Selections from Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture in Literature
Dylan’s impressionistic Nobel Lecture was released this week. Here are some favorite selections.
Selections from Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture in Literature
Going Head-On at Futility
Going Head-On at Futility
In What Bullets Do to Bodies, Jason Fagone suggests: “The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront every day.” But would it?
The Ethics of Nonfiction in S-Town: Should it Have Been Made?
The Ethics of Nonfiction in S-Town: Should it Have Been Made?
If you are interested in nonfiction, and the ethical dilemmas a writer can be confronted with when taking on real life and real people as your subjects, you might be particularly interested in listening to S-Town.
Autobiography: “The Only Form”
Autobiography: “The Only Form”
From a Guardian article by Kate Kellaway on Rachel Cusk. Is autobiography becoming the only form?
Blood Moon
Blood Moon
Barthes wrote: Life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred. I want to write a story for you. I want to follow your lead. ~~~ I saw the moon once for what it was. And then...
HOW I READ THE POEMS IN THOSE THICK POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
HOW I READ THE POEMS IN THOSE THICK POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
I read the title. I read the first line. If they are identical, I skip it. I find the last line. If it is fewer than two pages away from the first, I read it. If Aristotle’s name appears, I skip it. If the poem was written by William Carlos Williams, I read it. If...
Eric D. Goodman: Short Stories Take Skill and Work
Eric D. Goodman: Short Stories Take Skill and Work
When I began fiction writing, I used to think the smart thing to do was to tackle the novel straight away. I knew (although I wasn’t exactly right) that a novel could get a power agent and a big-time publisher and transform a writer into a career novelist...
Mike Maggio: Stories Are Rooted In the Oral Tradition
Mike Maggio: Stories Are Rooted In the Oral Tradition
The short story is the crystalline form of the novel; that is, it takes the essence of what makes a novel (character, plot, dramatic development) and condenses it into a form that is whole and pleasing. What the novelist accomplishes in two or three hundred pages,...
Mickey Laurence Cohen: Flash Fiction Is Only for the Moment
Mickey Laurence Cohen: Flash Fiction Is Only for the Moment
I hate short stories. Hate to read them, not a big fan of writing them. I like novels, I like the feeling I’m entering an entirely new world, or creating one. The best novels can build their own vocabulary, even a new language altogether. Short stories are windows....
Chuck Richardson: Short Stories Are Like a One Night Stand
Chuck Richardson: Short Stories Are Like a One Night Stand
I wonder why short fiction isn’t as popular as the novel. Maybe because it’s more like a one night stand than the slower, longer term and, dare I say, more respectable relationships we have with certain novels. But I like the idea that within the span of a single...