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

Jonathan’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

. . .happy birthday, christopher!!!

. . . sounds potentially suffocating to me . . . i like the idea of a ghost being in love with someone who doesn't know they exist . . . i think jonathan carroll might've already done that, though . . .

. . .anybody who can index all this stuff is my H-E-R-O!

. . .hi lavinia! welcome jodi, and great to see you back, evan!

. . .ha! yep, patrick, fear and arrogance, that's bandini!

. . .hooray, i escaped the wrath of martyn! so glad you enjoyed!!! . . .i'm already finished with my next book, the revised fundamentals of caregiving, and i'm quite sure it's the funniest and saddest book i've written--that is, it has the most emotional range . . . where WOH is a novel of themes and ideas, the revised fundamentals of caregiving is a novel of the heart . .. i'm about 100 pages into a new novel, which is form-wise i believe more ambitious than west of here . . .here's hoping i pull it off! . . . thanks for the great reading martyn--what a relief!

. . .okay, martyn, you're killing me . . .

ha! . . . anybody got some dogfish oil so i can grease this thing up?

. . . dude's a great sentence writer, no doubt, with a keen eye for observation . . . i just want to be compelled by story a little more, i guess . . .

. . .anyone read last year's pulitzer winner for fiction, tinkers? . . .while it's probably a bad career move for me to knock the current pulitzer winner, i'm just a little flabbergasted . . . there is some lovely writing herein, no doubt, but where's the narrative engine? . . .this isn't so much a novel, as a meditation on clock-making and seizures, by a guy who writes good sentences . . . so, while i consider it a HUGE victory for publishing that a title by tiny bellevue press won the pulitzer (really, this is a big deal!), i'm a little bit disillusioned at the lack of story . . . part of me feels like this sort of "literary" fiction is a big part of the reason the novel as a medium is having such a hard time connecting with readers . . . on the upside, it's only 190 pages long . . . i'm not saying i want helicopter chases or love triangles or quirky, convoluted plot lines, i just want something that demands my attention by virtue of the story itself . . . look at stewart o'nan's last night at the lobster-- nothing "happens" that isn't completely mundane, and yet it's riveting because of the telling . . .

cat in the hat (it's come to this!)

the iron will of shoeshine cats - hesh kestin

hi jodi, welcome welcome welcome!

. . . where would i be without your laugh a day, ad!!!

. . .hooray, welcome brock! you're going to love the people you meet in here-- they are family . . .

. . .brock and i have a history that goes back 23 years . . . we were hopelessly young alcoholic misfits together in san francisco . . . reconnected with brock in minnesota this weekend, and we hit three bookstores together and talked about books for hours, so i know he'll be right at home . . .

. . .wow, thanks for the vivid childbirth sequence, patrick . . . goes great with my morning coffee . . .

. . . yikes, a bookseller in KC told me he recently put west of here in franzen's hand recently and told he must read it . . .

. . . adrian, you're an absolute gem!

. . . hey, consider i'm talking to ewwa, here . . . balance is not always symmetry . . .

. . .matt, you and ry have hit on something, but the sad fact is that my current ex-pat friends report that nobody abroad really talks about america anymore, not like they have for the past sixty years, at least in the last eighteen months or so . . . we're losing our allure along with our ability to produce anything. . .