http://www.catherinelacey.com/
Catherine Lacey is a 2012 NYFA Fiction Fellow. She has published work in The Believer, The Atlantic.com, a Harper Perennial's 40 Stories, Diagram and others. She writes for Brooklyn Magazine rather often and is a founding partner of 3B, a cooperatively operated bed and breakfast in downtown Brooklyn.
Writing is easy!
Writer & Marlboro writing professor Brian Mooney just launched this website where you can buy (or just learn about) his writing aid/ game/ teaching aid/ toy The Storymatic. Here’s how it works:
“The Storymatic consists of 250 ivory cards and 250 silver cards. Each ivory card contains a character trait or occupation. Each silver card contains a situation or object. Wild Cards contain instructions about where and when your story takes place, and how it must be told.
“…First, draw two ivory cards. Then combine the information on these two cards to create your main character. For example, if you draw “surgeon” and “amateur boxer,” your character is a surgeon who is also a boxer.
“Next, draw one or two silver cards. Let the information on the cards lead you into a story. If, for example, your cards say “box of teeth” and “pair of pants that don’t fit right,” then perhaps after a night in the ring Dr. Boxer always scans the floor of the ring for the teeth of his opponents, but maybe Dr. Boxer has put on some extra weight due to his long days at the hospital, causing him to slow down in the ring, and then…”
The Vicarious MFA
Last Friday Jonathan Safran-Foer came to do a guest lecture titled “Intersections.” It was clear that he put a lot of work and thought into the lecture and I feel like I will do it a disservice by trying to describe his overall “point,” but I will say that he showed us this short video of a completely insane intersection in Hanoi. Please click on that. It is ridiculous. He also mentioned that one of the buildings on Columbia’s campus (one that is right by the Writing Department) used to be a part of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. He also mentioned Hiroshi Sugimoto, a photographer who Jonathan Safran-Foer wrote a fan letter to when he was in college and whom he later got to collaborate with on a project called “Joe.”
There was a point to Safran-Foer’s guest lecture and I felt smarter and more calm when I left, but I can’t quite say why. From what I have gathered in the past 3.5 semesters in an MFA program, this is what it feels like: I have learned something; I feel different/better; I can’t explain why/what happened. READ MORE >
Carl Wilson is an adorably nervous Canadian music critic who lives in Toronto and he came to do a little Q & A with some students here yesterday. Carl wrote a great book in the 33 1/3 series about Celine Dion and we read it in Jonathan Lethem’s masterclass a few weeks ago. That would have been the end of the story if it hadn’t been for James Franco mentioning the book while at the Oscars and a bunch of blogs (Pitchfork, Idolator, The Village Voice, etc.) making a ruckus about it. Then he got invited to be on The Colbert Report, thus leading him to Columbia’s Writing department to say hello and presumably thank James for the name dropping.
Discussed:
-Aesthetic relativism
-Autobiographies of taste
-Remembering that Celine Dion is a human being
More notes after the jump…
The Vicarious MFA: all the fun of an MFA, without the embarrassing degree!
I had a sad realization last Monday in the Non/Fiction seminar. We were discussing Beauty Before Comfort by Allison Glock. This book came out in 2003 and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year but just six years later it’s out of print. Benson said this is another good reason to go with an independent publisher, since they tend to keep their stock in print for as long as possible. Even so, it’s a little depressing that your work can get lots of gold stars on minute and be marked way, way down at The Strand the next minute.
We started class with a writing exercize (not a normal practice in a seminar, but a welcome deviation.)
“Describe someone you know in third person, but in the way you think that they see themselves. A paragraph or so into it, add something that they might not nesscessarily know about themselves– your perspective/interpretation of their behavior or personality.” Good fun.
Read David Markson’s Reader’s Block for next Monday. Read Kathleen Norris’s Dakota for Thursday and give a presentation about the transgenerational epigenetic effects of endocrine-disruptive chemicals on mate selection in female rats for Friday. (yikes!)
Also on Friday, Jonathan Safran-Foer is coming to do a talk titled “Intersections” for a small group of grad students (which is neat because usually these lectures get a little crowded and/or infultrated with eager, bad-question-asking undergrads.)
The Vicarious MFA
Monday: In Amy Benson’s Non/Fiction class we discussed The Things They Carried. Everybody liked it, said smart things, left feeling hopeful. Read “Beauty Before Comfort” by Allison Glock for next week.
+In Lethem’s class we talked about Joe Brainard’s “I Remember” and Carl Wilson’s “Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste” which was endorsed by a classmate here.
+Joyce Carol Oates came to lecture. (See notes here.)
Tuesday: I turned in a workshop submission.
Wednesday: Lethem took a group from the class to a secret bookstore which is described here. I bought “What Maise Knew” by Henry James. The copy I got is really old and has an Edward Gorey illustration on the cover. There was a whole section of the store devoted to Edward Gorey covers. I can’t explain how great this place was. If any of you are ever in New York let me know and I will try to get you an appointment there.
Thursday: Discussed In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin and an awesome profile of Chatwin by David Plante. Read Dakota by Kathleen Norris for next week.
**I feel like including my notes is kind of useless for the VMFA, and that the reading lists are what you really want.**
Random Undergrad Question-Asker: I was wondering what you think of blogging?
Joyce Carol Oates: Blogging? What I think of blogging?
RUQA: Um, yeah.
JCO: Well I think that anyone who’s worried about their blogging is wasting their time. Next question? READ MORE >
The Vicarious MFA
For Monday:
The Things They Carried by Tim Obrien
I Remember by Joe Brainard
Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson
(I’ve only just started this, but it is awesome. It’s a book that is all about Celine Dion’s album Let’s Talk About Love {the one with the Titanic song on it.} Some chapter titles: Let’s Talk About Schmatlz, Let’s Talk About Hate, Let’s Talk in French and Let’s Sing Really Loud. I am psyched to see Celine Dion burned at the stake of bad taste.)
For Tuesday:
Three Workshop Submissions (60 pages)
Turn-in second workshop piece
For Thursday:
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
For Friday:
More stuff I don’t understand for Psychology elective
(see the presentation I gave last week)
Incredibly abbreviated notes from 2 weeks of The First Book seminar are after the jump….
The Vicarious MFA
The thing about getting an MFA is that time tends to move really quickly when your “job” is to read and talk about great books and write on a deadline all the time. So, it looks like two weeks went by without me really noticing. Things were discussed. Revelations were had. D’agata talked about dancing in sequined pants…
First, the notes from John D’agata lecture:
Leigh Stein posted some hysterically great stuff this weekend, and so I am giving her the “First Semi-Annual HTMLgiant Blogger of the Weekend Award.”
Check out this video of a sock puppet reciting a poem of hers, and also this excerpt from a Will Eno play. Additionally, all the posts she puts up about the kids in her musical theater class are awesome, so put her on your Google Reader. Enjoy.
The dreaded blank page.
Discussed in Non/Fiction:
A Lie That Tells the Truth: Memoir and the Art of Memory by Joel Agee
A great essay about the memoir in the modern age that anyone working in fiction or nonfiction should read. (What are un-bendable facts? Where does lying end and art begin? Fact ≠ Truth.)
We talked about how much we liked Another Bullshit Night in Suck City * and/or what sections were brilliant and which were just myehh. Most were brilliant.
One of the assigned readings that we didn’t talk about was Jo Anne Beard’s Werner. Excellently strange essay. Would have liked to hear someone’s opinion on it. (It’s in the Best American Essay edited by DF Wallace if you’ve got that on your bookshelf and want to read it and report back to me. No pressure.)
Writing Assignment: Write a short piece (or essay or story) that responds to the title, “The Use of Nonfiction.”
Read By 2/9: Needs by George W.S. Trow, Captivity by Sherman Alexie, “…and nobody objected” by Paul Metcalf, and A Tin Butterfly by Mary McCarthy (a selection from Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.)
Lethem’s Masterclass was full of zingers. Lots of furious note taking and laughter.
Here’s an idea: What if Wikipedia means the death of post-modern uncertainness? What if Wikipedia necessitates the end of the novel of facts, the novel that is freckled with reportage? Lethem said something to the effect of “putting a fact in your novel is almost a wasted line,” considering that anyone can look up almost anything at any time on the internet.
We mostly talked about Terry Castle’s My Heroine Christmas and The White Album by Joan Didion. Both awesome.
Read by 2/9: Out of Sheer Rage by Jeff Dyer, which looks fun because I took a killer DHL survey my first semester here and I am still digesting