Benjamin Whitmer's Blog, page 12
February 11, 2014
Quote
From Michel Houellebecq’s interview with The Paris Review. I haven’t read Whatever yet, but I just finished The Possibility of an Island and found it to be exactly not what every America reviewer said it was. I loved it.
INTERVIEWER
So what made you write your first novel, Whatever, about a computer programmer and his sexually frustrated friend?
HOUELLEBECQ
I hadn’t seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work.
February 9, 2014
Father/Daughter Dance
Getting set to show off her balancing skills. And if anyone tells you they had a smarter, prettier, more charming or delightful date last night, they’re a liar.
The theme was Candy Land. I won’t tell you what I wore, but she’s a Doctor Who fan, and it was pink.
Father/daughter dance
Getting set to show off her balancing skills. And if anyone tells you they had a smarter, prettier, more charming or delightful date last night, they’re a liar.
The theme was Candy Land. I won’t tell you what I wore, but she’s a Doctor Who fan, and it was pink.
February 7, 2014
February 5, 2014
Jack’s Eighth
Last night we celebrated my son’s birthday with violent video games and laser tag, which is as it should be. He’s my partner in crime and my number one crony. A couple of days ago I think he dislocated my jaw with a body-check, and then couldn’t stop giggling as he watched me try to chew my dinner. Most days are like that somehow. Meaning, they’re perfect.
Lately, he’s been carrying around a little notebook and writing his thoughts in it. He’s gonna be a writer he tells me. I kind of hope he changes his mind, but I couldn’t be prouder of him. I always tell him that before he came along there was a Jack-sized hole in me that I didn’t even know was there, but now I’m all complete.
This is what that hole looked like.
Jack’s eighth
Last night we celebrated my son’s birthday with violent video games and laser tag, which is as it should be. He’s my partner in crime and my number one crony. A couple of days ago I think he dislocated my jaw with a body-check, and then couldn’t stop giggling as he watched me try to chew my dinner. Most days are like that somehow. Meaning, they’re perfect.
Lately, he’s been carrying around a little notebook and writing his thoughts in it. He’s gonna be a writer he tells me. I kind of hope he changes his mind, but I couldn’t be prouder of him. I always tell him that before he came along there was a Jack-sized hole in me that I didn’t even know was there, but now I’m all complete.
This is what that hole looked like.
February 3, 2014
Guns, Books, Etc.
I’m gonna have to be sold on this.
“If something comes up out of the past that doesn’t fit with who you have defined yourself to be, what do you do with that? How much of our memories are shaped by our sense of identity versus the things we’ve actually done?”
Old Crow.
“And then the public became more and more wild. They cut my neck and drank my blood.”
More on those R.I.P. bullets.
And more.
Possessed by Paul James: “Songs We Used to Sing.”
February 1, 2014
Anonymous-9 Interview
Anonymous-9 was kind enough to ask me some questions about how the Pike movie deal came about. The long and the short of it: I don’t know. But here’s the long of it.
January 31, 2014
Quote
Found in the back of George Saunders’ Tenth of December, which has been blowing me away lately.
A writer’s flaws are what he has to work with. To get any forward momentum, I have to make stories that have drama, which for me often means putting some overt threat in there. And I’m not subtle. To make “threat” and thereby “drama” I will just – you know – create a kindergarten teacher and then introduce an approaching Mongol horde. In the midst of a crisis is where we get the true measure of a character, and thus some new feeling about human tendency.
