Bill Cheng's Blog, page 133

theparisreview:“Before our fathers lost their jobs, before the...

theparisreview:

“Before our fathers lost their jobs, before the kid at school collapsed on the practice field, before our grandmothers forgot our names, before the first big uprooting, the tug of bourbon, and the crises of faith, there was a shameless season along the cattail-flanked pikes of northeast Nashville, a season as tough to fathom now as it is mortifying to confess, when our biggest concern, at least on weekend nights late, was whose house to roll with toilet paper.”

Read more from Drew Bratcher on getting caught here.

Alain de Botton, on Essays

Alain de Botton, on Essays:

picadorbookroom:

“For me, essays are about brevity and also personality, a feeling that you’re being taken on an intellectual or emotional journey by a particular person who you get to know along the way. Essays root ideas in personal experience.”

Censorship?

From the Guardian:

A German man whose letter to a publishing house prompted it to expunge the racist sentiment from a classic children’s book has spoken of his relief about the decision, despite the angry backlash and hate mail it has generated.

…

He initially wrote to the publishers in November, who offered to review the text and subsequently agreed to change it after consulting with the author, Otfried Preussler, who is 90.

I’m a writer (in so far as I am writing this and write regularly and care about the written word) so on hearing that The Little Witch was getting the black bar treatment, my gut response is to shake and froth and rail— but here I don’t know. The picture changes a little when I realize it was Preussler himself who OK’d the revision.

This comes hot on the heels of Stephen King’s essay Guns,  where he discusses the string of school shootings that was attributed to King’s novel Rage in the 80’s:

My book did not break (them) or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.”

I still think Preussler and King have done the world of letters a major disservice in pulling or altering their books; and I also maintain that I don’t believe that the writer should or can be the final arbiter of their work— but it’d be ignorant of me to glibly dismiss their choice.

Because, if I dig deep enough through my east-coast pseudo-intellectual liberalism, it is a choice.  And the sum goodness and badness of our world will come from making our own choices, not lightly, but with care and courageousness then bearing the consequences. 

I write, in part, because I think all writing makes the world better.  It adds to the sum points of view available to us.  But I think that we are also, as best as we can be, stewards for the world.  That our writing, while apolitical, cannot say nothing— and that if we speak, every word should intone only one final meaning: This can be better.

"We talk to ourselves when we travel. We get used to the double-voiced loneliness that accompanies us..."

“We talk to ourselves when we travel. We get used to the double-voiced loneliness that accompanies us somewhere strange and, because we have already imagined it, familiar. We tell ourselves stories about places, and our stories are stories about us. We knead our dreams and our memories into the clay of new streets and new cities, and because they are a part of us we are never alone.”

- Tara Isabella Burton: Fatherlands - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics (via guernicamag)

"If I can’t believe in God, I do believe in fiction. Reading a novel is an act of devotion that will..."

“If I can’t believe in God, I do believe in fiction. Reading a novel is an act of devotion that will slowly, I hope, build an empathetic understanding of people and experience beyond my own.”

- Claire Cameron, “Faith and Fiction: The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín.” (via millionsmillions)

You Rach You Lose: Hey, Sensible Nonsense fans!

You Rach You Lose: Hey, Sensible Nonsense fans!:

thesensiblenonsenseproject:

In one week, we will be hosting a live celebration of The Sensible Nonsense Project — and we want your involvement!

When is it?

On Wednesday, February 6th, at 6:00 PM EST. We’ll be hosted by the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia.

What are you doing?

…

Lines from Shakespeare Mistaken for 1990s Hip Hop Lyrics | HTMLGIANT

Lines from Shakespeare Mistaken for 1990s Hip Hop Lyrics | HTMLGIANT:

housingworksbookstore:

“I’ll teach you how to flow.” (The Tempest)

“He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.” (King John)

“I have within my mind / A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, / Which I will practise.” (The Merchant of Venice)

“That’s an ill phrase.” (Hamlet)

“Holla, holla!” (King Lear)

“I am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and I am the dog–Oh! the dog is me, and I am myself.” (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

“You knights of Tyre / Are excellent in making ladies trip.” (Pericles)

“Just as high as my heart.” (As You Like It)

“Thou art raw.” (As You Like It)

“Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not smooth.” (Henry V)

“Ay, on the front.” (Macbeth)

“Holla, you clown!” (As You Like It)

“Our cake’s dough on both sides.” (The Taming of the Shrew)

“Trip no further, pretty sweeting.” (Twelfth Night)

“Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill.” (The Comedy of Errors)

Who just got selected for Barnes and Noble's Summer '13 Discover Pick?

This guy:

Thanks to my friend Sarah who took this photo

Bookslut Interview with Jeanne Thornton

From Bookslut:

The initial stage. Most of this book was read aloud to comrades from the Fiction Circus — Miracle Jones, Kevin Carter, Bill Cheng, Anton Solomonik — while I was in the process of writing it. One of my favorite paragraphs in the book, when Julie talks about wildflowers, was written really fast at a café around the corner when I was late to one of our biweekly “writing meetings,” just so I’d have an end to the chapter to read at the meeting like fifteen minutes later. It’s one of the paragraphs that survived pretty much unchanged from the first draft.

Writing is generally a private act, but writing fiction for me is a public one, an effort to take something hard to describe and to structure that thing as a lie that gives people pleasure. The story doesn’t feel totally real until someone’s heard it, and as a bonus I get some sense of what makes sense in the story and what doesn’t. This whole reveal it as soon as you’ve done it practice comes out of doing webcomics, also: having people read along with the story while it’s in the process of being composed just seems normal to me. It’s nice when people are in some ways as invested in the world you’re creating as you are.

Ah I remember those days! 

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theparisreview:AhMother, the deadMother, the dead are...

theparisreview:

Ah
Mother, the dead
Mother, the dead are deafening now.
The dead are like starlings in a tree
       I clap my hands once.
       They rise in the air.
       They rise in a flock.
       They darken the sky.
       They turn on the wing.
       They turn again on the wing.
Mother, the dead are calling to me

Singing

—James Fenton, from “The Song of the Dead”
Photography Credit Donald MacMillan, “Six Suns”