David Abrams's Blog, page 51

Sunday Sentence: Anthony Trollope by Victoria Glendinning

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


The English residents of Pau were wary of (Anthony Trollope’s authoress mother) for fear she would put them in her next novel. When challenged on this, she replied: “Of course I draw from life—but I always pulp my acquaintance before serving them up. You would never recognize a pig in a sausage.”

Anthony Trollope by Victoria Glendinning

Friday Freebie: The Honor Was Mine by Elizabeth Heaney

Congratulations to Michael Cooper, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers , edited by Graydon Carter.

This week’s contest is for The Honor Was Mine by Elizabeth Heaney. Subtitled “A Look Inside the Struggles of Military Veterans,” it is essential reading for this Veterans Day. My friend Jerri Bell (co-author of It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan ) had this to say about the book: “Elizabeth Heaney writes with...

Sunday Sentence: Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


It was a face that you might see and forget, and see again and forget again; and yet when you looked at it and pulled it to pieces, you found that it was a fairly good face, showing intellect in the forehead, and much character in the mouth.

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

Friday Freebie: Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers

Congratulations to Nebojsa Zlatanovic, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: Father Figure by Lamar Herrin.

This week’s contest is for the new essay collection Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers , edited by Graydon Carter. A partial list of writers (both contributors and subjects) includes: Eudora Welty, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Bishop, Reynolds Price, Anne Tyler, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Paul Bowles, Willa Cather, Jay McInerney, Jacqueline Woodson, Toni Morrison, Dave Egge...

All the Hungry Possibilities: Elizabeth J. Church’s Library

Reader:  Elizabeth J. Church
Location:  Los Alamos, NM
Collection Size:  est. 6,000
The one book I’d run back into a burning building to rescue:  This question violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. But okay, since you INSIST–my Riverside Shakespeare (and it weighs a ton).
Favorite book from childhood:   Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders
Guilty pleasure book:   Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann


Each time I’ve moved over th...

New Story: Jesus and Elvis Have a Little Conversation

What if the King of Rock ’n’ Roll and the King of Kings were seatmates on a cross-country flight?

That’s the premise of my latest short story which appears in the current issue of The New Guard . Here’s how Jesus and Elvis Have a Little Conversation begins:

     Even before he sat next to me on the Minneapolis-to-Seattle flight, I could tell he was the kind of guy who talked to strangers. His face was large and loose with a tiny, tropical-fish mouth. As he walked sideways down t...

My First Time: Lamar Herrin

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is Lamar Herrin, author of seven novels, including Father Figure , The Lies Boys Tell , House of the Deaf , and Fractures ; a memoir, Romancing Spain ; and numerous short stories, which have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Epoch, and...

Sunday Sentence: The Iliad

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


          Where could he find some breathing room in battle?
          Wherever he looked, pains heaped on pains.

The Iliad by Homer
translated by Robert Fagles

Friday Freebie: Father Figure by Lamar Herrin

Congratulations to Sam Hobbs and Terry Pearson, winners of last week’s Friday Freebie: Fill the Sky by Katherine Sherbrooke.

This week’s contest is for Father Figure by Lamar Herrin. Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, had this to say about the novel: “What a remarkable, evocative book. Lamar Herrin is a consummate story-teller, and Father Figure is a richly imagined American story of patrimony and baseball and war and the...

Overnight Success and Other Fables of the Writing Life

Overnight Successand Other Fables of the Writing Lifeby Caroline Leavitt
Way back when I was 28, I first got serious about writing, I had my career trajectory all planned out. I was going to publish a few books of short stories, then, when I made my reputation with them, I’d try my hand at a novel. I collected enough rejection letters to wallpaper my apartment. I kept going, sure it would happen. But when it did, everything was vastly different than what I expected.

My first published short s...