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.
We always get really great guest speakers here and I always wish I had a good question at the end, but I never do.
John D’Agata is doing a talk about something next week, and I know you kids love D’agata, so let’s come up with something good. Post your inquiries in the comments, and assuming that a good question is generated and I get the chance to ask it, I will post his answer here also.
The Vicarious MFA
For Jonathan Lethem’s Masterclass about the essay:
1. Joan Didion’s “The White Album”
2. David Antin’s “The Theory And Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto”
3. Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse”
4. John D’Agata’s running commentary in between the various entries.
(All of these can be found in The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata)
Also, it was your turn to hand-in an essay yesterday, so I hope you did it. And I should probably remind you that that psychology book isn’t going to read itself by 10 AM this Friday.
The Vicarious MFA
School is in session! I got an email saying to go get “The Next American Essay” edited by John D’Agata and read a bunch of essays in it by Feb 2, when the Lethem masterclass starts. Hoorah. First classes for The First Book, Inheritance and Non/Fiction are after the jump….
Don’t let the economy stop you from getting that Creative Writing MFA you’ve always dreamed of! Or, maybe, do let it stop you and just get the knock-off version here. For this semester everyone reading this blog has a full scholarship to get a Vicarious MFA from me/Columbia. Tomorrow’s the first day of class, so I thought I might post a back-to-school warm up, in the Jimmy Chen fashion, using Google image search to find out what the internet thinks you can expect from your Creative Writing MFA.
Your new, narcissistic friends will always look like they’re posing for their (future) author photos.
Make sure you take advantage of free hot dog condiments because it’s probably the only meal you can afford today.
Get ready to have your stories torn apart by your workshop professor who brings in his dog to illustrate how worthless your work is.
Storyville Radio is a new(ish) radio show and free podcast that you can find here on their blog. This month’s episode is titled “What Will We Tell The Kids.” This show’s format is comparable to This American Life and/or Radio Lab and is equally awesome, evocative and funny. Go Listen.
by Andrew McComb
Stuff-makers of all kinds are lurking around the internet these days and my second favorite group of stuff-makers are photographers. Tons of emerging photographers are posting their stuff online, some even going so far to publish their pictures online almost exclusively and saving printing costs for their favorite pictures or ones they’ve sold.
A good place to see some of the best photographers online is this website for a thing called FJORD. The above photo is by Andrew McComb, a member of the Fjord collective.
these kids don
The other day I was somewhere waiting on something with a fourteen-year-old kid that I know and he didn’t have anything to read and I happened to have two books: Happy Birthday or Whatever by Annie Choi and Stories in The Worst Way by Gary Lutz. For some reason I thought this would be a good time to expand said kid’s literary horizons, but I was wrong. It was not. He took one look at the cover and grimaced.
“It’s good,” I said, “and they’re really short, so you can just read one and see if you like it.”
He opened to a random page and started “Waking Hours” by first reading the title outloud and seeming unpleased with it.
After he got a page and a half into it he said, “Oh, Nope. Too weird. Ew.”
“What?”
“Right there, look at that,” he said, pointing at a paragraph and scowling.
He was pointing at the word “seepages” and I thought for a second that this was the one about the guy with cloitis, but that wouldn’t make sense because what 14-year-old wouldn’t want to read about a guy with cloitis? Well, actually, probably not this one because his favorite show is Friends and he’s recently discovered that he likes using a stair master.I don’t know. You figure it out.
But this one wasn’t the one about the guy with cloitis anyway, it was the one about the gay, divorced, depressed guy who thinks people in his apartment are arranging their furniture exactly like his and mirroring all of his actions. It was the word “seepages” that pissed him off. Seepages. If he had gone on to read another paragraph he would have gotten to the gay bar scene, but I think he was skimming anyway.
A very smart woman I know started this site called Books That Saved My Life and it’s pretty self explanatory. She pusblishes people’s essays about particular books of books that have saved or have the capacity to save someone’s life. It’s still new, but there are already some good essays up, one of my favorites being Fan Letters to Judy Blum by CJ Evans.
I think she’s looking for more essays, so open that word document titled “LoveSongtoWhiteNoise?” and polish that sucker up.
From the New York Times Magazine
I completely envy and despise Deborah Solomon, who does the one-page interviews with influential people in the New York Times Magazine (I know, I know, it’s far from an Independent press; bear with me.) She interviewed David Lynch (ah, there’s the Independent spirit) this week and I loved to see how much he hated her interviewing style. His first answer was an insult to her question, but then again, her question was an ignorant insult to his work. Do you really think he wants someone to watch Blue Velvet on their iPod? I mean, have you seen anything he’s made? Click here to read the interview in full.
“I hear you’re getting married again.
In February. I’m marrying a girl named Emily Stofle.
Is she an actress? Was she in any of your films?
She was just in one, “Inland Empire.”
You’ve been married three times before?
Yeah, it’s real great.
Why would someone who feels so generally blissed out marry so many times?
Well, we live in the field of relativity. Things change.”
According to Gender Analyzer HTML Giant is only 54% male!
As for your new X-chromosome representatives, Soffi’s blog is probably written by a woman, while mine is decidedly written by a man!