Work in Progress
Written byPosted on March 11, 2007
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Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.
Here’s mine:
Kate stretched out her arms, as Alex removed her coat in a manner that struck Jack as vaguely seductive. As the coat slipped off, Kate looked to Jack like a beardless Christ with a good body. He didn’t know whether to be horrified or turned on.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
I came, I saw, I’ve posted.
That’s pretty nifty, E.
Make’s me cringe to do this, but what the hell. No excuses, no disclaimers.
Here’s mine:
“Oh,” I said. I thought I’d quit.
It was difficult to disagree with her. The Hunt for Red October was living the vagabond’s life in Costa Rica while studiously avoiding alimony payments. From her vantage point, he was a runaway from duty and good sense. But on the Osa, Hunt was part of the live-and-let-live atmosphere, a kooky ex-pat specimen in a landscape that is littered with them. Americans think of immigration as a one-way road heading from south to north. But there’s a lot of traffic in the other direction as well, the tired and worn out all looking for permissive, frontier towns that will let a man live cheaply, evade responsibility and camp out in an ambulance on a pristine beach. The John Hunts of the world are free to live on their terms on the Osa. The police are unlikely to bother him. Nor are Hunt’s fellow settlers, many of whom are up to some unregulated enterprise of their own.
“PFFFT. This guy doesn’t talks much does he?” (He was practicing his new Scandemerican accent). I shook my head very slightly, took aim at the pelican and threw. The fucking thing wouldn’t move.
Suprise, suprise – mine has the F word in it.
Here’s mine:
He thought about it for a moment, and she could see, in that transparent way of children, how he was working hard to pull himself together. He knew now that she couldn’t save him, that she was useless—even worse than useless. She was somebody that he had to work to save, to allow her her little delusions that things were going to be all right. She saw it in his eyes, that he had resolutely decided to go along with the cheerful tone. He kept hold of her thumb and ran his hand in circles around it, just like where a ring would go. Then he swallowed—that swallow nearly killed her—and said in the bravest voice he had, “Well, are you going to stay here with me until I have to go on the airplane?”