Lit Shuffle: “Heartland” by Karen Joy Fowler
Posted a couple days late, but hey…the bit itself was over a week late :(.
Don Pizarro's Manual of the Seven Wudan Tiger Shaolin Monkey Kung-Fu Style o' Death
Lit Shuffle: “Heartland” by Karen Joy Fowler
Posted a couple days late, but hey…the bit itself was over a week late :(.
Via Warren Ellis
…I have to pass on listing the various short stories I’ve read this week, unless you want me to regurgitate the table of contents for the last half of Barry Hannah’s Airships.
To tell the truth, I’m going to slow the short-story reading for a bit, even though I want to just continue with reading more Hannah. I snatched up a used copy of Hannah’s collection High Lonesome at one of the used bookstores. Instead, while I edit my last couple of stories, I’m going to read American Son and Dogeaters, slated to be the 6th and 7th novels I’ve read in the past four years.
It used to be a point of pride with me to be able to brag about how many shorts I’ve read at the expense of novel reading. I’ve come to realize, since I devoured Nick Sagan’s Idlewild trilogy and Ben Tanzer’s Lucky Man, that I do just shove them down my literary throat. I go through novels like I go through showings of Scent of a Woman or A Few Good Men on cable TV–before I know it, I’ve spent a couple of hours–2 to 3 days in the case of novels–doing nothing but taking it all in. Case in point, I’m a third of the way into American Son, and if I did nothing else for the rest of the night, I know I could finish it.
I attended a presentation at the local library yesterday by poet, author, and teacher Luis H. Francia, called “Longing and Belonging: The Idea of Home in Asian American Literature”. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my thoughts on the eye-opening themes of his lecture, how they’ve impacted my personal views on my culture which impacts on my writing, to myself (for now!). Suffice it to say that I was honored to get to speak with the man briefly afterward, and was pleased that the library actually carried two out of the three books he suggested to me, namely the novels Gangster of Love by Jessica Hagedorn and Brian Ascalon Roley’s American Son. The library didn’t have the third, Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, but a local bookstore did.
Yeah, I bought it and borrowed American Son. Yeah, I know I already bought a crapload of books to read. I bought a couple more on top of that last week, too. I’ll read what I want. Hey, quit yelling at me…
Okay, I got a backlog of posts and post ideas going back a week or so. Here’s where I try to get to them.
Last week, I workshopped a flash piece for the crit group, formerly titled “NIGYSOB,” one of the Games People Play in the book written by Eric Berne. It’s been a week, so I’m trying to recall the context of the notes I made.
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
No real ugliness, this time around.
I joked about how I wrote and brought a finished flash piece when I’d started two longer-length shorts which I haven’t finished. Well, now I’ve got two pieces to finish and two to edit. I think I’ve got a legit excuse for not bringing something to read next week–I should be editing!
Last week, I got through some awesome stuff…
With that, I’ve finished off the first quarter of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, which was originally the collection Reasons to Live–so, I’ve technically finally finished one of the many collections I’m multitasking on. And, at the rate I’m going, I’m going be done with Hannah’s Airships in pretty short order, too.
10 Reasons Jeff Vandermeer Rarely Reads YA
9 – Tired of reading about teens who turn out to be The Chosen One. (One time, just one time, why couldn’t The Chosen One be some tired single parent with four kids, just trying to catch a break.)
Now, get the hell off my yard :).
I went to the local comic-book show last Saturday and got to hang out a bit with VERTIGO editor Will Dennis, who steers such fine books as DMZ, 100 BULLETS, and Y: THE LAST MAN. I also attended a talk he gave last Thursday at the library. The talk was billed as a how-to on breaking into comics, but as usually happens in I-town during talks like this where only an interested few show up, the talk regresses into chilling out and talking shop. Which is still cool. I heard lots of stuff about the biz that I’ve heard before, but that sounds more real coming from someone neck-deep in it.
Besides, where else was I gonna sit two feet away from comic book legend Roger Stern? God, I’ve lived in this town for two years and I’m still too nervous to talk to the man. He’s a veteran with cool war stories, talking about stuff like conversations he had with folks like Frank Miller back in the day.
The show itself was fun. The scenery wasn’t as interesting since I got there as soon as it opened, beating the crowd. Not that it’s Nerd Prom or anything, but the room is small and can get cramped in short order. I continued rebuilding the lost collection of my youth, finding books I’d owned in years past in “good” to “very good” condition. Stuff like old issues of Rom and Dectective Comics from the early 80s–comics that are twenty-five years really, really old–that I remember, for example, buying in a 7-11 that’s no longer around, etc.
My “big score” was a discounted copy of Adrian Tomine’s Summer Blonde. I’m telling you, it’s a must-read. His stuff always keeps me enthralled.
I know it looks like I just buried my nose in a book the whole weekend. In fact, I took my Saturday and went to the local comic show where I got to hang for a few minutes with an editor from VERTIGO comics. I’ll talk about that next time, maybe.