The Heavyweights
Big time. In one way or another it’s what many of us crave. Years pass and we aspirants continue to tote around delicious, elusive illusions: The moment we’re gonna make it and hit the Big Time. Recently the National Book Awards recognized a couple of scribes, which pretty much signals the arrival of some new big timers in the literary world. Iowa City is big time — it’s even dubbed the City of Literature. But is it living up to its reputation? Find out more in the Press-Citizen. Good old Carlos Fuentes emerges from his Latin lair and has some sage advice for authors: Lie, damn it. Ever hiked the Smoky Mountains? No? That’s cool, because now you can cradle that would-be experience in the palm of your hand. Lastly, a derelict office worker writes a novel in the bathroom, and the events that inspired In Cold Blood — a big, tough novel from a small, wobbly man — reach their 50th anniversary. “I’m on my way I’m making it…” — Kevin Murphy
– “It seems to me that American literature is able to embrace, and American publishing is able to embrace, the other,” McCann said. “I believe in the power of the word. I believe, as Dave Eggers said, you’ve got to take this honor as a challenge. And as fiction writers and as people who believe in the word, we have to enter the anonymous corners of the human experience and to make that little corner right.” — Colum McCann in NPR
On Top Of The World, Ma
– A year ago, Iowa City was designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization City of Literature. However, the Iowa City area has yet to realize the full potential of the designation officials took three years to obtain. “I can’t say it has impacted the area all that great as of it,” said Iowa City/Coralville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau President Josh Schamberger. — City of Literature in the Press-Citizen
– Published in 1996, this work is now out of print, but to give you some idea of its merits, it brings premium prices on the out-of-print market. If you can find one, you have a treasure, because this chatty work, full of all sorts of unusual anecdotal material and redolent of the author’s deep love of the Smokies, is a masterpiece. — Hiking Books in the Smoky Mountain Times
– Forget stream of consciousness. I don’t know about you, but my stream of consciousness generally consists of fully formed sentences latched together into comprehensive paragraphs, often incorporating plot and lots of action verbs. This may be why The Sum of His Syndromes works so well. Composed of the narrator’s notes from a sixth floor bathroom as he avoids work, K.B. Dixon’s short novel hits life from workplace gossip to the larger questions of love and happiness. And it works. — K.B. Dixon in LitMob
A Liar's Best Friend
– Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes said that it is important that authors “play around with truth and lies” because the alternative is to promote the idea that absolute truth exists, which would imply “a dictatorship.” In a talk Wednesday at the Latin American Art Museum in Buenos Aires, Fuentes said that the “separation between the press and literature” lies in the fact “it’s assumed the press aims to tell the truth.” — Carlos Fuentes in the Latin Herald Tribune
– “Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.” That was how Truman Capote summed up the murders with somewhat greater drama, referring to the four Clutter victims and their two attackers who died later on the gallows. After reading a short newspaper account of the killings, he decided to make the 1,700km journey from his home in New York to Holcomb to chronicle the impact of terrible violence on a small community. The result, six years later, was In Cold Blood. It propelled him to household fame and fortune, and in the process ensured that Holcomb was put on the map, and changed forever, in ways that many of the townspeople did not – and still do not – appreciate. – Truman Capote in the Guardian
Video: Capote in Kansas (1966)
