Impossible structures

I bought two novels by Ismail Kadare from Barnes & Noble over the weekend, they were impulse purchases, as most of my purchases tend to be, bought along with the current Saint Anne’s Review that’s got a story by the lady who moderates my workshop—but I am now thinking of returning them, not because I [...]

“Better last sentence TK”

I am coding a manuscript for the design department, and the pages are very clean, so far just two elements to code—story title (ST) and space break (#)—which made me think of fiction using only words, that is sans poem or letter extracts, or charts/graphs/pictures/etc., which then made me think of the stupid computerized picture [...]

Comma, too.

Working on a 900-plus-page novel at the office, and my proofreader has queried every instance of a comma-less “too”—i.e., “He laughed too,” as opposed to “He laughed, too.”
It depends on the style the author prefers, of course, plus my boss once instructed me not to globally add or remove such commas, as it really depends [...]

Back to work

After nearly a month and a half of no proofreading due to another self-imposed writing spree, I sent out a query to my contacts about upcoming jobs. Sadly, not much fiction is being done right now (or perhaps my contacts are shunning me!), but one contact finally proposed a novel. I don’t have the luxury [...]

“The Death of the Author”

I hesitated some time, not knowing whether to open these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, i. e., whether to start with my birth or with my death. Granted, the usual practice is to begin with one’s birth, but two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that, properly [...]

“Inaesthetic stains”

. . . No one could ever accuse death of having left behind in the world some forgotten old man of no particular merit and for no apparent reason merely for him to grow ever older. We all know that, however long old people may last, their hour will always come. Not a day passes [...]

80; or, Business as usual

A week ago I met an Author who was going to share a table with Edmund White at the Strand Bookstore’s eightieth anniversary literary festival, and I kept asking him what they were slated to do, because I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that the festival’s daylong schedule of Author appearances included not [...]

A writer’s first sentence

The thesis behind Natural Novel, the debut novel by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov:
My immodest desire is to mold a novel of beginnings, a novel that keeps starting, promising something, reaching page 17 and then starting again. The idea or nucleus of this kind of novel can be found in classical philosophy, and mostly in the [...]

Bumbling around in the heat

Yesterday
Wrote early in morning at new writing space. ** Found out I’ll be attending a show of The Colbert Report in August, woo! ** Went to dance class after work, sweated like a mofo to Kelly Clarkson (ungh), but at least the lady who usually jazzes it up to nth degree in front row wasn’t there to [...]

Stranded

Met a writer two days ago who had worked at the Strand around 1998. A miserable place, he said. But when you get bumped up to the cashiers’ section, it is heaven. There, you can chat, smile, laugh, interact with people—feel like a human being, he said. I asked why the older clerks are so grumpy. Nobody [...]

A mother’s echo

A week ago: At the last minute came another chance to do a reading of somebody else’s work. So: took it. Read about two pages of Ma Jian’s ”Where Are You Running To?” from the anthology of international fiction by Wordswithoutborders.org. And was satisfied at the end. Not with the reading itself—hadn’t had time to practice aloud, as had decided only [...]

Dreamer

I haven’t had time to think of Don Quixote this week, let alone pick up the sadly neglected hardcover edition from my shelf to start reading, but my brain must be preparing me for the endeavor, eager to start, because I had a dream this morning about sighting what looked like windmills on the horizon of a [...]

Newly acquired first sentences

Sartorialist, I hope I look as good as this lady if you and I ever run into each other in the street.
*
Meanwhile, I’ve added new fiction openers to my Shelf from books that I bought or pilfered from work in the last month: Mariama Bâ, Thomas Bernhard, Roberto Bolaño, Péter Esterházy, Gabriel Josipovici, Georges Perec, Laura Restrepo, and [...]

“Home”

Thoughts on a Quiet Night
by Li Pai
Before my bed the light is so bright
it looks like a layer of frost
lifting my head I gaze at the moon
lying back down I think of home
—from Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology
of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, translated by Red Pine
Li Pai (701–762), aka Li Po, was born [...]

“A belated beautifying”

 

I react to capricious accidents of light and shadow with a feeling of joy and warmth, and, perhaps even more, with a vague sense of joy yet to come, a feeling inseparable from what I call, for want of a better expression, a belated beautifying. For example, the late afternoon of a long day of [...]