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

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

That's how I felt. As though the hands of love and passion were being tied behind their backs. It was cold and hard to read, especially when I felt like they were sublimating so extremely:

Suddenly Jordan, with deep tenderness, ran his hand very slowly over her head, and Alicia instantly burst into sobs, throwing her arms around his neck. For a long time she cried out all the fears she had kept silent, redoubling her weeping at Jordan's slightest caress. Then her sobs subsided, and she stood a long while, her face hidden in the hollow of his neck, not moving or speaking a word.

And by the way, yes. I squirmed. And I am not the squirmy type. At all.

OK. So.

The story is called The Feather Pillow. So I'm thinking that at least part of the point is the pillow, that masked the creature sucking the life out of Alicia.

But why is the creature there? How did it get there?

And that it's normally a parasite of birds...

So, is this about freedom and love?

I think so.

But I'm always going to say everything is about love.

I fight this battle every day, R.a.

I like the pace of the handwritten letter taking time to arrive in the mail; I love handwriting, or typewritten letters.

I like hearing the voices of people I love.

Even better, seeing the people I love, which happens less and less because we're all so damn busy managing our channels.

At work, I am on Skype, AIM, email, and the phone all day long. I wear a headset like an implant, switching back and forth between computer and phone. I communicate. I manage my time. I manage expectations. I manage my instantaneous channels.

And while I love the internet -- it would be hard to find someone as enthusiastic about the medium as I am -- I truly do love all that it offers me as a member of the human race and as an individual... sometimes... it's just too much. There is no quiet place. No retreat.

http://sayberklas.tripod.com/antholog...

Let's get this party started! As soon as I get home.

R.a., I think your advice applies to SO many more areas than just reading lists.

Un-plug to focus. Indeed.

Hm. Maybe I walk the line on this one.

I think that the novel does get at something the writer feels strongly about or believes (or doesn't believe) in. Otherwise, why write it.

And it depends on the writer, right?

I typically take a naive approach, as in, I don't know and don't care about the life of the author because I want to know what the story has to say to me. Autobiographical details on the writer are not what I'm digging for, unless I'm a grad student trying to dig up something sensational for my thesis.

But books like... Portnoy's Complaint... well, it's hard NOT to see through it to the writer because that's in some ways the point. This is where ego comes into play for writers. IMO.

I see what you're saying, Jonathan, but I think the great stories have beating hearts of their very own.

Someone posted this to my wall on Facebook and from the ones listed, I like these... I skipped Franzen altogether!

Diana Athill
You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

Margaret Atwood
You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.

Helen Dunmore
Read Keats's letters.

Geoff Dyer
Don't be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.

Anne Enright
The first 12 years are the worst.

Richard Ford
Don't take any shit if you can possibly help it.

David Hare
The two most depressing words in the English language are "literary fiction".

PD James
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

AL Kennedy
Remember writing doesn't love you. It doesn't care. Nevertheless, it can behave with remarkable generosity. Speak well of it, encourage others, pass it on.

Matt wrote: "no, no, it's too late... worthy try though... (lol)"

Sorry to let you down. I tried to be incendiary... I think I just got kinder and gentler when the tan and grey design took over the bright blue and white one... ;-)

I don't know if I can learn a lot about a person from their writing. I don't know how much anyone would learn about me from what I write. I kinda hope, not much of anything, because I want people to be relating to my characters, but that depends on the genre, right? I mean, I might, say, write anonymously for blogs and while you can learn about the "me" I present, I'd have to be pretty careful to cover my actual identity.

Which gets at the question of identity vs. the real insides of a person.

I suppose I can learn those things if that's what I'm looking for, but I also hope that writers pop out of their own experience to empathize with a whole other kind of person. I am not that good a writer.

Or not learn/empathize, as the case may be. I don't know how much empathy I can really drum up for Joe Christmas, for example, even if I feel the inevitability of his path in life. And I do wonder how Faulkner created him, from what nightmare he was born.

Yeah - I guess empathy with the state of humanity as a whole and individuals is where it's at. Otherwise, how can you get at the emotional heart of a character, and really, how can we as humans relate to one another at all without tuning into it?

Empathy, in my opinion, is just energy willingly exchanged/shared.

I never thought of it as something to use for art. It's hard enough to manage in every day life.

Ah, the irony!

JE, that's a pretty big statement about a writer's greatness and his humanity. I'm interested in your take. What does that mean, exactly?

Matt wrote: "I actually thought this was a more incendiary way of getting conversation flowing, guess not

I miss the old files a bit (no offense to those of you game enough to join in here)"

Well, if you want incendiary, here's the more incendiary version of my opinion: I think this is bullshit.

I think that lambasting someone's life after they're DEAD is just silly. Not because they can't respond, but really just because... it's all OVER. Leave the guy ALONE. He's gone. He can't FIX it to your liking.

I feel the same way about this article as I did about the critique of Thoreau - in my opinion, the fact that he had friends bring him food did not take away from the power of his work, and the attempts to detract from Salinger's "mysterious" life are really just the author's way of trying to gain traction for herself.

In general, I just hate revisionism.

So there. Sorry if that's not incendiary enough. ;)

Hmm... In the Light in August thread, Hugh posted a little contemporary summary written about Faulkner in which it was noted he had a fondness for corn liquor.

There is a part of me that longs for the days of not knowing every damn thing about people.

A big part.

I like my writers larger than life, full of unknowable flaws that make them *human* ... since that's what they are.

I kinda dig Richard Ford's quote, myself.

And yeah - the Neil Gaiman quote rings true to me, too.

Jonathan Franzen, go have a drink and open a Facebook account! It's TV that's doing in writers!

Seriously, though. What harm does joining the collective human consciousness do to writing? Unless you can't tear yourself away from it and be an individual to scribble some stuff down every few minutes.

Unlike Conrad, Faulkner depends on madmen for his best effects.

Interesting remark.

a murder, a lynching and a good deal of morbid fornication....

Wow. As though they are equal. I don't remember it being morbid. Maybe morbid is a code word I don't know that told people to "go out and buy this potboiler right away."

There is something to the glossing over of personal details that you just wouldn't get now, isn't there? Like... a fondness for corn liquor. Hmmmm.

Phew. That title.

I don't know if I see sustained tension as much as I see an inevitable collision thing happening.

And I see that in multiple characters. Who they believe themselves to be, who their actions display them to be, and who 'the town' believes them to be -- and 'the town' has a fatalistic consciousness all its own.

There is a sense of predestiny, a grinding inevitability of cruelty & misunderstanding. That's the part of Faulkner that is hard for me to get through. Because I'm a big believer in redemption, in general and in my books. I had to wait for the final chapter for that one and even then...

It is a problem, to find good contemporary stuff for free online, and that's one of the rules for my thread here.

I mean, they're short stories; I wouldn't expect a trip to the library or bookstore to be made.

That said, I'm totally open to suggestions like the one you made. And it's not complaining if you make a suggestion. :)

Actually, I did like the story, and the reason I like these stories is because they are early forays into the form itself. They may only use one device that became well-used and loved, maybe even discarded eventually, but they are a good way to think about the form as a whole. Sort of like reading The Aeneid or The Odyssey, in a way.

The point of the story, for me as a short story reader, is the sneaky reveal. Much like La Parure, or a Poe story.

But yes. We can move into more recent authors. I put together this list a very long time ago based on requests... and I am always open to more of those.