Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts

Monday, April 22, 2013

Has Climate Change Given Birth to a New Genre?


Cli-Fi. Climate change fiction.

From a piece on NPR...

The book was Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich. Its protagonist is a boy genius who spins out worst-case scenarios and sells his elaborate calculations to corporations. Given what happens next — a disastrous hurricane floods New York City — it's tempting to say that Rich himself predicted Sandy. He didn't, of course. He was as surprised as anyone else.

"I had the very strange experience of editing the final proof of my novel one night, going to sleep, and waking up and essentially seeing it adapted on cable television the next morning," Rich says. "It was eerie. But I think this is the time that we live in now. We live in this time where our worst fears are being realized regularly."

Odds is the latest in what seems to be an emerging literary genre. Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter. The genre has come to be called climate fiction — "cli-fi," for short.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Weird World of Fan Fiction


They're amateur writers—with millions of readers. After years in the shadows, they're starting to break into the mainstream. 

From a long fun piece in the Wall Street Journal...

What if Edward Cullen, the moody vampire heartthrob in Stephenie Meyer's best-selling "Twilight" series, was an undercover cop? Or a baker who specializes in bachelor-party cakes? Or a kidnapper who takes Bella hostage?

It may sound like heresy to some "Twilight" fans. But those stories, published online, have thousands of dedicated readers. They were written by Randi Flanagan, a 35-year-old sales manager for a trade publishing company in Toronto. 

Ms. Flanagan writes fan fiction—amateur works based on the characters and settings from novels, movies, television shows, plays, videogames or pop songs. Such stories, which take place in fictional worlds created by professional writers, are flourishing online and attracting millions of readers.

 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

John Steinbeck, Interviewed


The Paris Review interviewed Steinbeck once for their "Art of Fiction" series.

From the piece...

ON CHARACTER

It is hard to open up a person and to look inside. There is even a touch of decent reluctance about privacy but writers and detectives cannot permit the luxury of privacy. In this book [East of Eden] I have opened lots of people and some of them are going to be a little bit angry. But I can't help that. Right now I can't think of any work which requires concentration for so long a time as a big novel.
Sometimes I have a vision of human personality as a kind of fetid jungle full of monsters and demons and little lights. It seemed to me a dangerous place to venture, a little like those tunnels at Coney Island where “things” leap out screaming. I have been accused so often of writing about abnormal people.

It would be a great joke on the people in my book if I just left them high and dry, waiting for me. If they bully me and do what they choose I have them over a barrel. They can't move until I pick up a pencil. They are frozen, turned to ice standing one foot up and with the same smile they had yesterday when I stopped.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

How to Write Flash Fiction


The Guardian offers up some tips on National Flash Fiction Day.

From the piece...

1. Start in the middle.
You don't have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character.

2. Don't use too many characters.
You won't have time to describe your characters when you're writing ultra-short. Even a name may not be useful in a micro-story unless it conveys a lot of additional story information or saves you words elsewhere.

3. Make sure the ending isn't at the end.
In micro-fiction there's a danger that much of the engagement with the story takes place when the reader has stopped reading. To avoid this, place the denouement in the middle of the story, allowing us time, as the rest of the text spins out, to consider the situation along with the narrator, and ruminate on the decisions his characters have taken. If you're not careful, micro-stories can lean towards punchline-based or "pull back to reveal" endings which have a one-note, gag-a-minute feel – the drum roll and cymbal crash. Avoid this by giving us almost all the information we need in the first few lines, using the next few paragraphs to take us on a journey below the surface.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

William S. Burroughs Interviewed by Allen Ginsberg


The interview, care of Sensitive Skin.

From the piece...

AG: Later, in conversation with the shaman, you were agreeing that, in order to get a spirit, you have to see it.
WSB: Oh yes. If you see it, you gain control of it. It’s just a matter of, well, if you see it outside, it’s no longer inside.
AG: In other words, unless error were allowed enough play so that it manifested itself visibly—
WSB: You would never see it. In exorcism, a verbal argument can never do anything. You can’t ever beat the entity in a verbal argument because that’s what he wants. It’s only through a confront, a non-verbal confront, that anything happens. It has to be non-verbal. Otherwise, they’d argue and argue going around and around and around for a hundred thousand years. But the arguing has nothing whatever to do with what they’re really doing.
AG: So now how would you have confronted the Satan in the Ayatollah and his followers, about this price on Salman Rushdie’s head and the killing of his Japanese translator?
WSB: That is not a question. You think in political terms or justifications, never get anywhere.
AG: Well, the method of confrontation is now that many of the publishers got together to put out The Satanic Verses in paperback. That’s not an argument, that’s a deed.
WSB: Yes, it might be something. But never, never a verbal argument, it will never never go anywhere except in circles. Because you’re not talking about the issue at all, you’re talking about words.




Saturday, May 05, 2012

Is There Such a Thing as Jewish Fiction?


That was the question recently discussed at Moment magazine.

From the article...

Let us start by asking: Is there such a creature as a Jewish writer? Jewish mothers gave birth to Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, but these idiosyncratic giants of mid-20th-century American fiction consistently suggested that they were not Jewish writers but rather Jews who wrote about American life in its many incarnations, sometimes focusing on Jewish characters and themes and motifs, sometimes not. Is Bellow’s fabulous seeker of a character Henderson the Rain King a Jew because his creator was born Jewish? Or is he a Gentile character invented by a Jewish-born writer who finds in him a universal quality of cosmic questing? We don’t have to look at Henderson’s matrilineal connections to find him fascinating and important, do we?

And Malamud? Is he a Brooklyn writer? And when he writes a comic masterpiece about identity in the contemporary American West—A New Life—does he thus become a Western writer, or does he remain a Jewish-American Brooklynite writing about the West? This is all sociological fine-tuning and interesting to consider. But does it get us to the heart of a writer’s work or merely keep our eyes on the surfaces? Malamud’s finest work suggests that all of his characters are Jewish, even the Gentiles. If all Gentiles are Jews, does that make all Gentile writers Jewish writers? Does this play out for black American writers? Are James Baldwin’s white characters in
Giovanni’s Room and Another Country actually black characters under the skin?

The argument gets murky. Maybe Malamud is right. All men are Jews and all Gentiles are Jews, so all writers are Jewish writers.



Sunday, April 08, 2012

What's the Big Idea?


Dostoevsky tackled free will, Tolstoy the meaning of life – but is it still possible to write philosophical novels?

From a piece in the Financial Times...

The more novels I read at university, the more I felt that fiction was where truth was to be discovered. I seemed to experience Melville’s “shock of recognition”; which is to say re-cognition, for it was there already, waiting to be reawakened – the knowledge that some things, not least what it is that makes us human, can never be adequately expressed in conventional philosophical prose.

It is not immediately obvious why this should be. From ancient times, philosophers have addressed the question of how best to live; which is also, quintessentially, the concern of storytellers everywhere, especially those engaged in “serious fiction”. The pursuit of knowledge and truth – this too is common ground, and if only Plato had seen it that way, he might not have banned the poets from his Republic. But Plato regarded the poets – the forerunners of novelists – as troublesome and lacking in the right kind of knowledge (not pure enough). They dealt in dangerous emotions – fear, sorrow, pity – all of which weakened the character and led to moral degeneration. Philosophy and literature were set on different paths.

After reading for a degree in both subjects, however, I came to understand two things: that the puzzles and paradoxes of philosophical reflection are not best aired in the narrow, arid corridors of philosophical tracts; and that Plato was wrong to think that literature had nothing to offer philosophy.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Edmund White on Gay Fiction


He discusses it with the Browser.

From the piece...

Do you think you would be such a prolific writer – or even a writer at all – if you weren’t gay? I remember you once said that when you were young you wrote about gay themes as a form of therapy.

For sure, in my early writing I felt like I was drowning and that writing was the only way of putting my head above the water, but the water was constantly rising. I think I had so many mental problems when I was young and I was constantly in therapy. That was certainly true for my teenage years and my twenties. I think that after I was 30 things changed a lot and I began to take more pleasure in the craft of writing and see novels as almost problems to be solved – artistic problems rather than psychological ones.

You teach creative writing and have done so for many years. You once said you found teaching in the early years a very useful education for yourself as a novelist. Do you still find that today?

I used to teach literature courses and that was certainly useful to be able to examine how books were put together. Now I only teach creative writing seminars and workshops. It’s instructive in a different way. For one thing, it keeps me in touch with how young people feel and the things they are thinking about and the way they are talking. For another, I’m constantly thinking about the construction of stories and novels. Issues like suspense and tension, characterisation, dialogue, percentages of dialogue to description and so on. All those rather technical issues get discussed in class and I think they are ones that I’m always thinking about and that must be useful for a writer.


And talking about gay writers, the New York Times reviews a book about American gay writers at the ramparts of the gay revolution.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

What Fiction Can Teach Us About Love


Reading fiction, from Virgil to Jane Austen to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a great way to learn about the ways of the heart—and to avoid getting heartsick.

From a piece in the Daily Beast...

When E.M. Forster asked a hypothetical reader in his book Aspects of the Novel why he read fiction, the character said, “It seems a funny sort of question to ask—a novel’s a novel—well, I don’t know—I suppose it tells a story, so to speak.” The story is essential, of course, to keep us engaged. But those of us who are drawn to novels aren’t there purely for entertainment (particularly not in this era when we can watch all the movies, television shows, and viral videos we want). No, most of us go between the pages to get inside different minds and learn more about how people tick. It’s no coincidence that the world’s best novelists are some of our most outstanding psychologists. (Just ask Freud, who thought Dostoyevsky was revelatory.)

When it comes to figuring out crucial lessons of human behavior, timeless works of fiction are unparalleled primers. As Keith Oatley, a professor in the department of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, recently told the Guardian: “Reading fiction improves understanding of others, and this has a very basic importance in society, not just in the general way [of] making the world a better place by improving [empathy] … but in specific areas such as politics, business, and education.” Fiction can also, I’ve found, shed plenty of light on our romantic lives. In fact, I myself have learned so much about my own amorous trials and tribulations from great stories that I was inspired to write a book about it: the just-published Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not-so-great Gatsbys, and Love in the Time of Internet Dating.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Nat Tate


One of my favorite writers is William Boyd. He discusses his creation of his most realistic character, Nat Tate, for the Guardian.

From the piece...

I put together the details of Nat Tate's life fairly swiftly. Born in New Jersey in 1928, he had been orphaned as a young boy and adopted by a rich couple who lived in Long Island. Showing some aptitude for art, he went to art school and then – funded by his doting father – set himself up as an artist in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. New York was becoming the centre of all that was fashionable in modern painting and Nat began to enjoy some acclaim in the 1950s as a young painter, and was linked with the artists who formed part of the Abstract Expressionist movement. But as the decade ended Nat Tate was in a bad way. He was drinking too much and he had been profoundly shaken by two encounters with unequivocal artistic genius – namely Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Nat had met them both in France – the one trip he took abroad in his life.

Disturbed and made insecure by the meeting with these two contemporary giants of the art world, Nat had looked again at his own art and whatever talent it displayed and had found it seriously wanting. Depressed by this self-knowledge, he gathered together everything he could find of his paintings and drawings – some 99% of his output – and burned them in a fervid auto da fé over one weekend. He then committed suicide by jumping off the Staten Island ferry as it crossed the Hudson River from New York towards New Jersey. It was 12 January 1960. His body was never found.

Another member of the Modern Painters editorial board was David Bowie (we had joined the board at the same time). Bowie, with some collaborators, had set up a small publishing company called 21 Publishing and he suggested we publish the story I had written about Nat Tate as a small, beautifully produced, coffee-table art-monograph. I agreed, unhesitatingly.

Why Teens Should Read Adult Fiction


Salon states the case.

From the piece...

The argument about whether young-adult fiction has become too adult in its subject matter is a long-standing one. My concern is not this debate — in fact, I consider it to be moot. The YA category is a marketing distinction, not a moral one, however much parents would like it to be a synonym for “safe.”

But you are raising a child, possibly the least safe enterprise imaginable. And if this child is also a reader, there is a high probability that, closely preceding adolescence, his or her literary curiosity will hit an exponential curve — one that will be made apparent in a taste for books intended for the adult market. Let’s call this the V.C. Andrews Curve, after the author of “Flowers in the Attic.” It can be attributed more or less to two phenomena: first, with a simple increase in reading comprehension, adult genre fiction will be of considerable appeal owing to the accessibility of the prose and story lines. Second, irrespective of age, human beings have an innate attraction to the dramatization of issues around life’s central mysteries: its genesis and termination. Put another way, not only will your kids survive an exposure to violence and sexuality in books, but it is crucial to their moral development.

So the VCA Curve should not be resisted. It should be shouted from the rooftops: Your child is a human being! A cool one! Because this human being is building an infrastructure for critical reasoning in a frequently bizarre, paradoxical universe where fairly miraculous and fucked-up stuff happens on a regular basis. Of course adolescents have an irresistible attraction to adult themes; perverse and puritanical an instinct as there is in this culture to prolong childhood, there is a far stronger counter-instinct in children to analyze, simulate, and as soon as humanly possible participate in the challenges of adulthood. This is not to suggest that growing up is a process that should be unnaturally accelerated, or that it can be in the first place. These days, casual observation suggests that in a modern urban environment, childhood is a stage that lasts approximately 30 years. But we should be counted lucky when this fascination with the adult world manifests in wanting to read more books.