Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Jonathan wrote: "what about that one where the guy turns into a cockroach? that book was D-U-M dum! there's no way you could just turn into a cockroach unless you're like a superhero. but that guy was a total loser..."

Clearly, Jonathan is an authority on Amazon reviews. :)

strap ons, hard ons, you'd think we only talk about one thing around here. :P

Just saying...

http://www.purifiedpictures.com/

What I love is how you're looking at this family sitting on a couch on the right, and in the top left is an image of a Shutter Island DVD.

Seconded, Noreen. There is a handful of us that get together every year but the group started out on MySpace in... 07? and is mostly virtual.

I love these suggestions! This kind of work is all over the place. I want to write something where the very pattern of the interlocking has meaning, too... but the incidental appearance of one character in another story has a lot of appeal, too.

The timeline of Just Kids starts in about 1968 and runs through the mid 80s. It's really about her formation as an artist through her eyes and it's a pretty unflinching appraisal - she says she didn't know what she was doing, she didn't know where she was going, didn't recognize moments for what they were and for many years had no idea what kind of "artist" she was, just that she wanted to live her life for art, and she and Mapplethorpe supported one another in that endeavor.

I respect that kind of single mindedness and don't believe it has a label. As a writer who would love to have more time to write, I have to carve that time out of my day in the pre-dawn hours. Granted, I've made choices that have pulled me away from having that time -- whether it's having children or needing to make money to support those children, succumbing to societal expectations of my time, or a lack of confidence in my abilities, doesn't matter. What I admire most about her is that focus and dedication.

For my part, I wasn't born until 1973 and spent most of my early years not in the States, so my points of reference for these labels and their correct application is limited to what I've read.
From my perspective the term hippy doesn't really apply to her and neither does punk but then, there's really only a subset of people those words would really apply to. Her fascination with Rimbaud and the middle East cements that too -- I would almost call her a Romantic. If there was a label that would work.

I second Dan's comment.

I picked up IJ again after not having a ton of attention span to read it last year, and life settling down this year ... and just finished the really harrowing, painful, stream of consciousness, clockwork-orange-esque chapter of Yrstruly, C and Poor Tony.

So glad to be getting back into it...

I'm just takin' a temperature out here. I've been considering writing a short story cycle, the kind where the stories are sort of loosely or tightly stitched together... where it's obviously a whole story, just not one told in a linear, novel format.

I've read some really successful ones. Joyce Carol Oates, for one. Mary Gaitskill. Really, it's practically its own sub-genre of the short story at this point. And there are novels that do this, too, I know. But I want to vary my voices pretty widely.

What do you guys think of them? Do you have any stellar examples I can take a peek at? Anything you really hate about them?

I have it in my head to create something where there is a method to the interlocking pieces, maybe even significance to the number of stories, etc. to lend to the cohesiveness. But I also want the pieces to stand alone.

There are a few reasons I'm considering doing it this way, mostly having to do with point of view, perspective, and being able to overlap stories of the characters. But also because I need to get started, and when I confront the idea of a "whole novel" I worry about carrying a single story.

Agreed, Patty. And if it has an Oprah medallion on it... I make a little cross with my fingers.

St. Mark's is where she did her first... half show, half reading.

P.S. I have no idea. That's just how I write it.

The thing about the National Book Award is that what I've read from that list I've really liked. So if it brings exposure to those titles, so much the better.

And it's a leftover from my writing professors in college. They seemed to have a hardon for it above other awards.

The most recent one I've read is Patti Smith's Just Kids. And if you're friends with me on Facebook you've heard enough about how much I love that one already. If you're not, let me just say that for me, it's akin to Letters to A Young Poet in terms of its importance to my creative life.

Absurd, bizarre, chickenshit and ridiculous.

In a nutshell.

Booker. More international & inclusive.

The Pulitzer I think more of journalism and stuff like that...

To me, National Book Award, the Booker, and a handful of other international prizes (NOT the Nobel, mind you).

That's just total personal opinion, though.

I bought this for one of my friends (who had the wisdom to send me Pearl Buck!) for the holidays:



And I bought Cotswold Privies for my mom -- a true classic -- because it's hilarious and we lived only a few km from Cotswold when I was a kid.

It has a list of "other names for privies" that includes:

Crapping Kennel
Gong House
Klondike
Place of Easement
Shittush
Shooting Gallery
The You Know Where

He is interviewed in The Paris Review this month.

http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...

I read it. I liked it. He's an interesting guy. Lots to say about Pynchon (well, that's the part I paid attention to, anyway).

subject varies but is about a range of things -- the full novel is a kind of a spy novel but with a more character-driven plot... form is short story, length is between 1000 to 2000 words...

I'll check this out and what JE posted - thanks, guys. :)

OK, it's time for me to sh*t or get off the pot. Jonathan and everyone else within earshot has been telling me for over a year that I need to just get my stuff out there and see what happens. And finally, my ego has been beaten into submission enough to really DO something.

SO I have three excerpts that I want to start testing the waters with in the zine world. Or the lit mag world. Or somewhere.

I know very little about how to approach this but I feel like a plan would be a good idea. Or at least a good list of journals or zines that are open to new authors...

I'm a bit worried about submitting longish stuff to online zines because I come from a world where we all believe no one reads more than 150 words on a page. Does anyone else worry about that?

And, while the subject of their relevance overall can be debated I also think that for people like me who need to get their groove for rejection nice, smooth and deep, it's a good place to start.

So ... recommendations?

So, a friend of mine recommended Kinky Friedman to me.

And of course, I want to know what you guys think first. Anyone read the books? Have an opinion?

Can I just say I don't really get what Flaubert is trying to do with Berthe?

I mean, is she just a casualty of Emma's inability to focus on things that don't directly, immediately please her? Or only give her something, not needing in return?

Pictures of motherhood from this time, I have never really been able to relate to, and that's likely a good thing. I think that it's an interesting topic to study, because moms get the shaft more often than not in their portrayal -- but this little vignette in section two bothers me.

I mean, I get that mothers are painted to be Shiva, and only occasionally Sophia... And the rest of the book I've understood. I would understand it better if she had the baby and didn't see it except on birthdays... is the point that she uses Berthe to make herself believe she is "reformed..." and Berthe, like Charles, will always be around for her to be that way with? Or that people, in general, aren't real to her, always a projection, always part of the scenery?

It's the first time since starting this book that I've been a little ticked off.

Again, more about Leon and Rodolphe. Once he decides to seduce her, Rodolphe starts fantasizing about possessing her. As he starts to weave his web, he does an interesting dance about morality.

In principle it's hard to disagree with, seductive -- that there are two moralities (about halfway through Ch 8):

"No! Why rant against the passions? Aren't they the only beautiful thing on earth, the source of heroism, enthusiasm, poetry, music, the arts -- everything, in fact?"

"But still," said Emma, "we have to pay some attention to opinions and abide by its morality."

"Ah! In fact there are two moralities," he replied. "The petty one, the conventional one, the one devised by men, that keeps changing and bellows so loudly, making a commotion down here among us, in a perfectly pedestrian way, like that gathering of imbeciles you see out there. But the other one, the eternal one, is all around and above us, like the landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that gives us light."

[a bit later]

"Doesn't it revolt you, the way society conspires? Is there a single feeling it doesn't condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies, are persecuted, maligned, and if at last two poor souls should find each other, everything is organized to prevent their coming together."

Hugh Hefner couldn't have done a better job on the twins.