Didn't I Tell You?
Rascals. All of us. Especially this Monday, what with Halloween behind us. Granted, we subscribed to our hermetic philosophy and did absolutely nothing for October’s ghoulish holiday. But still, we imagine many of you are struggling this morning — with makeup, memories and tummy aches. Nonetheless, the DSM furnace burns on. Here’s the skinny: Raymond Carver did not like sappy publicists trumping his words. Still, he’d be happy with the second life of his most famous book. William T. Vollman is a mental estuary. Drink up what you can. Who here, right now, wants to talk about women’s rights? Nobody? Us neither. Read Splice Today’s take on why it still matters. Google remains the thorn that for-the-love-of-Christ will not come out of the publishing industry’s skin. An academic from south Florida wins a literary prize, Dorothea Lange looks back at the real Great Depression, and the detective story is dead. In closing, Ayn Rand’s putrid prose is re-evaluated. All we learn is what we already know: she’s kinky, she’s bold. Freshen up, kids. A new, costume-free week dawns. — Kevin Murphy
– “On Writing” is Carver’s vision for fiction; his blue-collar blueprint. It’s a fine and persuasive piece, full of insight into the creative process and the obligations of the writer. There are moments of personal confession, coupled with elegantly quotable sentences – “Get in, get out. Don’t linger” for example. But as with his very best writing, there is a darker, less palatable truth lurking within its pages. — Raymond Carver in the Guardian
– William T. Vollmann hardly looks like one of the most ambitious authors of his generation. Walking on Haight Street in his rumpled jeans, ball cap and black T-shirt, shoulders bowed beneath a heavy backpack, he seems an older version of the street kids who still congregate in the tawdry heart of Haight-Ashbury — young men mostly, carrying bedrolls, panhandling for change. In a lot of ways, these are Vollmann’s people: outsiders, on the fringes, whom society tends to disregard. — William T. Vollman in the LA Times
Just Kidding, Ladies
– Proponents of gender equality have always acknowledged that men, like women, are trapped by traditional ideas and stereotypes about gender. Where women are trapped in the world of “girls can’t do math” and “don’t be such a slut,” men are trapped in a world of “boys don’t cry” and “don’t be such a wimp.” Yet feminism, so often seen as being all about women, can liberate men, too. — Feminism in Splice Today
– Facing a November deadline to revamp the proposal, which Google struck with the book-publishing industry after a class-action lawsuit, the company with the unofficial motto “Don’t Be Evil” is fighting the perception among some that the plan is an unseemly power play to seize the lucrative dominance of digital books. — Google in the Mercury News
– Poetry may be the path to the highest literary expression, but it doesn’t usually pay much. That’s why Jay Hopler, an accomplished poet and assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Florida, says, “I’m still in shock.”He says, “A couple of weeks ago I came back from class and there was a message on my answering machine. It was out of the blue.” And into the green. Hopler had been chosen as one of 10 recipients of the 2009 Whiting Writers Award — which comes with a $50,000 check. — Jay Hopler in the St. Petersburg Times
– Published in 1935 in the middle of the Depression, William Empson’s Some Versions of Pastoral casts a hard modern light on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poems about shepherds and shepherdesses with classical names like Corydon and Phyllida. Pastoral, Empson wrote, was a “puzzling form” and a “queer business” in which highly educated and well-heeled poets from the city idealized the lives of the poorest people in the land. — Dorothea Lange in the New York Review of Books
– One of the best-written detective series in the genre’s history is ending. With “The Monster in the Box,” Ruth Rendell says farewell to Reginald Wexford, her popular chief inspector of Kingsmarkham, a small Sussex town south of London. “I don’t want to do any more Wexfords,” she told the Telegraph this spring. “I have other interests now.” — Ruth Rendell in the Washington Post
– Judging from the cover portrait, Rand had the eyes of a hawk between meals – a predator that is well fed, but far from satisfied. I was surprised to learn that she owned a cat. I can more easily imagine Rand devouring it than rubbing it behind the ears. — Ayn Rand in the San Francisco Chronicle
Video: Mike Wallace Interviews Ayn Rand
