Literature
Cormac McCarthy at Christmas
All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. –W.B. Yeats I have at times found myself at a loss to explain to another person why I love McCarthy’s writing. It is...
Other Post
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Stories for Social Change in "Flight Behavior" & "The Line"
December 24, 2012 -
This Baffled Dance: Amy Leach's "Things That Are"
December 10, 2012 -
Chimneys Dark & Spirits Bright
December 06, 2012 -
Shire Reckonings
October 17, 2012 -
Real Life in Mumbai: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
October 15, 2012 -
Desire: The Drive & Death of Surrealism
October 05, 2012
The Physics of Worship, w/r/t DFW
To put my literary cards on the table: I am a rabid acolyte for David Foster Wallace (hereafter DFW), his personality, and work. Cult leaders dream of disciples with my dedication and single-mindedness. Wounded by the failed cultural terrorism of older avant-garde fiction, I found DFW. Or more precisely I received him about a decade after his mid-90s fame—stumbled upon stories bursting with irony, meta-irony, grad-...
Stories That Tell Themselves
I have written in the past—for instance, here, here, here —about theology embodied in a work of art. Embodied Theology occurs when a religiously devout writer, composer, or artist incarnates faith in the very form and fabric of his or her work. Literature, for instance, can be about some doctrine or belief; it can also enact it. The simplest examples are “redemptive” storylines (think Les Mis), or Christ-lik...
Other Wizards, Many Worlds
We all know which child wizard first grabbed his Elementary Spells textbook and walked the castle hallways to Magical History 101, right? Not necessarily. Decades before J.K. Rowling put Harry and Ron in a flying Ford Anglia on their way to Hogwarts, Diana Wynne Jones sent a young enchanter named Cat Chant crashing into the local post office on a contraption of enchanted bicycles and magicked flying furniture – ...
The Language Aesthetic & The Phantom Tollbooth
I went back to reading Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth recently, the same as I have so many times. And I found myself, as always, overcome with delight. First published in 1961, the story follows a boy named Milo, a rather etiolated fellow suffering from a youthful ennui familiar to us all. The first page explains: “There once was a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself—not just...
On Publication
Just as lawyers are asked legal advice over dinner and doctors are asked to diagnose conditions over cocktails, so writers are regularly asked to give free consultations on How To Get Published. Much more rarely are writers asked How To Write Well. The second is a lifetime's vocation; the first should be the natural result of that lifetime's vocation, but is more often seen as a quick route to affirmation, wealth, co...
Creative Historical Memoir Fiction
About seven years ago, I decided to write a novel about my grandfather’s experience in World War Two. I knew a very little bit about it: only that he’d been a prisoner of war, and that he’d escaped the Germans by jumping off a train somewhere in northern Italy. I’d also been told that he was shot (which I later learned was actually a shrapnel wound), but that was about it. When I finally asked my grandmoth...
Same Old Story
This article originally appeared in The Curator January 9, 2009. The third or fourth time he spoke to me, my husband laughed aloud at the mild exasperation that must have shown in my eyes. “You really want to read that book you’ve read a hundred times, don’t you?” I had Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban open across my lap, and his conversation, albeit welcome, was interrupting the flow of the st...
