David Mamet offers strong advice in this pared down clip from movie commentaries, such as this:
It’s hard to write a drama — because it’s hard to write a drama with a plot, because a plot means that you have to at the end of the drama resolve that problem which gave rise to the drama in such a way that it’s both surprising and inevitable as per Aristotle. The thing is, can you turn the film around in the last 10 seconds — one of the hardest things in the world to do.
“But Klavan is not only a provocateur—he’s also, Stephen King says, ‘the most original American novelist of crime and suspense since Cornell Woolrich.’ And Werewolf Cop (so I say) is his best book yet, one that starts with a rush and never lets up, dark and funny, with the bittersweet taste of the knowledge of good and evil.” John Wilson of Books and Culture praises Andrew Klavan and his latest novel–naturally.
See Lars’ review of Werewolf Cop, if you haven’t already.
“DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING,” said Death. “JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
Many people are talking about fantasy author Terry Pratchett, who passed away this week of a chest infection (He also had Alzheimers). Though he supported allowing people to give their doctors permission to kill them, he died of natural causes.
Fans continue to honor him with quotations and memories. “After losing the ability to touch type in 2012,” reports the Telegraph, “he used voice-recognition technology to complete his much-loved new works. He went on to become one of the most prominent and influential voices in the campaign for research into the disease, and was a patron of Alzheimers Research UK.
“When asked about his career in May 2014, he said: ‘It is possible to live well with dementia and write best-sellers ‘like wot I do.'”
Pratchett said many good, witty things, such as, “The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.” The Guardian has fifteen of the best.
Over 2,500 fans, so far, have petitioned Death to reinstate the author.
Poet Anne M. Doe Overstreet describes thinking about when she became a writer.
I come from a family that read hungrily and constantly; there was music—banjo to clarinet to piano—and hikes beside copper-colored ponds, beneath the huff and shrug of spruce at places like Peaks of Otter, reciting the names of deciduous trees. In between, stillness, time to reflect. And within that, Walter Farley’s novels and Webster’s Dictionary, the 1970 edition, I Capture the Castle and World Book Encyclopedia, which opened up the universe and made me hungry to understand why a Tennessee Walking Horse was what it was. But I cannot tease it apart, say, here I begin, here I turn my face toward a different tree line, moving from reader and listener to writer. It doesn’t begin. It doesn’t end.
I attended a reading of her poetry many months ago. I loved the sound of her words. You can read them for free through Noisetrade now, though leaving a tip would be kind. She’s a poet who rewards her audience with beautiful mystery and perhaps inspiration.
Edgar Poe looks Odinesque in this cover, don’t you think?
Book Covers: Allan Poe's "The Raven" (by Emmanuel Polanco) and George Orwell's "1984". pic.twitter.com/ZcW7G2N652
— ✍ Bibliophilia (@Libroantiguo) March 6, 2015
History author Susan Wise Bauer talks about taking a break from writing under deadline–well, behind deadline–for a few years.
“So about a year ago, I promised myself that when I hit my last big deadline, I wouldn’t sign another contract immediately. Instead, I decided to take six months and just write. Go down to my office and work on anything that struck my fancy. Read, reflect, experiment, let my horizons expand.”
A few weeks into this hiatus, she entered ‘fish mode’, and you’ll never guess what happened next. It completely blew my mind. I was weeping by the end of her story. Ok, I’m not saying what you might easily conclude I’m trying to say. All I’m saying is click the link to her post to see what ‘fish mode’ is and how Bauer feels it.
That’s all I’m saying. Really.
Oh, and I should also say that Bauer is the excellent author of several history books, such as The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. Her newest book is The Story of Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory.
Poet Ezra Pound, whose hair launched a thousand conversations, planned a luncheon with his employer, William Butler Yeats, to serve a distinguished older poet, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a peacock at his manor. “The maneuverings of poets and literary people, jostling for fame behind the keyhole of glimpsed conviviality, is as old as Rome, older even; but Pound had a special gift for P.R.”
Though Lifeway still sells The Jefferson Lies, Thomas Nelson does not and after an investigation will not publish it. The author, David Barton, has stated Simon & Schuster will pick it this year, but that claim has been denied by the publisher’s spokesman.
“Once home to the humorist P.G. Wodehouse, Walton Street still emanates an old-school English charm,” writes Amiee Farrell. “Though flanked by Harrods and The Conran Shop, it’s an enclave of independent, if occasionally chichi, antiques and interiors shops, and art galleries and boutiques that has — so far — bucked the trend for high-end homogenization.”
I thought you’d want to know this. No need to thank me.
And on a loosely related note, Gene Veith talks about Sacramone’s list of funniest books, saying Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy should be on the list.
A U.S. Poet Laureate died last weekend. Philip Levine, a Detroit native, was the 18th U.S. Poet Laureate. He was caught in the rain one day when his neighbor noticed him.
Michael Bourne tells the story and a bit more. “The anger that filled him in his early years was of no use to him as a writer, he told me. ‘It was a huge hindrance because it meant I couldn’t write anything worth a damn about that work life,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get that disinterestedness that’s often required. I couldn’t get Wordsworth’s tranquility. It took me until I was about 35 before I really wrote a poem that was about work.’”