tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88664030802727589432024-03-13T17:19:32.628-07:00Ishmael's DogPhil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-91450522135793253002016-03-30T01:42:00.000-07:002016-03-30T01:42:09.628-07:00Toni Morrison on Writing What You Know<span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 27px;">Toni Morrison: 'When I taught creative writing at Princeton, my students had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, “Don’t pay any attention to that.” First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris? Things way outside their camp. Imagine it, create it. Don’t record and editorialize on some event that you’ve already lived through.'</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 27px;"><br /></span>Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-42104703795423820482015-03-23T01:58:00.003-07:002015-03-23T02:03:30.571-07:00Art is the Technology of the SelfScience proves that humans require Art. Without the surrealist films we dream while sleeping, we go insane. (see <a href="http://sfprg.org/control_mastery/docs/Sampson1966.pdf">1)</a><br />
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Humanity is learned. The humanities are how we learn it. (see <a href="http://marksinthemargin.blogspot.com/2012/07/moral-life-of-downtown.html">2</a> also see <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/?hp&_r=0">3)</a><br />
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We go to war every day for metaphors like Freedom and God. But many artists agree with Auden that "Poetry makes nothing happen."<br />
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Art is our best tool for redefining ourselves. We change by reading ourselves, also known as overhearing. (see <a href="http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/2011/05/11/shakespearean-overhearing-as-persuasion-theory/">4)</a><br />
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We have the science to save or destroy the world. We find the apocalypse easier to imagine. (see <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2007/12/paradise_lost.html">5)</a><br />
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Art is the technology of the self.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-60050407660888505762014-07-06T01:01:00.002-07:002014-07-06T01:01:34.957-07:00Fiction in the Contemporary World<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; line-height: 15.455999374389648px;">"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." —J.G. Ballard, CRASH (1974)</span>Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-41600397953783276682014-05-29T17:49:00.002-07:002014-05-29T17:50:54.713-07:00Notes Toward a Longer Essay on KunderaFor a long time I’ve marveled at the structure of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Only recently did I understand, in the course of writing recursive algorithms at my technology job, that Kundera’s masterpiece is a recursive novel, looping back through events in the characters’ lives repeatedly. I should have realized that long ago, because TULOB takes as its foremost theme the notion of eternal return.<br />
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Eternal return is Nietzsche’s statement of the idea that events repeat themselves endlessly, finishing and starting again from the first moment. This possibility, like identical Big Bangs causing the Universe to expand and contract the same way forever, would make our lives’ every moment inevitable and impossibly weighty and ponderous. But if everything only happens once, Kundera posits, then our lives become the opposite, unbearably fleeting, meaningless, and light.<br />
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TULOB’s structure follows the dictates of this theme, and of Kundera’s play with the contrast between light and heavy. The last of the novel’s seven sections, focused on the couple’s dog, unfolds after the deaths of its protagonists have already been described. Yet that section covers incidents preceding their deaths. <br />
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In interviews, the author has acknowledged a desire to mimic Anna Karenina, which also continues for a long section after its protagonist’s demise. But Kundera’s return to the couple’s lives through canine eyes recasts the final movement with a lighter atmosphere than Tolstoy’s ending section. Kundera finds a more playful poignancy and a more innocent aspect than his predecessor.<br />
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Maybe the weight of what TULOB depicts is so great that, unlike Anna Karenina’s community-centered final section, the Communist-era book requires a shift of perspective to a simpler species to reduce the heaviness.<br />
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The dog’s name in TULOB is Karenin.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-50544066710199859472014-02-16T03:27:00.005-08:002014-02-16T03:48:54.425-08:00Play the Blues, Punk! A guitarist for 25 years, I have been learning about music my whole life. Fairly recently I've come back to country music, a form I only appreciated occasionally when growing up in Texas. But the blues has always been essential to me and I'm now trying to understand if I need two different projects to create my vision in each of these genres.
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No other art form matches the power of the greatest songs, for me at least. Some that do it for me are <i>The Missing Heart </i>by <b>Dwight Yoakam</b>, <i>Better World</i> by <b>The Rave-Ups</b> (led by the great <b>Jimmer Podrasky</b>) and <i>Death Letter Blues</i> by <b>Son House</b>. Also <i>Come On In My Kitchen</i> by <b>Robert Johnson</b>, along with his <i>Hellhound on My Trail</i>. The greatest songs haunt me in ways I want to be haunted.
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My new blog on this subject is <a href="http://americansounds.blogspot.com">American Sounds</a>. Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-41684361939250914702013-09-15T19:45:00.003-07:002013-09-16T14:11:14.264-07:00Gary Snyder on poets/writers' roleThe function of the poet is to determine what part of our mythology is valuable in the present era. Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-52090232422289930852013-09-13T15:54:00.000-07:002013-09-13T15:57:55.495-07:00Why I Love CalculusCalculus is the mathematics that, among those I know, is most like metaphor. It describes longing in its approach to limits that are never achieved, it describes the imperfect analogy of anything to anything else in a similar way.
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It grabs the world by a parameter, and derives what it can. And so much more too. Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-63309718674067130382013-09-12T17:51:00.002-07:002013-09-12T17:51:14.283-07:00More about the Lyrical DelusionThe lyrical delusion is that each of our idiosyncrasies is important. E.g. the rambling, hermetic work of Blake Butler.
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The lyrical delusion presumes we have endless time to follow any thought, any digression, any path. E.g. The huge novels of David Foster Wallace.
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The lyrical delusion is youthful, vigorous, but not hardened by experience or condensed. The latter has its e.g. in Seamus Heaney and Adrienne Rich.
Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-88183436280552101112013-09-12T10:12:00.001-07:002013-09-12T10:12:27.370-07:00Poetry of Conscience in Syriahttp://m.aljazeera.com/story/20139784442125773Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-90424541555120430762013-09-12T08:48:00.000-07:002013-09-12T08:55:28.838-07:00Learning the World from Seamus Heaney"There's a good yield, isn't there?" <br>
As proud as if he were the land itself. <br>
- from <b>The Wife's Tale</b> <Br>
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The lough waters <br>
Can petrify wood. <Br>
Old oars and posts <br>
Over the years <br>
Harden their grain <br>
Incarcerate ghosts <Br>
Of sap and season. <br>
- From <b>Relic of Memory</b>
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Heaney's greatest strength was not his music, his way with phrases, his style. These were powerfully idiosyncratic to him. But his real shamanic gift was that he saw the world better than most of us do. The phrase "incarcerate ghosts of sap and season" envisions a natural process in spiritual terms, and makes the conflation of the two concrete.
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And the way he makes clear that rural life eliminates the distinction between people and their soil is essential to understanding life outside of cities. <br>
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The poets I care about enable me to learn the world anew. Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-60027575548366310302013-09-03T15:41:00.002-07:002013-09-03T15:43:24.130-07:00Questions for Blake Butler - or anyone who caresQuestion #1 -
Do you think writing is more powerful when it addresses directly matters of ethics and conscience? My favorite novelists - Melville, Rushdie, Woolf, Kundera, Cervantes - all address them overtly.
Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-40583141507130725002013-09-03T09:16:00.001-07:002013-09-03T15:42:51.443-07:00HTMLGIANT and Literary DissentThere's been a minor controversy over at HTMLGIANT. My long time friend Rauan Klassnik, with good reason, didn't like my sarcastic posts in the comments section eulogizing Heaney. He challenged me to put together something on why I think writing that doesn't engage questions of conscience becomes merely decorative. This is how he posted it: <a href="http://htmlgiant.com/random/why-the-trolls-been-bashing-blake-butler/"> Troll Post by Rauan.</a>
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To reiterate some stuff I posted over there.
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1. In science the test of an idea is how well it stands up to fair and thorough evaluation relative to other
ideas. I don't think Rauan attempted that here.
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2. Words can carry ethical meaning in a way music (sans lyrics) does not. I wanted to explore this question: if you reject that aspect of writing, are you a primarily a decorative writer? I think that's worth discussing. There's an aspect of emotional effects vs. ideas that is interesting too. Maybe my hastily assembled piece for Rauan didn't bring that out. I'll try to address it more directly elsewhere.
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3. I found it striking and ironic that Rauan chose to eulogize Heaney, a large part of whose program Rauan disdains, or doesn't try to live up to, or both.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-14427102898636105752012-03-28T06:11:00.012-07:002012-03-31T07:14:30.364-07:00Kundera's Genius Part 2 of SeveralMy poet friend Rauan Klassnik often asks me to look at other poets' verse and reviews of their colleagues. They're almost always examples of the reflexive, lyrically deluded work that's so common in the contemporary verse world. Rauan does this out of perplexity, I think, at their publication. <br />
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Kundera has a lot to say about lyrical delusion in his novel <b>Life is Elsewhere</b>, about a young poet in Communist Czechoslovakia, and in his essays. Below he's asked about the subject (sort of) in a 1980 interview by Philip Roth. <br />
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What Kundera points at throughout his career but never says directly is that interrogation of our metaphors, of our prose and verse and political and social poetics, is the central task of the writer. Because our undefined terms dominate us, and delude us, their definition and renovation is my aim as a writer. <br />
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<i>PR: In your novel <b>The Book of Laughter and Forgetting</b>, the great French poet Eluard soars over paradise and gulag, singing. Is this bit of history which you mention in the book authentic?<br />
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MK: After the war, Paul Eluard abandoned surrealism and became the greatest exponent of what I might call the "poesy of totalitarianism." He sang for brotherhood, peace, justice, better tomorrows, he sang for comradeship and against isolation, for joy and against gloom, for innocence and against cynicism. When in 1950 the rulers of paradise sentenced Eluard's Prague friend, the surrealist Zalvis Kalandra, to death by hanging, Eluard suppressed his personal feelings of friendship for the sake of supra-personal ideals, and publicly declared his approval of his comrade's execution. The hangman killed while the poet sang.<br />
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And not just the poet. The whole period of Stalinist terror was a period of collective lyrical delirium. This has by now been completely forgotten but it is the crux of the matter. People like to say: Revolution is beautiful, it is only the terror arising from it which is evil. But this is not true. The evil is already present in the beautiful, hell is already contained in the dream of paradise and if we wish to understand the essence of hell we must examine the essence of the paradise from which it originated. It is extremely easy to condemn gulags, but to reject the totalitarianism poesy which leads to the gulag, by way of paradise is as difficult as ever. Nowadays, people all over the world unequivocally reject the idea of gulags, yet they are still willing to let themselves be hypnotized by totalitarian poesy and to march to new gulags to the tune of the same lyrical song piped by Eluard when he soared over Prague like the great archangel of the lyre, while the smoke of Kalandra's body rose to the sky from the crematory chimney.<br />
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Later in the interview Kundera draws parallels between "totalitarian poesies" of Marx and Mohammed, implying that other systems and religions are equally susceptible to the poetics of power. This is his most important point, which is obscured a bit by his use of the word totalitarian. The poetics of kitsch, which apply in both "free" systems like ours and in totalitarian ones, are equal opportunity destroyers of clarity, creators of delusion.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-49754951596541453472012-03-27T08:16:00.006-07:002012-03-28T12:14:10.998-07:00Kundera's Genius Part 1 of SeveralMilan Kundera is my favorite author right now. He has been a favorite for a long time, but my appreciation of him has deepened in the last year. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wyx8eUpsrdk/T3HZ0xQyakI/AAAAAAAAAJo/xZmUB06UudA/s1600/milan_kundera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="267" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wyx8eUpsrdk/T3HZ0xQyakI/AAAAAAAAAJo/xZmUB06UudA/s320/milan_kundera.jpg" /></a></div><br />
While I detest his male chauvanism, I find his formal invention dazzling. And his scope and depth are amazing on many subjects. I would argue that one interview with him holds more observation of life and literature than whole novels, books of poems, and essay collections by others writing today. <br />
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To wit this interview of Kundera conducted by Philip Roth: <br />
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<i>ROTH: The last part of your novel <b>The Book of Laughter and Forgetting</b>, the seventh part, actually deals with nothing but sexuality. Why does this part close the book rather than another, such as the much more dramatic sixth part in which the heroine dies? <br />
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KUNDERA: Tamina dies, metaphorically speaking, amid the laughter of angels. Through the last section of the book, on the other hand, resounds the contrary kind of laugh, the kind heard when things lose their meaning. There is a certain imaginary dividing line beyond which things appear senseless and ridiculous. A person asks himself: Isn't it nonsensical for me to get up in the morning? to go to work? to strive for anything? to belong to a nation just because I was born that way? Man lives in close proximity to this boundary, and can easily find himself on the other side. That boundary exists everywhere, in all areas of human life and even in the deepest, most biological of all: sexuality. And precisely because it is the deepest region of life the question posed to sexuality is the deepest question. This is why my book of variations can end with no variation but this.</i>Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-63334443706451763642012-03-05T05:05:00.006-08:002012-03-28T06:50:42.563-07:00Metaphor and the NovelI'd say that Milan Kundera has produced the best, most complete testimonial on the craft of novel writing among any of our contemporaries. Recently my favorite of his essays was <b>The Curtain</b>. But in his brilliant <b>The Art of the Novel</b>, he indicates that metaphors should be used sparingly in fiction. Those metaphors that are used should be of the utmost power, and of central importance to the book. <br />
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For a long time I disagreed with him, but now I see his point. As I shop my first novel <b>Love Song of Zero and One</b> to agents and independent presses, I have begun writing my next called <b>Alchemy of Air</b>. I'm not claiming to be extremely discreet about my use of metaphor in this book, but I have attempted to answer Kundera's call for caution, and respond to his championship of the novelistic essay in <b>Alchemy</b>. <br />
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Also, Kundera's "nonfiction" books should be considered by anyone who loves the Art of... series by Graywolf, a great edition of which by Dean Young called <b>The Art of Recklessness</b> I reviewed <a href=http://ishmaelsdog.blogspot.com/2010/08/dean-youngs-art-of-recklessness.html>here</a> awhile back. <br />
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Who sounds like this? Who dares? How can you deny lyrics like "I wish that I could kill you/But I too love your eyes." Who can resist Lars and Kirk's crunch? <br />
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Check it: <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.annasolomon.com" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="276" width="275" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZkLgwGCMlFc/TmemBXwEsBI/AAAAAAAAAIw/dnIXXsx65sQ/s320/portrait_anna.jpg" /></a></div><br />
You can get all information about it at http://www.annasolomon.com. Check it out!Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-37812601187945881072011-07-11T07:49:00.000-07:002011-07-11T08:52:28.313-07:00Kate Christensen Interview, Part One<span style="font-weight:bold;">Kate Christensen is the PEN/Faulkner Prize winning author of The Great Man, Epicure's Lament, and other lauded novels. <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R2Wd29vli4w/ThsOyUfsgOI/AAAAAAAAAHo/P0fVIXubhcw/s1600/kateC.bmp"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 182px; height: 276px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R2Wd29vli4w/ThsOyUfsgOI/AAAAAAAAAHo/P0fVIXubhcw/s320/kateC.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628108416987463906" /></a><br />Her newest, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Astral-Novel-Kate-Christensen/dp/0385530919/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310396309&sr=8-1">The Astral</a>, follows Harry Quirk, a Brooklyn poet in his mid fifties whose marriage and professional reputation are in decline. Set in contemporary Greenpoint, the first-person narrative captures the texture of Harry's consciousness with an uncanny facility and truth to life.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">PH: To me, Harry Quirk represents New York bohemianism before it became irrevocably self-conscious. What about his aspirations and struggles moved you to portray this man so carefully, so inventively?</span><br /><br />KC: There's a certain kind of New Yorker I don't see written about much -- the artist who keeps making art without any reward of money or fame -- the artist who reaches middle age in a state of scruffy, striving dedication. Successful artists of any stripe interest me far less than struggling ones. I know so many people -- painters, photographers, poets, novelists, musicians -- who are still in that state, middle-aged, living hand to mouth, no insurance, no savings account, still paying rent, trying to survive, but not giving up -- their lives have been shaped around their art. It's a quiet heroism. I'm inspired and moved by artists who do it because they have to -- because it's who they are -- and for no other reason. I admire their integrity, authenticity, and deep dedication. They are an unsung and crucial part of the city's character.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.amazon.com/Astral-Novel-Kate-Christensen/dp/0385530919/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310396309&sr=8-1"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:left;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 113px; height: 172px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_77s_bOc5u4/ThsPBQMA9II/AAAAAAAAAHw/2CQzXz3tpxI/s320/astral.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628108673529214082" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">PH: What was the biggest piece of editorial advice you accepted on this novel, and the biggest piece of editorial advice you rejected?</span><br /><br />KC: After he read the first draft, my editor, Gerry Howard, told me he wanted more back-story and history. He wanted to know more clearly who Luz was, and he wanted me to flesh out Harry's marriage, family, and friendship with Marion. His idea was to make Luz more sympathetic, to let us see her side of things as clearly as we see Harry's. I agreed with the first suggestion and rejected the second. I added seven or eight full scenes from Harry's past, which I felt helped deepen and shape the book -- but rather than making her sympathetic, I showed Luz as a controlling, cold, histrionic bitch. This was completely necessary to the novel; my editor agreed with me when he read the next draft.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">PH: What have been turning points for you in terms of craft? What were the lessons you learned, the breakthroughs you made, the epiphanies? Did they come from your Iowa MFA, or a novel you read, or essays on craft, or elsewhere?</span><br /><br />KC: The major turning point for me came when I was almost 30. I had spent the entire decade of my 20s writing stories and novel chapters that were simultaneously earnestly overwrought and callowly underdeveloped, an attempted imitative amalgam of Ann Beatty and William Faulkner. These were not terrible stories and chapters; I was encouraged to keep going in this vein by getting into the Iowa Writers' Workshop, winning the 1988 Mademoiselle fiction contest, and then, after I'd moved to New York, getting a series of handwritten New Yorker rejections asking me to keep submitting -- I thought I was on the right track. <br /><br />But one day -- I remember this so clearly -- I looked over the thing I was working on and felt a profound revulsion, an aesthetic nausea. I couldn't stand it another minute. That was the day I started writing "In the Drink," the day I realized that my own voice was not the one I'd been writing in all these years. I realized I'd been faking it; I had a flash of what my writing was going to be. It felt so good to switch to my real voice. It felt like taking off the training wheels and flying down a hill for the first time with no hands -- freeing, euphoric, subversive.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-36627893847402500332011-07-07T08:31:00.001-07:002011-07-13T07:20:39.662-07:00Fiction's For Fools?A dean of American novelists just announced publicly that reading fiction is for fools. What has the response been from his peers? Nothing so far. According to a June 24 Financial Times interview, Philip Roth now reads history and biography instead of fiction. Asked why, he says "I don't know. I wised up." <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ywiqSBWHB0/ThXRdt3zgLI/AAAAAAAAAHg/pcEjqjX39Lw/s1600/Philip_Roth.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 257px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ywiqSBWHB0/ThXRdt3zgLI/AAAAAAAAAHg/pcEjqjX39Lw/s320/Philip_Roth.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626633617929371826" /></a><br /><br />Can we ascribe Roth's statement to his well-known eccentricity? Unfortunately, no. Roth speaks for the general readership , as increasing numbers of readers have turned to non-fiction. The utility of spending one's time reading facts can't be disputed in the Information Age. That humanity believes we have little need for the humanities these days cannot be in serious doubt either.<br /><br />Considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature, Philip Roth might be expected to stand as a partisan for the value of reading fiction. One could inquire, again somewhat flippantly, whether Roth has nothing left to learn from Melville, Woolf, Tolstoy. I'd argue that Roth has not absorbed the full richness of Cervantes, or of the greatest of Cervantes' heirs.<br /><br />Nor have any of us, whether readers or writers. But why stop trying? <br /><br />Readers are turning away from fiction for good reasons, many of them having to do with writers. With some exceptions, contemporary writers have not made available the best of Quixote's infinite possibilities to readers. How might they do that? Through passionate essays that confront greatness and make it our own, and through the creation of ambitious new novels that benefit from that confrontation.<br /><br />Instead, as society shunts them aside, novelists and other artists seem to have accepted a peripheral, decorative function. Roth's old friend Milan Kundera refuses that position. He considers art vital to our humanity, and continues to publish impassioned essays on the inexhaustible depths of Kafka, Cervantes, and Broch, as well as on more contemporary writers such as Cesaire, Chamoiseau, and Marquez. I've never read essays by an American novelist with as much vitality and insight into the novel as Kundera's, as Vargas Llosa's, as Calvino's, as Woolf's.<br /><br />Mightn't it behoove every novelist, when readership is dwindling, to extol the virtues of our medium strenuously, with greater boldness and vigor than ever? What was the last contemporary essay or novel you read that made you think "The ambition of this amazes me. This person has taken on Melville, or Joyce, or Woolf. This is an attempt at a masterpiece."<br /><br />Joshua Cohen's WIT has some of that hubris. We know Jonathan Franzen has it, and have learned that Jennifer Egan has it. David Foster Wallace had it. Grace Krilanovich has it in ORANGE EATS CREEPS, though she expresses it less overtly, with more subtlety than some. There are other examples. But show me the novelist who reads brilliantly, and I'll show you the form's best defender, and potentially one of its greatest writers.<br /><br />Is there anything less productive than a leading novelist pronouncing useless all of imaginative fiction? Perhaps only our failure to refute him thoroughly, emphatically, ceaselessly.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-56574355440707295102011-07-04T19:31:00.000-07:002011-07-04T19:46:05.800-07:00Walt Whitman Saved My Life TooAt the consistently amazing lit site called themillions.com, I read a July 4th post about America's bard saving the life of the article's author Michael Bourne. Amazing <a href="http://www.themillions.com/2011/07/embracing-the-other-i-am-or-how-walt-whitman-saved-my-life.html">piece</a>, and more like it I would welcome. <br /><br />Whitman saved my life too. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IgVv1wdiWR0/ThJ47xoR-oI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/nB8LGnT6E1A/s1600/whitman.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 228px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IgVv1wdiWR0/ThJ47xoR-oI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/nB8LGnT6E1A/s320/whitman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5625691852869073538" /></a><br /><br />When 2010 began, I still disliked Whitman, and held a fierce grudge against myself, not just for failing to grasp his barbaric yawp, but for a lot of scarier stuff too. Then I began to understand that Walt was not just trying to write uplifting arias to the self. He was renovating the stale soul of humanity. <br /><br />After a few passes through Leaves of Grass, the poems that struck me hardest were Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, and So Long. "I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for." <br /><br />More on this to come, but I ended the year a Whitman devotee, happier than I've ever been, and highly recommend <a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.detail?invid=10615033645&keyword=worshipping+walt&qwork=10633206&qsort=&page=1">this book</a> on the poet's impact on his contemporaries.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-82326440043983370532011-06-22T12:05:00.000-07:002011-06-22T12:12:10.622-07:00Literary Confessions, Part OneDark secrets no more, these ... (literary category)<br /><br />I've never read (and feel ashamed about it) <br />* Anna Karenina OR War and Peace<br />* Madame Bovary<br />* More than 10 pages of Saul Bellow<br />* lots more to come <br /><br />I can't stand (and feel ashamed for it) <br />* Ulysses<br />* A Catcher in the Rye<br />* Lolita<br />* John Steinbeck <br />* Infinite Jest (though I keep trying) <br /><br />I really like (and feel ashamed for it) <br />* Larry McMurtry, that popular yarn-spinner<br />* quoting Shakespeare, even at work<br />* almost all of Milan Kundera, that sexist pigPhil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-24758984967183868342011-06-15T11:33:00.001-07:002011-06-15T11:37:24.068-07:00The Naïveté of Gilles DeleuzeThe hip literary and philosophical kids, such as those at HTMLGIANT, love the 20th century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Deleuze was a good writer, judging solely from the translations I've read, and had some decent ideas, but he was extraordinarily naïve. His naïveté resembles that of philosophers of various nationalities, especially these days. <br /><br />For example, Deleuze says in his book Dialogues II that asking questions is pointless. He means particularly in the context of an interview or public dialogue, but this is just nonsense. He makes a subtle distinction, or twenty, about framing problems and the importance of doing that carefully. I understand what he's saying. But really, somebody who refuses the format of an interview is just a twit. <br /><br />When my favorite writers (Kundera, Woolf, Rushdie) offer a new idea, they try to draw the reader in, use simplicity and directness, and sometimes present their notions in familiar formats. From Kundera's interviews, to the Socratic method, to the tabloid five-question format, humanity likes Q&A. Deleuze posits a world beyond that. Really? How about a world beyond bullshit like that? <br /><br />Let's set our sights on getting some good questions answered well (can literature change humanity?) and then we'll address the format of Q&A. In Deleuze's world everyone sits around asking themselves what it means to ask themselves these questions, etc. Utopianism like that is impractical at best, and dangerous at worst. <br /><br />Where's the danger? It's in good people doing nothing but writing or reading stuff like Deleuze. Important work needs to happen, ignorance-slaying work requires cycles of thought to accomplish, and Deleuze is telling us that Q&As don't suit him? Whatever. <br /><br />I want to move the conversation forward too, but I don't think we need to redefine the meaning of the word conversation.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-85333138285376574782011-06-02T01:23:00.000-07:002011-06-02T01:30:04.236-07:00Poets <> MathematiciansIn writing a novel about a mathematician and his computer scientist son, I've begun thinking about literature in terms of equations. <br /><br />For instance, I thought about the famous phrase by John Keats: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." I decided that his equation is imbalanced. Truth is rare. Beauty's cheap. Any jerk can flatter people. What do you think? <br /><br />Separately, as part of my novel, I rendered the first scene of King Lear as instructions in an Apple BASIC program, the first programming language I learned and still one of my favorites. <br /><br />20 PRINT "OUR DARKER PURPOSE"<br />30 GONERIL=FLATTERY<br />40 REGAN=FLATTERY*2<br />50 CORDELIA=FLATTERY*0<br />60 IF KING(CORDELIA) < KING(GONERIL) THEN 70<br />70 IF KING(CORDELIA) < KING(REGAN) THEN 80<br />80 KINGDOOM = LAND/2 <br /><br />The above lines mix BASIC's structure with function call syntax from the C programming language, but they get the point across. I didn't include every line I wrote to summarize Lear I,i in the novel. But I liked the typo KINGDOOM, and thought that line (80) condensed the play decently in one command.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-59531492616346796532011-05-29T09:19:00.000-07:002011-06-02T02:15:53.349-07:00More about the Role of the WriterThe literary community often debates its relevance, debates whether reading/publishing/writing are dying. Are you surprised that writers can't agree that literature, that reading and writing ourselves and each other, is the essence of life? Of course, people do almost everything in life for metaphors. Not just writers, but all of us work, marry, live, and kill for metaphors.<br /><br />It's always fascinated me that Islamic leaders issued a fatwa on an author of fiction, as opposed a writer of polemics or religious tracts. Though I've read many more articles announcing the irrelevance of fiction than its relevance, little was made of Rushdie's status as a mere novelist (as opposed to a theologian or politician, or writer of another form than novels.) That's because we know deeper down that fiction is relevant; people kill for Bibles and Korans. The Ayatollah realizes that the old metaphors cannot be supplanted except by new ones.<br /><br />The new metaphors, topic of a future blog post.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8866403080272758943.post-45417989392813560522011-05-29T08:16:00.001-07:002011-05-29T09:02:15.326-07:00Provocative Essays on LiteratureI don't think that spurious controversy is helpful, and Jess Row's essay that I mentioned in my previous post has generated its share of that. What I prefer is outrageous essays making enormous claims for literature. Mainly, I'm surprised that writers of every stripe can't agree that literature is the central human activity, the key to our evolution, the engine of human progress. <br /><br />What else is there? As a technologist, I submit that technology offers us apocalypse and immortality, but our imaginations incline toward apocalypse. The humanities have to catch up, we have to mature faster so we don't destroy ourselves with the power technological progress has given us. We need to forgive us our grudge against ourselves. <br /><br />I'm currently condensing my ideas on this subject in to 250 words. But I'd argue that if you're a writer and you don't think along the lines of what I'm saying above, you should be doing something else that you think will help us all more.Phil Hopkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04211181723127440566noreply@blogger.com0