S. Craig Renfroe Jr.'s Blog, page 4

What I Learned from Michael Chabon's Fountain City

So, I'm on Goodreads--have you heard of Goodreads? It's Facebook for books. Anyway, they have a challenge where you pick how many books you're going to read in 2011. My friend Mel showed me. I played along. I need the encouragement. I don't read as much as I did/should/would, but to be fair if I were able to bind all the student writing I read it would certainly give Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down a run for it's length (and that's yearly). It's a pathetically low bar I set for myself, but even so I find myself picking shorter and shorter books to read. Which is why I read Fountain City by Michael Chabon. It's not even a book, but four chapters of a failed book, a "wrecked" book with annotations and miscellany by the author. It was part of McSweeney's 36, so is actually, technically a magazine article, but it's on Goodreads freestanding so I'm counting it as a book. Point is you should read it. I should make my students read it. See how they like it. Having to read stuff. Here's a list of things I learned. I won't go into detail because since this is only four chapters, the spoilers wouldn't be the plot but how Chabon writes about his failure.

How writing can be suicide (non-poet edition).
The care of characters hanged from the "peg board of the imagination."
The role of the random.
Definition of draftitis.
Ditto authorial alienation
Thoughts on writing post-workshop
The need for a novelist's spouse (are you listening, Heather?).

Now to find something shorter to read.

Me on decomP magazinE II

You'll remember that I was on decomP, a literary magazine, once before. That was about a scientist who got mad.

This time my story "Femme Fatale, Rabid Raccoon" is in the decomP March issue. It's not about an actual raccoon, but there might be a femme fatale in there. It also includes audio of me reading the story, so you can finally hear my voice, the way you've always wanted. Play it for your kids to lull them to sleep. There's lots of other cool stuff in the issue, so poke around.

By the way, decomP is doing a Kickstarter campaign to put out its first print edition, so give.

2nd Annual Post-AWP Awards

That's right--I'm back. And now time for my 2nd annual post-AWP awards (You of course remember last year's):


Best crazy question: Building the Literary Robot Panel. So I can't crazy up the question precisely but here's the paraphrase—"If we survive in the future, which is doubtful, and go to other planets then we can't use paper to publish because it's too heavy. And then there will be Berlusconi-type octopus arms all over everything, taking everything. And then will we just be sending literature to robots?" I may not be doing that crazy justice but you get the idea.

Best response to a crazy question at AWP: I have no response to that. –Travis Kurowski. I'm not doing justice to that either—it was very deadpan and probably not those exact words but again you get the idea.

Best panel where I caught the very last minute because the crowd finally thinned out: Hint Fiction

Best unexpected meeting: David Erlewine

Best sort of expected meeting: It's a tie. Ben Tanzer & Jesse Waters

Magazine with the best paper: Knee-Jerk Offline Vol 01 MMX

Strangest free magazine: a 1964 Sewanee Review (which is cool because it has a review by one of my favorites: Walker Percy)

Best reason to quit my teaching job: Jhumpa Lahiri's (unintentional?) dissing of writing professors when she said she chose winning the Pulitzer instead. She didn't really say that, but it was the subtext.

All winners will be receiving a golden pen (Fine print: all pens are made of dreams and coffee cup sleeves. Finer print: no one is getting anything).

AWP Ready

Apparently it's snowing somewhere and making it hard to get to AWP, but I'm bound for DC, and I am ready for my AWP experience. I have everything I need:

√A leather bound notebook so that I can write while other people are just talking about writing.

√A laptop to sit in the free Wi-Fi lobby and blog about the conference.

√An odd hat so people will look at me.

√An odd shirt or T-shirt with an odd phrase so that when people are staring straight ahead they'll look at me.

√An odd pair of shoes so that when people are looking down and don't see my hat or shirt they will notice my shoes and look at me.

√Pre-prepared questions/comments (mostly comments) that are so good they will prove that I am smarter than the people on the panel and that I should have been up there in the first place.

√A limber neck so that I can scan the Bookfair as I talk to someone in case there is someone more important I should be talking to.

√Nonalcoholic whiskey to use for shots with other writers who are using actual whiskey so that I can drink them under the table and thus prove I am a better writer.

√My wife--step one in entourage creation.

Away we go.

Me in DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION 2011 ANTHOLOGY

So my story "Pre-Revelation Coffee with Ex-Girlfriend" is in the Dogzplot Flash Fiction 2011 Anthology with these cool people:

BILL BARR
LAUREN BECKER
ERIC BENNETT
ALEC BRYAN
ELIZABETH ELLEN
ASHLEY FARMER
SASHA FLETCHER
JON-MICHAEL FRANK
REBECCA GAFFRON
ROXANE GAY
MADDIE GORMAN
BARRY GRAHAM
PAUL GRINER
SHELLY HOLDER
JAMIE IREDELL
DREW KALBACH
STEFAN KIESBYE
JEREMY KELLY
CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY
MAXINE LOPEZ-KEOUGH
ANDREA KNEELAND
LEN KUNTZ
DARBY LARSON
MK LAUGHLIN
BRIAN LE LAY
ROBERT LOPEZ
ROBERT JOHN MILLER
KYLE MINOR
DAVID PEAK
SHANNON PEIL
SAM RASNAKE
MICHELLE REALE
DANIEL ROMO
LINDA SANDS
KELLY SCHIRMANN
MARNIE SHURE
ANI SMITH
E. SODERBACK
BEN SPIVEY
PARKER TETTLETON
XTX

Very cool. Cover image by Sam Pink.

Necessary Fiction's First Footing

So Necessary Fiction is doing a month of fictional "first footings" where they've "invited our past contributors to let the last line of someone else's story get a foot in the door of their own fiction."

My contribution is called "The Banshee" and took its footing from Kevin Spaide's story "The Beard." You should definitly read his even if you don't read mine. By the way, his is about a beard and mine is about a banshee.

Me in Jelly Bucket

So my short story "No One Drowns Here Anymore" is in the 2010 issue of Jelly Bucket, a cool literary journal put out by the MFA program at Eastern Kentucky University. I'd especially like to thank Russell Helms. You can get copy of Jelly Bucket here.

Me in moonShine review

So my short story "An Introduction to Conflict as Understood by the Philosopher Diogenes" is in the latest issue of moonShine review #12 (Volume 6:Issue 2, that is). It's more about a father and son than Diogenes. Though it is also about Diogenes, who is one of my favorite philosophers…of all time. He lived in a tub and masturbated in public, like an obscene Oscar the Grouch. The best.

Here's some other info about the issue: moonShine review #12 released early Dec 2010, just in time for your holiday gift shopping! Only $8 ~ a lot of bang for the buck ~ this issue features fine prose by these talented writers other than me: Billie Bierer, Susan M. Boyer, Jessie Carty, Peg Daniels, Kate V.M. Ferguson, Gary V. Powell, Tom Quinn, Susan Snowden, Bob Strother, and Charlotte Wolf... and gorgeous featured photography by Clarke Armstrong.

Me on the Twitter

So I've decided to join Twitter. It's been a momentous decision I will soon regret. I mostly made it because blogging is too hard.

I joined today in honor of NaNoWriMo. I thought it was the least I could do in honor of novel writing month. Quite literally the least I could do. Because novels are actually longer than blogs I hear. Geez.

What Kids Want for Christmas: Bitter Cynicism

Turns out the must-have-but-impossible-to-find gift this Christmas season is the Autobiography of Mark Twain, joining the ranks of Zu Zu Pets and Cabbage Patch Kids. Go books!