King on Carver

Stephen King wrote a review of a new Raymond Carver biography for the New York Times. You can read it here.

The bio coincides with the release of a new collection of Carver short stories. As you may know, erstwhile Esquire editor Gordon Lish used a very heavy hand when editing a lot of Carver’s early work. The new collection includes what Carver originally wrote, and what Lish ultimately published.

If someone offered to publish your work first in a national “slick” and then a book, but only if you accepted dramatic changes, would you do it…?

New Yorker: ““Indianapolis (Highway 74)”

I had a crappy day. Work was slow. Before and after work I had to change my 10-month-old son’s diaper five times because he kept crapping. In the evening he just kept whining. When my wife came home, she bitched me out for not making dinner. Once things settled down I read this week’s New Yorker story, “Indianapolis (Highway 74),” by Sam Shepard.

Now I feel better.

I really enjoyed the story! In my little reviews, I don’t typically outline the storylines, and I’m not going to this time, either. Why ruin the surprise? But I was impressed with how Shepard artfully created who is main character is. Or at least, who he is at this moment in time. And he achieved this through “showing” not “telling.” (Note: I can find the whole showing vs. telling obsession annoying, but I appreciated how it was done here). The ending, in particular, really rang true for me.

And now the prose…

The story is told in first person, present tense. I think this is one of the easiet ways to write a story. For me, it is also very compelling. But more importantly, the prose is clear, easy-to-read; prolix fiction turns me cold.

New Yorker: “Slow Fade”

Last night I sat down to read last week’s New Yorker short story, “Alone,” by Yiyun Li, but after reading just a few hundred words I stopped. It wasn’t that the story was bad – what I had read was actually pretty compelling. But it was dense and long and I’m busy and didn’t have time to read it. Gripe, gripe…gripe!

Also, I was really drawn to the article on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s failed attempt to be a successful Hollywood screenwriter, “Slow Fade.” The author of the piece, Arthur Krystal, writes: “Fitzgerald, to put in mildly, did not impress the studio bosses. The rap against him was that he couldn’t make the shift from words on the page to images on the screen. His plotting was elaborate without purpose; his dialogue arch or sentimental; and his tone too serious – at times, even grim.”

It seems hard to believe. Modern Library lists Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby” as the second best novel of the 20^th Century. I love that book. I am a huge fan of Fitzgerald’s prose. How could someone that talented not transfer his ability in one related area to another? I suggest you read the article and find out…

New Yorker: “Premium Harmony”

When this week’s issue of the New Yorker arrived and I saw that Stephen King had written the short story I was happy. I’ve enjoyed his novels. “Pet Cemetery” and ”The Shining” definitely reside somewhere on my to-read list. His book “On Writing” was great! And I almost always like his short stories. He wrote one that ran in the fiction issue of Esquire earlier this year that was really good.

I liked his story from this week, “Premium Harmony.” King is very good at creating characters. I always prefer writers – like King – who use clear, readable prose. Unfortunately, I didn’t love “Premium Harmony.” It was good, but not really spectacular.

I often wonder: are the New Yorker editors really diligently looking for the best submitted short story to publish, or do they just say, “Hey, Stephen King is submitting something. When was the last time we ran one of his stories? It was really that long ago? Hell – let’s go with it!”

Two New Crime Books

Last night I heard two authors speak at the “M” is for Mystery bookstore in San Mateo. They didn’t read from their books, but instead each gave a PowerPoint presentation explaining how they came up with their plots.

It was really interesting. Both plots sound very elaborate and compelling. I’ve only published a few short stories, and they were all literary fiction, so it was really eye opening for me to discover how much effort a crime novelist has to put into plot development. I guess it should have been obvious…

The authors are Mark Coggins and Michelle Gagnon. His book is “The Big Wake-Up.” Michelle’s book is called, “The Gatekeeper.” I didn’t buy “The Big Wake-Up,” but likely will when it comes out in paperback. But I did buy “The Gatekeeper” and I’m looking forward to reading it.

Also there last night was the graphic artist Owen Smith. He created the cover art for Coggins’ book. Smith frequently designs the cover for the New Yorker. He also just created these cool images for new releases of the Maltese Falcon (one of my favorite books!). I really dig his work.

One Story: “Stag”

I decided to shake things up and not read last week’s New Yorker short story. Instead, I read the most recent offering from One Story – a story by Robert McCarthy called “Stag.”

I’ve been a One Story subscriber for a couple of years now. I like the concept: each month they send me one story in an easy-to-carry little booklet.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the stories, but mostly I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read. They tend to be less experimental – less odd in their structure – then a lot of the New Yorker stories. Some of the subject matter is off-beat (those are actually the ones I tend to like), but they’re told in a good old-fashion story telling way. Some of my favorites are “Hurt People,” “The Tennis Player,” “Sir Fleeting,” “Harriet Elliot,” “We Bluegills,” and “Safe Passage.”

Unfortunately, “Stag” didn’t blow me away. That may be because of the blue-collar nature of the story. I’m not really a blue-collar fiction aficionado (expect, of course, for Raymond Carver).

I also found the whole scene with the deer strange. If a deer breaks into your home and you successful escape the room with the deer, why would you go back in? And, would you really wrestle the deer to the ground and break its neck? Me: I’d be calling someone on the phone.

But what do I know? The author says he based the deer episode on something he read in a newspaper. And that brings me to one of my favorite parts of One Story – the online author Q&A. So if you want to read what the author has to say about his piece, go here.

New blog

I just stumbled upon a new blog from Cathryn Grant. Actually, it isn’t that new, but it is new to me. Check it out…

Quotes On Writing

My friend Al sent me these quotes. Great stuff…

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” —William Saroyan, in the preface to The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

“The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning bolt and the lightning bug.” —Mark Twain

“I hate writing. I love having written.” —Dorothy Parker

“Kill your darlings.” —William Faulkner

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” —Douglas Adams

“Take out the sentence you love best. You’re trying too hard.” —David Sedaris

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” —W. Somerset Maugham

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” —Dr. Seuss

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne


“The goal of writing is not to be understood but to write so as not to be misunderstood.” —Cicero

“I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.” —William Faulkner

“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow

“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” —Robert Heinlein

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.” —Joseph Pulitzer

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” —Stephen King

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” —Ernest Hemingway

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.” —H.G. Wells

New Yorker: “Complicity”

Huh?

If I hadn’t made a personal commitment to read each week’s New Yorker short story I would have stopped part way through this one.

“Complicity” is a love story. Or a story about how we find love.

Complicity, to the narrator, “…indicates an unspoken understanding between two people, a kind of pre-sense, if you like. The first hint that you may be suited, before the nervous trudgery of finding out whether you ‘share the same interests,’ or have the same metabolism, or are sexually compatible, or both want children, or however it is that we argue consciously about our unconscious decisions.”

He has a point. Still, I found the story dull and too eager to be clever.

But what do I know? For Clifford Garstang, it was one of his favorite stories of the year. Maybe it requires a second reading when I am in a better frame-of-mind…?

Moaning

Last year I wanted to try writing something a little darker than I had before. I banged out a short story called “Moaning.” It took about a day to write, and I had a great time doing it. There is something liberating about digging into the dark parts of your soul.

You can now read “Moaning” on the Thirst for Fire website.

Thirst for Fire publishes incendiary fiction. The other pieces in the Fall 2009 issue are short – flash fiction, really. They are all twisted, bizarre, and a blast to read! I really dig the story “Beauty” by Kenneth Radu.

Thanks for Taylor Durden and Nathan Tyree for getting the site up.