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

Jonathan’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

. . . fuck, i would love to do a reading of moby dick or the brothers karamozov . . . no matter what, i'm down for the discussion . . .

. . . that's giving wallace too much credit, at least in my mind . . .moby dick was truly a groundbreaking work, way ahead of its time . . . IJ is more like kurt vonnegut finally wrote a long book . . .

. . .yeah, the shorter novels rul, especially benito cereno . . . i think you'll LOVE moby dick, actually, martyn . . .

, , ,martyn, who knew?

. .. wow, it's already in pluto?

. . . i loved cloud atlas, the ambition and scope, and the amazing writing . . . ironically, what inspired me about the book, and the way in which it influenced WOH, was what the book was lacking: connective tissue . . . it read like six novellas, written separately, that were simply nested together after the fact . . . mitchell confirmed this in an interview . . . i wanted to do something with a staggering scope, but i wanted it to be ABOUT the connections between all these stories . . . i wanted the connections to be the narrative engine . . .

. . . in addition to my book being on shelves, and more importantly, i think it's swanny's birthday . . .queue hero video form dorka '08 . . .

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, he could never turn into a cockroach. . . the worst tho is that 1984 book . . . why would you write a book about the future that took place like 25 years ago? dum! . . . and i haven't read that one dog soldiers, but it sounds dum too . . .a dog could never be a soldier, not even a really smart dog . . .

. . . don't worry, patty, if it comes down to you or the manuscript, i toss the ms. and rush to your rescue . . . and ben, my step-dad is a mechanic . . . let's have check out that helio-pack before you strap it on! . . .huhuhuh, i said strap it on . . .

. . . whoa! . . .wherever we celebrate this year--no lighthouse!

. . . lame!

. . .okay, okay, score one for the brits, but work with me here: pulitzer or booker?

. . . interesting piece in the millions, which got me started thinking about this in the first place:

http://www.themillions.com/2006/04/pu...

. . .and a list of the past decades NBA winners:

2000 Susan Sontag In America
2001 Jonathan Franzen The Corrections
2002 Julia Glass Three Junes
2003 Shirley Hazzard The Great Fire
2004 Lily Tuck The News from Paraguay
2005 William Vollmann Europe Central
2006 Richard Powers The Echo Maker
2007 Denis Johnson Tree of Smoke
2008 Peter Matthiessen Shadow Country
2009 Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin
2010 Jaimy Gordon Lord of Misrule

here's a list of pulitzer winners since 2000:

2010 Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)

2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)

2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)


2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)


2006 March by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar)


2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins)


2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar)


2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Alfred A. Knopf)


2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House)

. . . curious about people's perceptions about the pulitzer prize and the national book award . . . it used to be that the pulitzer was clearly the most prestigious american literary award, but in recent decades the national book award's stock has really gone up . . . which do you consider more prestigious?

. . . also, i'll track down lists of the past twenty or so winners in each . . .

. . .um ry, funny you should mention that, but they already did that:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/gr...

. . .also notice that it's a satire of the time/franzen cover . . .

. . .i'll say this: i'm not a TL fan, but stranger book editor paul constant is a prince, and a pillar of book culture in our region . . . dude is a good reader and a fair critic . . .

. . .yeah, this site was a great resource for me when i was submitting stories . . . a few words of advice to prospective submitters:

profile journals well, really target them, and only send out a few stories at a time . . . if an editor thinks he or she is part of a carpet-bombing campaign, they're far less likely to actually consider a submission . . . thus, in your query letter, express specifically why you think this or that journal would make a great fit for your story . . . be prepared to wait months . . . it's a good idea to have several stories circulating at once, since you'll only be querying a few journals at a time . . .

. . . here's the most comprehensive and informative databas for literary journals that i know of:

http://www.newpages.com/literary-maga...

. . . it runs a thru z, and offers brief descriptions, links, and submissions guidelines . . . they also review literary journals . . .

hooray for charles portis, and hooray for overlook press for bringing all of his titles back in print . . .they were all out of print!