: Slaughterhouse Five (x), Written on the Body (x), The Brothers Karamazov (x), A Game of Thrones (x).
Paul Greer 