Patrick’s Comments (group member since Mar 09, 2009)

Patrick’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Is this a way for you to ordain us into unwitting victims of Prescription for Love Cult? If so, put me in charge of injecting lsd in cupcakes for the next wave. :)

August would be better for most I think...I am not sure if I can go or not. I need to check up on my savings.

I have been going from literacy magazines from A to B after typing literacy magazines but they takes five to six months to respond.

There's this scene where Bandini read aloud his latest accepted work in front of the mirror, with grand gestures and another where he made a fourteen year old girl read his short story while he writhed on the hotel bed, sobbing with the sounds of his own prose. It seems a bit masturbatory for him to do that.

When I said a bit, I meant a lot. Masturbatory alot.

I am reading it now and it reminds me of every bloated egotiscal thought I have in my writings and I kept cringing at every writery gesticulating because I could see myself doing that.

Didja anyone see the interview of David Mitchell? It's as if he snuck in fiction files to read up on our group reads.

Just turn her on her stomach and she'll look like Miss America from behind.

I am reading Cloud Atlas. I hope to use it as a guide for my next novel about a superhero.

But after reading how the women writers get stuck with books covers that are soft toned and 'feminine', I could see how the establishment like the publishing world are pushing their luck with them even if the novels like Lotus Eaters (An example used on Three Guys and One Book) are softened and just use a picture of a pretty woman on a beach. It is like a hearing person who knows sign language and being put in charge of deaf staff in the deaf community even though that person may not be fully experienced in the deaf culture.

It is also an outrage when both members of the establishment use their precieved notion that females are soft and delicate when since the beginning of mankind, they had to labor and push their babies out of the wombs, along with the placenta, and urine and shit flying out of their vaginas and assholes.

I was just kidding. I don't watch sport but think it's funny in a sad way how sport fans don't watch WNBA with the enthusiam of NBA.

Yeah, pretty soon the National Women Basketball Association would actually expect to have real fans in arenas instead of recorded applauses.

Martha wrote: "So embarrassed...I'm just emerging from those godawful Steig Larsson books that I haven't been able to put down despite the terrible writing (or translation, or something). The high point in recent..."

Yeah, I read that book also and loves the dreamy beginning of childhood fishing of Zeitoun's story.

It happened several times in the U.S.A. with the Japanese internment after Pearl Harbor, and the 9/11. Fear in the name of security tends to make people do ugly things.

It started when the author outsmarted Jon Evision who ran the orginal fiction files three times in a row by posting her book after Jon removes it and he started this ironic love in for that book to punish the rest of us for laughing about it.

Although to be honest, I liked the fight of the doctors over who gets to have coffee with the nurse in question and the line, "Aha! There's the notorious sponge that continues to elude me!" regarding a patient when the bad guy doctor was looking at the X ray of the latest medical instruments he mistakenly stitched up inside. This kind of a writer makes me proud that I am from PA, NOT from Alto, Michigan. Pure genius. :)

I'm finishing Ghostwritten by David Mitchell. I just need a weekend to mope that I am not brillant as he is...book review to follow.

Shel wrote: "Picoult didn't write We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver did.

Picoult's work doesn't do much for me but I see her point.

The mere notion that ANYONE would say Franzen has "profound moral ..."

Lionel wrote the article and I was agreeing with her.

I am a fan of Picoult myself for she is a very good craftperson when it comes to writing. Every one of her novel that I read, I have liked so far.

Ooo,ooo! Looks like someone needs to stock up on extra tampons. Just kidding. I do think she has a point. I have been a fan of her works ever since I bought We Need to Talk About Kevin after reading her short story in Knock.

I think Jonathan Franzen got the nod in his Corrections because it seems that (to me) he successfully wrote about a person's mortality and vulerability without having anyone actually die which is not likely in Shriver's next novel in which about billions of people is gonna hafta die for her to tell her story. Life grimly plod on even if people show their weakness in the Corrections.


But I am a bit disturbed to see that Joyce Carol Oates do not recieve the same praises that she should get when now we stand by and watch Jonathan gets ushered to the forefront of the literacy community with his first and then second novel.

I am not surprised at how the publishing industry still look at women readers as compliant and prissy when the thought of passing something bigger than a breadbox out of the body is enough to make men cringe inwardly. It is just another sign of the publishing being I don't know pussified.

I tried reading that article but wanted to just fall asleep the way Hicks describes gratefully falling asleep at the end of his essay. Does he means to be ironic and commit the fallacy of the imitative form by being horribly boring or as one of our moderators would have posted: A few years ago, a woman I hardZzzzz...

I thought it was hysterical when Ben responded with his post that he likes HIS with whipped creame, and caramel icings and a cinnamon stick then everybody chimed in with their pussified versions of creamy coffees. I always thought it would make for a great Saturday Night Live sketch with all the ff talking out of the corners of their mouths like hardboiled tough guys asking for various creamy coffeee with candies flavors.

I remember having an huge appetite for Kurt Vonnegut when I was a sophomore 10 years ago, but ran out of steam. I love Slaughter House Five and loves that raw honesty that maybe some men in the unit probably doesn't stay together like brothers in arms. There was no limit to his simple narration.

Nice to know I'm not the only one to like porno. I wonder what Franz would make of the easy availibiity of internet porn?

After discussing how the language is difficult to translate and how it might be different than the original source, it seems contradictionary to other posts to say that the books in which languages reigns over stories are themselves translated books. It probably depends on the most successful translation and your choice of novels does seem interesting. I guess I will have to check 'em out.