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January 22, 2006
Where I've been lately
So here the goss:
My Bollywood Times & Others up at Mad Hatter's Review.
Plus Romance is doing well at Pineldyboz
I'm supposed to be holiday reading all that stuff from Amazon and the books are laid out on the couch like dresses to try on. So far in Best American my vote goes to J. Robert Lennon's Eight Pieces for the Left Hand. I love what he's doing in that story and so I take a peek at the back and he says all the right things about what he's up to, and I get a warm chummy feeling like he's my best friend or something; He goes on to talk about how he's accumulating a hundred stories etc. He's written some cool novels. I did leave Postman unfinished but that was because of 'other' factors and I'll go back to it some time.
And Jeff's been at it again--introducing me to yet another writer I didn't know about: Nicola Mason. He showed me the way to her stories and they are pretty cool (have I been using that word a lot--must be the bucket of water I've got my feet in--the temperature in Melbourne is rattling the Richter scale).
I started on Kawabata's Thousand Cranes and then stopped. I could see that I was going to like it very very much and did not wish to be greedy--so I'm going to save and savor.
I wish I could read without recrafting endings and fixing up middles.Yesterday, the current issue of GlimmerTrain arrived. Great opening story. This is good. With the last issue, I didn't get past the first story. When that happens in a magazine, I find it difficult to return to the book. I am noticing this is particularly so with short fiction collections and literary magazines.
And I am reminded of a link provided by writer-friend, John Leary, who happened on a scathing opinion of McSweeney's, and a sweet note about Pia Ehrhardt's Driveway. It was a tough review... with a small grain of truth. I bought one of those McSweeneys issues with less stories but with interesting what-Mad-Hatter's-would-call WHATNOTS, and stopped buying the mag for a while. But truth be told, if I had endless cash, I wouldn't have stopped, I'd have kept buying on. So my reported result is skewed!
I do have coffee table design books in my bookcase. I don't buy them so much any more. So it is possible to see the direction of the McSweeney books as little steps in pushing the look-feel of the book package. I was attracted to ths difference when I first started. However, I do want my fair quota of fiction. And this is what makes a difference in whether I subscribe (when the previously mentined financials are looking good) to literary magazines. Those with a lot of essays (those of regional interest) don't really work so well for someone gazing in from the other side of the world. I do like the odd essay of this type but not enough to have them as a regular part of my book diet.
Posted by girija at January 22, 2006 12:02 AM