Cheap shot?

Are novels superior to short story collections, as a form? Should all fictionists aspire to the novel format, at some point?

Writers:  If the first sentence in your story is bad, rethink.  It’s like handing someone a business card covered in shit.

who writes good dialogue?  what is good about it?

There is a difference between trying hard and trying too hard. And, obviously, the difference between trying and doing.

Vollmann ‘Hood

NYTBR has got some interesting stuff going on this weekend, mostly in the form of its bylines. They’ve got William T. Vollmann reviewing Crossers by Philip Caputo, August Kleinzahler on a new biography of Thelonious Monk, Amy Bloom on a book about feminism (When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present), and George Packer on Mark Danner’s Stripping Bare the Body: Politics Violence War. Plus, you know, a bunch of other stuff. The usual run of whatever, plus as near as I can tell there seems to be only one new entry this week into the NYT’s famous vortex of nobody-gives-a-shit. That would be David Kamp (The United States of Arugala) reviewing the new Michael Chabon essay collection, Manhood for Amateurs (yikes!) which features that infamously stupid essay about childhood that made everyone hate him. Anyway, here’s the beginning of the Vollmann review:

Once when I was so weak with amebic dysentery that all time not spent on the toilet was passed in bed, I found in my host’s house one book in a language I could read. It was one of those storm-tossed but ultimately upbeat women’s romances, a genre I had not yet sampled. I read it, then read it again and again, since there was nothing better to do. If I ever have the luxury of repeating such an experience, I hope to do so with a Philip Caputo book. For how many decades in how many used bookstores have I seen “Horn of Africa” standing steadfast, a Rock of Gibraltar compared with the mere boulders of Ken Follett and Sidney Sheldon? And only now, with a half-century of my life already over, have I finally learned whom to turn to for a good potboiler in my next wasting sickness!

Palette, cleansed.

Hello, I’m Rauan Klassnik. My themes are sex, death, violence, God. And love. Yes, I’m also laced, scarred, disfigured and healed by love. Today’s my birthday and my first htmlgiant post. Yeah!!

Slope has reopened, with a new issue 26 featuring Heather Christle.

make magic then send it to dogzplot.  read about the magic issue here.  it is ok to like this.