Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 156
June 22, 2010
Penny C. Sansevieri: 12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events
There are some excellent tips here. Some sound corny, but that doesn't mean they won't work.Penny C. Sansevieri: 12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events
June 21, 2010
The New Yorker: "Here We Aren't, So Quickly" by Jonathan Safran Foer
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Does this story remind anyone else of Lorrie Moore? The story is short and until the last paragraph every single sentence uses a pronoun. The first paragraph is all "I" but the second is all "you" as the narrator gives information about a couple—the excuses they give, their quirks, their habits. Then there's a paragraph that's mixed "I" and "You" followed by a paragraph of "We." Eventually "They" enter the picture—various third parties—and then "he" when the couple's child is born. (Through h...
Sewanee Writers' Conference
Only three weeks until Sewanee! I'm looking forward to getting back there, seeing a lot of old friends and making new ones, and soaking in the great writing. The schedule has been posted. I'm reading on July 18th at 2:30 in the afternoon. The readings are open to the public, so if you're in the neighborhood you are welcome to come!The 2010 Schedule | The Conference | Sewanee Writers' Conference
June 20, 2010
The New Yorker: "The Pilot" by Joshua Ferris
I think we'll put this one on the best-of-the-year watch list. It's about Lawrence, a recovering alcoholic and aspiring TV writer who is working on a script for a pilot. His agent is obscure, and Lawrence's recent work is an underarm commercial that was shot in "tax-friendly Winston-Salem." Lawrence obsesses about an invitation he receives from Kate Lotvelt, an actress/producer/writer whom he's met, briefly. He worries about how he responded, he worries that she invited him by mistake, he...
June 19, 2010
The New Yorker List, the Dzanc List
Much has been written about the "20 Under 40" list promulgated by The New Yorker: "twenty young writers who capture the inventiveness and the vitality of contemporary American fiction." A lot of people (most writers other than the 20 who made the list, it seems) are critical of the list--the age cutoff is meaningless, small and independent presses aren't represented, etc. The editors of the magazine are careful to point out that the gender balance on the list was accidental, but I doubt that...
June 17, 2010
SWAG Reading: Bloomsday, June 16
About 30 people turned out for the inaugural SWAG (Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro Group of Writers) Reading at the Irish Alley Restaurant and Pub last night, which happened to coincide with Bloomsday. We had arranged tables cabaret-style and the Pub served drinks and food to every table. We even had TV coverage, with a crew from WHSV-3 who interviewed me and then filmed some of the reading. Here's the clip they aired.I kicked things off by reading the first page of Ulysses (from the copy of the ...
June 15, 2010
Chicago Lit50
Speaking of lists, Newcity has posted a list of the "Top 50" Chicago writers. It seems like an odd undertaking--maybe even more so than The New Yorker's self-serving 20 Under 40 list--but fun anyway.And so I'm looking at the list and there are several people I actually know, which is cool.
It's funny to read the comments, too, like the one from "ALH" (could that be Aleksandar Hemon, #2 on the list?).
Literary Magazine Rankings
We know that some people put no store in rankings of literary magazines, and yet the lists persist. I've just found a new entry into the fray, and this one is more about raw data than subjective rankings, and I whole-heartedly approve of that methodology. Let the user of the information decide what to do with the data, but thanks to the data gatherer for making it possible.
In this case, The Rankings gives us a list of the best-known anthologies such as Best American Short Stories and Best of ...
In this case, The Rankings gives us a list of the best-known anthologies such as Best American Short Stories and Best of ...
re:Joyce!
Do you find Ulysses intimidating? Frank Delaney proposes to help with that. Check out the weekly podcasts in which the Irish novelist will guide us through it -- sometimes sentence by sentence. So here it is:
Frank Delaney: Author of Ireland, A Novel.
Frank Delaney: Author of Ireland, A Novel.
