Emily M. Danforth's Blog, page 64
December 21, 2012
December 20, 2012
Love. Wendy McNaughton’s “Snacks of the Great...
Love. Wendy McNaughton’s “Snacks of the Great Scribblers.”
December 19, 2012
artchipel:
Laurent Chehere (France) - Flying house
[more...
"I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story. People talk about..."
I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story. People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction.
“When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you experience that meaning more fully.”
”-
– Flannery O’Connor
(from Mystery and Manners)
For me this is endlessly, endlessly useful advice about fiction: it’s fundamental to the processes (of writing it, reading it, and talking about it.)
Completely thrilled to find CAM POST among the Booklist...
Completely thrilled to find CAM POST among the Booklist Editors’ Choice Books for Youth 2012. (Still adding to that unconscionably large TBR stack. To be read, to be read, to be read!)
(You can peruse the entire list by clicking the image above)
December 17, 2012
While working on an article (“Capote’s Swan...
While working on an article (“Capote’s Swan Song”) Vanity Fair staff recently discovered pages from “Yachts and Things,” a partial chapter from Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers long missing. It’s wonderful to see these pages, his handwritten notes and edits. You should check them out (and the aforementioned article, too.)
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/truman-capote-unseen-manuscript-unfinished-novel-answered-prayers#slide=1
12 Enjoyable Names for Relatively Common Things
:
box tent : the plastic table-like item found in pizza boxes
jamais vu : that feeling of seeing something for the first time, even though there’s nothing new about it
paresthesia : that tingling sensation when your foot falls asleep
grawlix : the string of typographical symbols comic strips use to indicate profanity (“$%@!”)
caruncula : the small, triangular pink bump on the inside corner of each eye
badinage : another word for playful banter
rhumba : a group of rattlesnakes
dringle : to waste time by being lazy
agraffe : the wire cage that keeps the cork in a bottle of champagne
wings : those back flaps on a bra
rasher : a single slice of bacon
purlicue : the web between your thumb and forefinger
more
I’m not sure that I’d consider a group of rattlesnakes “relatively common,” but this list is still good times.
December 16, 2012
"Love removes the world for you, and just as surely when it’s going well as when it’s going badly."
- Alice Munro (via tattoolit)
