An American Classic

I first read this book many years ago on a business trip, one of those things you have to endure where you want some sort of engrossing novel to carry you away from the bullshit of a job you hate (and traveling with the company owner, too) and one of those nerve-wracking times when you have to be “on” all the time because you’re surrounded by clients who are all morons anyway, and you have to be nice to them. I was on board a plane reading the opening scenes of American Gods that take place on a plane. Not that it had anything to do with the novel, but I remember watching what was almost a mugging on a Baltimore street from my hotel room late one night while I read this book. Fascinating, as if the world had become weirdly in-tune and out-of-order from the normal and usual, as if tendrils of the novel wormed their way out of the pages and into the ether.

I finished American Gods well after that trip ended, and when I closed its pages I was startled by an unbidden thought: “That was one of the most satisfying books I have ever read.” And I meant it. Every moment spent reading American Gods had been worth it, every hour with it an hour much more than well-spent. How often can you say that about any book? The works of Shakespeare and Homer; the utterly perfect characters and situations of Stephen King’s masterpiece, The Shining; the overwhelming too-muchness and diamond-flaw perfection of my favorite novel, Les Misérables. Not many others. Not many others at all.

The edition of American Gods I read years ago was the “standard edition,” I guess we could say. I started reading it again recently in the above pictured, Tenth Anniversary edition, with text restored by the brilliant Neil Gaiman. I’m already hooked again. Read this. It’s worth every minute of your time. Very little written today is this goddamned excellent.



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"Straighten up your gay kids or find another agent!"

Here's a great blog entry about a pair of writers who encountered trouble when a prospective agent demanded that they "write the gay away" -- i.e., remove the gay elements of one of their teen boy characters in a YA fantasy novel they had written. The writers stood their ground and wrote this excellent blog post alerting fellow writers and genre fiction fans to the problem, which appears to run pretty deep in the publishing industry. There's not much I can add to what the writers say or to some of the terrific comments that follow their post. This incident makes me anxious to finish my gay YA steampunk fantasy novel Wrath of the Gryphonwind and get it self-published. It also convinces me that I was correct to go ahead and publish WotG myself. Keep an eye here for updates on that novel, and go read some gay YA fiction! If you want to read something shorter than a novel, try one of my stories listed on the left side of this blog and enjoy!

"Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA" -- Genreville

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Contested Will is a Great, nay, TREMENDOUS Book!

I recently finished reading James Shaprio’s marvelous book, Contested Will. Michael Feingold writes in his terrific review of it at the Village Voice:

With sardonic aptness, James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia, chooses Garrick's adoration as the starting point for his new book, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, a rueful history of Shakespeare worship's darker side. For it seems that even in a field as narrow as dramatic poetry, once you declare that a god has walked the earth, satanic forces must instantly spring up to deny him. From Garrick's veneration of Shakespeare's unearthly powers, a counter-assumption was born: A lowly actor from a small-town background, like "the man from Stratford," could not possibly have written these extraordinary plays.

With even-handed compassion, Shapiro chronicles the slow but steady growth of this dark belief, from its first scholarly murmurs, circa 1800, to its current Internet burgeoning. Wisely, he declines to ridicule its preachers, instead weighing their various claims fairly, in lucid, uncontentious prose, saving for the final chapter his reasoned rebuttal of their basic assumption. Secure in his knowledge of Shakespeare's world, Shapiro feels no compulsion to pick quarrels with these cipher-hunters and conspiracy theorists, not even when their extravagance invents, for their authorial candidates, incestuous affairs with Queen Elizabeth. He takes no cheap shots at such easy targets.

Instead, cunningly, he makes his opponents' lives, not Shakespeare's, his principal subject, replacing their nitpicky disputes over unprovable biographical what-ifs with a fascinating, well-documented parade of literary eccentrics, displaying the torments that drive frustrated souls into revisionist mythmaking. Shapiro doesn't flinch even when the frustrated souls carry beloved names: Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, and Sigmund Freud are among those whose disbelief in Shakespeare's authorship he confronts, squarely and honorably.

Feingold follows this with a short summary of Shapiro’s case, and his concluding paragraph is pure gold. Read the review, and then read the book – it is very rewarding.

Note to my commenting Oxfordian fans: Please take issue with Mr. Shapiro, et al., and not me. They’re the ones you have to convince, because it is they who will have to convince me.

Contested Will Looks at the Nuts Who Think Shakespeare Didn't Write Shakespeare (The Village Voice)

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The Shining

“Wow, Stephen King remade my movie for TV. And it sucks.”

Here’s a look at the real-life inspiration that prodded Stephen King to pen his best novel ever, The Shining, on the 30th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film version of the story.

Built in 1909 by the high-rolling F. O. Stanley, co-inventor (with his twin brother, F. E.) of a steam-powered car known as the Stanley Steamer, the Stanley sits in lucid splendor, in Georgian incongruity, on the eastern rise of the Colorado Rockies. The hotel is welcoming and comfortable; the mountain air is thrilling. King stayed at the Stanley in 1974, the night before it shut down for the winter, and his muse was tickled. Old World fixtures and furnishings; a vibe of vanished gaiety, of cigar-chewing autocrats and good-time gals, parties and their orchestras, all sliding down into darkness, like the Titanic … And then the hauntings, for which the Stanley was already famous: paranormal poppings-in by domestics and scampering children, and also by the scandalous Lord Dunraven, who likes to goose ladies in the closet of Room 401.

In the hands of Stanley Kubrick, The Shining became the finest film adaptation of any of King’s works. I don’t care what King says; Kubrick drilled down to the dark essence of the characters and created something that, when tried by lesser filmmakers, doesn’t always work – an almost personal riff on someone else’s creation – but which in this case worked fantastically. I was a huge fan of the book (I first read it when I was 14) when Kubrick’s film was released in 1980, and I hated the movie. Thirteen years later I rented the video to give Kubrick another chance, and I discovered what a masterpiece it is. (The less said about the King-scripted TV remake, the better.)

How powerful is King’s book? A few years ago I was re-reading The Shining for the umpteenth time during my lunch break. I was on the Plaza in Kansas City at the Penguin Court on a brilliant, sunny spring day. People were enjoying their lunch, shoppers were strolling happily about, and children ran around the bronze penguin sculptures that give the court its name. In the book, little Danny Torrance, all by himself in the Overlook’s playground, crawls into those concrete rings buried in the snow. The snow falls in, blocking the open ends. And Danny realizes…there’s something in the rings with him!

A beautiful, sunny spring day, and my skin crawled right up my body with a shiver. I’d read that scene many times, but god, how well it still worked! If I ever write anything that brings a reader an emotional response half that enduring, I’ll be happy. The Shining is only one of two books that contained a moment which, when I first read it, made me almost literally crawl up the wall behind me with fear (the other was The Silence of the Lambs). I can’t tell you which scene it was; you’ll just have to find out for yourself. But it took place in room 217.

Kubrick’s film is a different animal and is great in different ways. In a book about Kubrick, I once read an excellent analysis that convincingly proposed Kubrick’s The Shining as a literal anti-thesis of his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a remarkable discussion of how the use of mirrors and mirror-images in The Shining (think of that lake in the opening shot, or what you see reflected in the mirrors along the hallway outside the ballroom) differentiates between the worlds of Jack Torrance’s sanity and insanity. The story of The Shining has become so well-known that I would love to see, like Shakespeare, many different directors tackle the material and give us their personal take on it. King needn’t fear, for his original novel will always retain its terrifying brilliance.

"A Killer Vacation" (The Atlantic)

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Why I Love Neil Gaiman

Mr. Gaiman was recently involved in a bit of a dustup over his speaking fee. How he explains what happened and tries to soothe some inappropriately ruffled feathers is another example of why I love this man. And this isn't even about his actual writing!

"Q. How can I get Neil Gaiman to make an appearance at my school/convention/event?

A. Contact Lisa Bransdorf at the Greater Talent Network. Tell her you want Neil to appear somewhere. Have her tell you how much it costs. Have her say it again in case you misheard it the first time. Tell her you could get Bill Clinton for that money. Have her tell you that you couldn't even get ten minutes of Bill Clinton for that money but it's true, he's not cheap.

On the other hand, I'm really busy, and I ought to be writing, so pricing appearances somewhere between ridiculously high and obscenely high helps to discourage most of the people who want me to come and talk to them. Which I could make a full time profession, if I didn't say 'no' a lot."

Plus, this is an interesting look at what us aspiring writers can look forward to when our respective ships come in. Someday. Maybe. At least, I hope so...

A Political Football in A Teacup

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Denying Shakespeare

I've always thought that the Shakespeare authorship question was a load of hooey. For one thing, the advocates of another author having written the plays strike me as something not unlike the sort of folks who think they saw Elvis in a Burger King in Ypsilanti. What difference does it make, anyway? "The play's the thing," as the man said, and those plays are all we need to explore fascinating worlds and characters and confrontations. Sometimes it's nice to look at an author's works in light of his or her biography, but really, isn't it nicer to just savor what's on the page and treasure it (and analyze it) for that alone, and not for any armchair psychological analysis?

Terry Teachout reviews a new book about the Shakespeare authorship question, and with him I hope that just maybe we can finally lay this silly "controversy" to rest:

It doesn't surprise me that such lunacy has grown so popular in recent years. To deny that Shakespeare's plays could have been written by a man of relatively humble background is, after all, to deny the very possibility of genius itself—a sentiment increasingly attractive in a democratic culture where few harsh realities are so unpalatable as that of human inequality. The mere existence of a Shakespeare is a mortal blow to the pride of those who prefer to suppose that everybody is just as good as everybody else. But just as some people are prettier than others, so are some people smarter than others, and no matter who you are or how hard you try, I can absolutely guarantee that you're not as smart as Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was Shakespeare. That is all.

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Reading Update

I have taken a break from reading J.G. Ballard's huge collection of short stories (excellently-written, character-driven genre fiction, precisely the sort of thing I want to write) and taken up Close Range, a collection of stories by Annie Proulx. These stories are fascinating -- I've been in Wyoming only once in my life, but I feel like I'm back there while I read these tales. Proulx writes phrases and sentences that flow and shock like the finest lines of an opera aria. And her characters! OMG, to be able to create characters like this, whose lives are something I would have never thought to find interesting, and yet in her hands their stories become riveting. "The Mud Below," a story about a man trying to make a go of it in rodeo, turned out to be one of the finest stories I have ever read. Proulx says that short stories are hard for her to write, but with the high bar she seems to have set for herself, I can see why. Nonetheless, the words flow like music from her pen. This is two writers in a row (along with Ballard) with whom I've fallen in love.

"Brokeback Mountain" is the last story in this volume. I'll let you know what I think about it when I finish.

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UPDATE: I finished Close Range – what a terrific collection of stories! I read “Brokeback Mountain,” and I wish I had read it before seeing the movie since it’s hard to shake off what I saw in the film when I imagine the scenes. The movie was a very close adaptation of the story, but I’ve grown to enjoy the way Annie Proulx depicts her settings and characters so much that I would like to have encountered them in “Brokeback Mountain” from her first. I highly recommend this collection of stories if you want to read some great writing.

The Parent Problem in Young Adult Lit

Via Neil Gaiman's Facebook post, here's an interesting article from the New York Times about the "problem parent" in YA novels. When I was a kid, I didn't like the genre of "problem novel" very much -- I had plenty of my own problems which I found every day when I rolled out of bed, thank you very much, and I sure didn't want to waste good reading time on reading about other kids and their too-close-to-home problems. If you're going to do that sort of thing, at least be creative about it, which is exactly what Neil Gaiman does in Coraline.

You have to wonder how the distracted, failing parent became such a ubiquitous image in pop culture. In Neil Gaiman’s novel “Coraline,” from 2002, the lonely title character wanders into danger in a creepy new house because the parents are busy and preoccupied. “Go away,” the father says cheerfully the minute she appears. This theme was made more explicit in the 2009 movie version, in which both parents seem to be transfixed by their computers. “Hey Mom, where does this door go?” Coraline asks, and her mother replies without looking away from the monitor: “I’m really, really busy.” Near-fatal adventures ensue with terrifying “other parents” in the alternate world behind the door — who begin by offering Coraline delicious meals and toys, but actually want to turn her into a kind of soulless rag doll with button eyes — because the real parents are on deadline writing a gardening catalog.

The author of the article makes this sound like such a bad thing...

Not that I don't agree with the cynical outlook -- believe me, I haven't forgotten the way kids think about their parents, and quite often, it ain't good in the best of times. Getting the parent(s) out of the way so the kid can begin to live and/or have an adventure is a problem all writers face (if this is the sort of writing you do). Anyway, an good article if you're interested in YA books, or if, like me, you want to portray kids and their lives accurately.

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Franco writes! Aaaaaand...well...don't give up the day job, Jimmy...

The story starts out simply, almost minimalist in tone. Why, it could be by another Hemingway.

But then it goes on. And on. And on.

Jeebus Christmas, James Franco is about the cutest damn thing I've ever seen on the silver screen, but he should just not try this writing thing. Nope. Acting, Jimmy; that's where it's at for you. Oh my; the run-on sentences. The meandering imagery and inner thoughts. The overuse of a certain four-letter word that begins with the letter F. Oh, my...

And before I even know it, or can enjoy the new look on Joe’s face, like a blubbery peekaboo face, so surprised, because I’m driving us right toward the vague beige shadow-filled wall, and I can only see and hear Joe for a second, a high-pitched thing that cracks for just a second, and for that second I’m with Joe’s voice on a plateau in the black of space, wherever it is that noise cracks like that and decibels live, and then it’s gone because there’s the metal sound so loud and it’s how I had always planned it to be, crunching, and a jerk and the front of my head is filled with the cold hollow sinus pain, the surprise punch in the nose that takes you back to childhood and there’s an immediate link to every other time you ever had your nose hit, by a ball, by a head, by your own knee, and after the surprise it doesn’t go away; but I’m still there and the tires behind me are screeching because my foot is still on the gas, and the car has gone a ways into the wall but it ain’t going any farther, and I look over at fat shit, and there is blood rolling out of a slice in his forehead, and some blood coming out of his mouth, and I think that it’s from the head gash until I see one of those teeth is now a black gap and he looks like a fat something-awful: hockey-player-pumpkin-cartoon-shithead, and he says,

"Why the fuck did you do that, Manuel?"

James, I want to give you writing lessons. Although I think (hope) we wouldn't get much writing done. Which, as far as the writing world goes, might just be all for the best...at least as far as, *ahem!*, you're concerned...

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Tell Them Anything You Want

Okay, someone needs to tell Spike Jonze that I can't take more than one movie in any twelve month period that leaves me all broken up inside, and WTWTA already has that honor for a few more months. Sheesh! I just watched Tell Them Anything You Want, the HBO documentary about Maurice Sendak made by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs. It's only 39 minutes long, but I was all tied up in knots by the time it was over (and I could have watched another hour of it). I remember the Sendak documentary Mon Cher Papa that was run on PBS' American Masters series in 1987. That film moved me deeply, too. Is there something about Sendak that speaks to whatever it is in me that is creative? Hell, I dunno. But this HBO doc is wonderful. Get this DVD and watch it! Watch the extras too, especially the Q&A with Sendak and Spike.

I love Sendak's dog. I love the shot of Maurice with the box on the table next to him that has an image of a medieval Virgin Mary icon on the side, and a Mr. Incredible doll behind it. I love the life-size Barack Obama stand-up in Sendak's living room. I love his crankiness. I love his drawings. I simply love this man.

And Spike looks pretty darn sharp with a beard, eh?

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The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard

I received this book for my birthday, and I started reading it tonight.

"Short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction," Ballard says in the introduction, "easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available, an over-valued currency that often turns out to be counterfeit. At its best, in Borges, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe, the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow forever in the deep purse of your imagination"

The inimitable Christopher Hitchens reviews this collection of Ballard's stories here.

I just read the first story in the collection, "Prima Belladonna," about an overworked man, a golden-skinned woman with insects for eyes, and a shop full of flowers that sing classical music.

I...am..in...love.

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Young adult lit comes of age

A great article in the LA Times about the popularity of YA fiction amongst adults.

"YA authors are able to take themselves less seriously. They're able to have a little more fun, and they're less confined by this idea of themselves as Very Important Artists. That paradoxically leads them to create far better work than people who are trying to win awards."

I’ve written a lot of stories and novels with young people as central characters, although I wouldn’t classify any of them as YA – I like to reserve the right to use appropriate levels of sexuality, violence, and vocabulary in my work where needed. (You can understand why I so love Spike Jonze’s description of his film Where the Wild Things Are as a movie about childhood, and not necessarily for children.) And I have known for years that if you want a ripping good yarn with memorable characters and, very often, trenchant observations about life, you should give YAs a try. I felt quite vindicated when Harry Potter became a success. (I read them all, and loved them.) Expect more of this from my writing – the world caught up to me once, maybe it will do so again.



The article doesn’t mention one of the most popular adult writers who has crossed over more or less full-time (at present) into YA and children’s books, and that is the inimitable Neil Gaiman. Pictured at the top of the post is one of my favorite YAs, China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, about an alternate world existing parallel/underneath the real London. Miéville cited as one point of inspiration for this book Gaiman’s Neverwhere, another book I love. Compare the two sometime.

Young adult lit comes of age (LA Times)

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Book tour? More like a safari

"Mmm, yes; this was a very delicious writer! I wonder if his book is any good..."

Ah, yes...you work hard, put up with rejection, and then someday...someday! You finally publish that book and...you have to handle your own book tour! Oy!

Writing just isn't cracked up to what it used to be:

It's a shame because, for all the hoopla surrounding the latest celebrity memoir, readers are rarely drawn to books by hype machines. We get turned on by trusted friends, by the local bookseller, by a reading, even by a newspaper review. "It was exciting to get a lot of different reviews in regional newspapers," Chaon says, "but it just doesn't happen that much anymore."

Oh well; back to the writing table...

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The writing advice industry

Sierra thinks I should knock off this writing nonsense and go get her something to eat.

Here's a more cynical take on last week's Guardian round-up of advice to writers on writing, from Russell Smith at The Globe and Mail:

Their repeated compilation does point, however, to a paradox often noted in literary circles. The market for fiction shrinks every year, the attention paid to novels by the media diminishes monthly, booksellers demand ever-lower prices, everybody in the industry says it’s the worst it’s ever been. And yet more academic or private creative-writing programs are created every year, and the demand for advice on becoming a novelist remains furiously high. Indeed, the selling of advice on writing has become a self-supporting industry: I know young writers who are doing masters of fine arts in creative writing so that they can in turn become creative-writing teachers in similar programs.

I get the feeling that the best advice is just to shut up and write. And don't quit your day job just yet, damn it.

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Ten Rules for Writing Fiction

Cover of the Russian-language edition of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, which I just read for the second time (in English, of course). Many good stories in this, and I particularly love the final story in it, "The Monarch of the Glen."

Via Neil Gaiman's blog comes not one but two columns of advice from writers for writers, just published in the Guardian. Agree with some, disagree with others, laugh at a few, nod in agreement with more; but definitely peruse this advice from writers like Margaret Atwood, PD James, Joyce Carol Oates, and Mr. Gaiman himself. The best advice might be that of Philip Pullman. Oddly enough, the kickoff for these columns was the list of ten rules for writing from the article by Elmore Leonard that I posted here recently, which Mr. Leonard is turning into a book.

Part One is here.
Part Two is here.

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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Absolutely my favorite movie of all time. I watched this again last night and it still moves me to tears at many places. It's an unbelievably strong story of human relationships and character. The first time I saw this I knew nothing about the novels by Patrick O'Brian, so naturally I found the experience of Dr. Maturin's interest in science and the music he plays with Captain Aubrey to be total intellectual catnip. Combined with exciting action sequences and you have, in my opinion, an almost perfect movie.

I have since read all but the last two of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels, which are amazingly well-written and meticulously researched. O'Brian achieved something I strive for in my writing: a type of genre story (the nautical adventure tale) told with remarkable characters and excellent, literary-quality writing.

See this if you haven't -- it's stunning.

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"Goliath," by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman and friend.

I'm currently re-reading Neil Gaiman's story collection Fragile Things, which contains this terrific story set in the universe of The Matrix. Gaiman was asked by Warner Bros. to write a story set in the world of The Matrix (they sent him a copy of the script), and the result, "Goliath," was posted at the film's website about a week before the movie opened. This is such a fine example of how a great story works, and it is so quintessentially Gaiman. Enjoy!

"Goliath," by Neil Gaiman

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Speaking of ‘Wild Things,’ love lost — and Mozart

One of the things that most intrigues me about writers and writing is influence -- what works on writers to make them create what they do? What fascinates them, encourages them, depresses them? Lots of people want to know from where writers get their ideas. Sometimes that is so hard to explain, but if you can find out what a writer loves, and hates, and fears, and finds joy in, then you will come closer to understanding what makes their imaginations tick.

Anyway, here's a fascinating article about Maurice Sendak and his loves and sorrows, called Speaking of ‘Wild Things,’ love lost — and Mozart. One of Sendak's great joys, as is mine, is the music of Mozart. There is much that is fascinating in this article, but I think I most love the conclusion:

But just a week before the interview, Sendak says, he began to come out of his depression. It started by picking up “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, followed by listening to Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”

“I’m coming back to life — and the movie of ‘Wild Things’ and everything is life-enhancing,” says the author. “One looks for signs and symptoms of what is good and what is bad, what is pulling you down and what is holding it up. It’s Mozart, but I haven’t listened to him carefully for a long time. Now he’s back in my life with a vengeance. ... And there’s Charles Dickens.”

Max, of “Wild Things,” would be around 50 now.

“If I had a preference, he would be an artist,” says Sendak. “He would be an artist and it could be in any profession — in painting, in illustrating, in writing, in music. Oh, God, if he were a great pianist, I would be so happy!”

That tells me more about Maurice Sendak than anything I've ever read about him. I'm anxious to see the HBO documentary about Sendak, Tell Them Anything You Want, made by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs, which is due out the same day as the DVD of WTWTA, March 2.

Don Giovanni is my favorite opera, BTW.

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Never Let Me Go

THIS NOVEL IS FREAKING HORRIFYING!!!

Click on the link above and you'll see why I decided to read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go after looking it over in Borders a couple of times. It's so low key that the whole thing creeps up on you like a faint awareness of cold fingering its way into your body, and the horror comes more from what is NOT said than what IS said. In other words, it's not Stephen King, wet-your-pants frights, it's a sort of sickly, "OMG what sort of world IS this?" fear. It's been a long time since a novel has given me such a gut punch as this one has. Yikes! I can't wait to see the movie.

GET THIS BOOK and read it. The best way to improve one's writing is to read great writing, especially great fiction. Damn, I'm glad I got this book.

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The Wild Things

As you might expect, I read this and enjoyed it quite a bit. I had never read Dave Eggers before, but right after reading The Wild Things, I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It was, of course, staggering.

The Wild Things was lots of fun! I love the way Eggers gets completely into Max's head without irony or affectation, and some of the expanded glimpses of the characters were fascinating. There's a lot of psychological depth going on inside the wild things, as well as inside Max. And as a fine example of unpretentious but brilliant writing, this little passage near the beginning of The Wild Things is where I fell in love with Dave Eggers:

One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are part wolf and part wind do not get cold.

Lovely.

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