This guy. Yeah. This one.

A friend of mine sent me a link to this letter ‘To a Young Writer’ from Wallace Stegner (you know, the guy  that fellowship that rejects you every year is named after.) The letter is long and dire and occasionally overwhelmed me with anxiety. I mean, it’s a great read. No, really. Uplifting.

You write better than hundreds of people with established literary reputations. You understand your characters and their implications, and you take the trouble to make sure that they have implications. Without cheating or bellowing or tearing a passion to tatters, you can bring a reader to that alert participation that is the truest proof of fiction’s effectiveness. You think ten times where a lot of writers throb once.

And there is very little demand for the cool, perfect things you can do. You have gone threadbare for ten years to discover that your talents are almost sure to go unappreciated.

Ok, great! Pass the barbiturates, Wally! If you can get past the fact that (prepare for a news flash) you shouldn’t expect ‘literary’ fiction to earn you a fabulous living on it’s own, the letter raises some interesting questions. I’m just going to point out one that caught my eye.

For one thing, you never took writing to mean self-expression, which means self-indulgence…I speak respectfully of this part of your education because every year I see students who will not submit to it—who have only themselves to say and who are bent upon saying it without concessions to the English language.

One of my least favorite phrases is ‘self-expression.’ When people say they make art or write or sing or whatever to express themselves, I immediately stop listening to them. Someday I’ll be able to forgive this turn of phrase, but for now, I can’t help it. It’s a red flag. (Like ‘Work hard, play hard.’ Yuck.)

We speak a lot about books being ‘self-indulgent’ or ‘masturbatory,’ but less is said about things being too self-expressive. Good writing goes deeper than the self; it isn’t about you, in particular. It’s a hole that you dug through yourself using words like pick-axes until you reached everyone else, or at least a lot of other people. Which reminds me of that post that Mike Young put up the other day. I loved that post. (And it’s weird to realize that sometimes it’s a random blog post that sticks with you and not that one book you read months ago Who wrote it? What was it called? It was so… expressive.)

Hey people who don’t live in New York.*  Yeah, that’s right, you people. There is something happening in Brooklyn that I want you to be a part of. This week I started a business called 3B. It’s a bed and breakfast that I have been renovating with 7 others this summer and now we’re officially  o  p  e  n  .  .  .   .  Amy McDaniel and Alban Fischer both booked weekends for this month and Adam Robinson is threatening to show up with his band. I am excited about all of these people because talking in real life is awesome. FYI: All rooms will be goddamncheap til November 15, when we open our lounge and kitchen. After November 15, I will be giving all Giant-readers a deal, especially if you’re a writer on tour or coming here for writing-related stuff. Even without a discount we are ridiculously cheaper than anywhere else in Brooklyn that isn’t shady and dank and inconvenient. (And our place is really nice and we bring you breakfast and coffee in the morning.)
Also, by staying here you’ll be directly supporting the stories, music, poems, essays, buildings, etc that my roommates and I make. Everyone wins. (And if you’re considering a move to Brooklyn (and who isn’t?) we have good monthly and weekly rates if you need a place to land before finding an apartment.)

*People who live in New York: send us those out-of-towners who keep showing up on your couch!

In Cambridge, Massachusetts they’re printing yoga poses on their parking tickets to remind that double-parked undergrad what she learned at Equinox last weekend and to baffle/enrage the guy who just drove daddy’s beemer into a speed trap. I guess the police are getting sensitive about their image because someone started a yelp page reviewing the Cambridge Police Department and it only got four stars from the guy who went there this summer to register his handgun, because, you know, yoga only gets you so far. But they’re going to earn that fifth star, goddamn it.

PR is important, we know. A roommate told me last night that the Washington State Department of Tourism motto used to be “Whaaa?” and even though he thought that was ridiculous, I thought that was appropriate. It says: “Washington– Pot smoking is totally OK here.” READ MORE >

by natalie Dee

I live in Brooklyn which means I can’t even leave the house without twisting my ankle as I trip over an author, often one whose book is already on my shelf. Just yesterday this guy was asking me if I had any spare change and I said, “Wait isn’t this you?” and held up the book I was reading. He just blushed and ran away. They are a timid species.

This would be a happy problem if I had just remained a reader and writer, but I started reviewing books last year and recently I got an assignment from Time Out New York to review Tao Lin’s newest, Richard Yates. READ MORE >