Literature
Hope Springs Eternal at the AWP Conference
The Writing Industry Is Booming, Even if the Book Industry Isn't
Years ago, one of the big New York slicks (I have no idea which one, though Esquire leaps to mind) ran a story purporting to represent the ranking of living American fiction writers. As I recall, it included a rather scary looking pyramid of scribbled names, topped by John Updike and Saul Bellow. There were no more than a few hundred names on the entire pyramid, all of which fit on a standard blackboard. READ MORE >>
Like a late victorian clergyman sweating in the dark over his Doubts, I have moments when my faith in fiction falters and then comes to the edge of collapse. I find myself asking, “Am I really a believer?” And then, “Was I ever?” First to go are the disjointed, upended narratives of experimental fiction. Oh well ... Next, the virgin birth miracle of magical realism. But I was always Low Church on that one. It’s when the icy waters of skepticism start to rise round the skirts of realism herself that I know my long night has begun. READ MORE >>
A couple of years ago, David Shields hit something of a nerve with the publication of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. It was made up of 618 short entries, some his own but most collected elsewhere. Only his publisher’s lawyers compelled him to cite the sources, which ranged from Walter Benjamin to Jennifer Jason Leigh. READ MORE >>
Since my fiction is usually about people, and I consider sex one of the more important and emotionally fascinating activities people undertake, sometimes I must run the gauntlet of writing a sex scene. The results vary, though I try to make a habit of not publishing the many occasions when things don't work. "Don't worry," I console myself, stroking my arm. "It happens." READ MORE >>
