persnickety 11 sleep chucks
8. Slate says DFW would not have sent Pale King to a publisher. Awkward analogy alert:
9. Now that Amanda Hocking has sold out to become a go-go-gillionairre, Forbes weighs in.
Nine. The new JMWW is out.
10. Kevin Brockmeier interview.
I broach my sentences one tiny piece at a time. That’s always how it is for me — slow and considered. I’ll work and work at one little cluster of words. Then, when its rhythms are in place, I’ll move on.
11. John Gardner Fiction Contest ends in 9 days.
12. Ever watched video of your own self reading? How did that go?
Tags: Amanda Hocking all goth and coffee, david foster wallace is OK, fidgety, john gardner sucks socks, Kevin Brockmeier kicks ass
Yeah, but also, it’s freaking Slate. Like you see a review and you’re like, ‘oh, this could be interestinggg’ but then you see where it was published and you’re all, ‘oh, no never mind. It’s from Slate.’
[snarky comment re “the kind of person who compares novels to dinner parties”]
That’s not always true about Slate.
I think that The Pale King, already, is being read by many people more as some sort of biography than a novel, which is inevitable, I suppose, because they cannot consider it a novel, but rather a stage of progress that was still very much in a state of a certain kind of senselessness that someone else later tried to make coherent and whole. This is exactly what a biography is.
The fact that it is what it is prevents one from reading it as a novel, unless you are willing to suspend all your knowledge for a while. One should read it at least once like this, probably. And other stuff too. Like… how someone not as “smart” as Wallace might read Andrew Weil or something, without cynicism…? Just to see if it can do things to/for you, despite itself…?
I think that The Pale King, already, is being read by many people more as some sort of biography than a novel, which is inevitable, I suppose, because they cannot consider it a novel, but rather a stage of progress that was still very much in a state of a certain kind of senselessness that someone else later tried to make coherent and whole. This is exactly what a biography is.
The fact that it is what it is prevents one from reading it as a novel, unless you are willing to suspend all your knowledge for a while. One should read it at least once like this, probably. And other stuff too. Like… how someone not as “smart” as Wallace might read Andrew Weil or something, without cynicism…? Just to see if it can do things to/for you, despite itself…?
Then be critical of what it did. But first let it.
Then be critical of what it did. But first let it.
i read somewhere that he left the manuscript out in the open, ‘bathed in sunlight,’ in his garage or shed or whatever, is that not true? who said that? personally, if i were going to do myself in and had a big book somewhere that was haunting me because i was really way overly critical although this is of course what made me so awesome up to that point i dunno, would i not burn it or something if i did not want it out in the world? i think so yes, and as for the analogy it seems funny and fitting given how much the man is deified, i lawled a little
Perhaps the Slate reviewer did not notice that the title page includes the words “an unfinished novel.” Unfinished it is, but what there is is choice.
it seems that is probably always how it is, right?
8. That’s a sharp, though sharply limited, analogy; a “dinner party” thrown well is a ‘work of art’.
I also think the rest of the discussion – that the review was a botch – was well put.
(The curtailment of parallel is temporal. One can stress out about a dinner party for, what, a couple of weeks? a month? Most novels cost in the years, no? – a great finished novel could mean, say, a decade of exhilaration/doubt roller-coasting — dangerous for a depressive obsesser.)
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[tangent alert: why does anyone pay attention to Cacotani??)
12. yeah i liked it okay
I think Reynard is correct re: Wallace leaving a big chunk of the book in a very visible place, leaving no doubt as to his intentions. Its certainly not as polished (or long) as a final draft would have been but certainly there are parts that are totally complete. Im 80 pages into it at the moment and there is some strong writing there, regardless of what certain reviewers may say. Everybody (and every publication) has an agenda, no?