Before two giants of 20th Century American literature were published, when both were unknown, discouraged and broke, Allen Ginsberg wrote a letter to Jack Kerouac telling him, “DON’T FLIP, take care of yourself now, rest from fatigue and figure what next to do. This is my poor advice.” Writers, as a general rule, are needy […]
Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’
The approval of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Sly Stone
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010The novel Skippy Dies is like a doughnut
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010Some books are like potato chips—you just can’t stop readin’ ‘em. Maybe it’s the salt. Or some diabolical bioengineerickal sort of thing cooked up in a crackling subterranean megacorp lab inducing an addict-like craving unknown by the EPA or USDA. And some books are like doughnuts—they taste good—very good—but at some point, you’ve just had […]
Marcel Proust and Le League Americain
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010(This essay was broadcast on WUWM’s Lake Effect program on May 7, 2010. Have a listen to it here.) It’s a little known fact that Marcel Proust—yes, that Marcel Proust—he of the monstrous early Modernist novel Remembrance of Things Past—one of those Mount Everest sort of books that some readers say they ought to tackle […]
The Real Housewives of 21st Century Fiction
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010(This essay was broadcast on WUWM’s Lake Effect program, 89.7, Milwaukee’s NPR affiliate on April 12, 2010. Listen to it here: ) Stories—you know, fiction, actual made-up stuff—are dead. I clicked off the last scene of Jersey Shore on my 52 inch flat-screen dual-quadrasonic surround-sound 5.1 plasma TV and began flipping through my Tivo’d shows […]
Personal dig
Monday, December 21st, 2009Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead Aristotle, in the Poetics, said that the worst kind of plot was the episodic—the kind where not much happens, it’s just one damn thing after another. I frankly don’t agree with the ancient Greek and am just fine with episodic plots (isn’t that the way life really is?) and I […]
