Recommended Reading: Townie Andre Dubus III

Townie, the recently released memoir by Andre Dubus III is a must read if you fit any of the following (and a damn good read even if you don't):

• You are a fan of either Andre Dubus III or of his father, famed short story and novella writer Andre Dubus.  Townie forces you to see both men in a new light and a new context.  Personally, I've long struggled separating my literary heroes as I imagine them via reading their work from the living people they were/are.  I've met a few; the page and the skin don't always match up.  This memoir is a good reminder of that danger and a reminder of the frailty of all humans.  I've long been guilty of nearly worshipping Andre Dubus's stories.  It is good to remember he was a man, but my god those stories.  And a good reminder that his son has written  work every bit as compelling for our time as his father did for his.

• If you grew up in the 70s.  I have seldom read work that better conveys a 70s childhood--that time that was scary for many of his simply because the world had gone a bit quiet after Vietnam and the tumult of the 60's and we turned inward more than we should have, turned away from the shame of a war we should not have fought, a failed presidency, an uncertain but foreboding Cold War--turned instead within the very real and very sad daily life of dying towns and dying industries and a widening gap between rich and poor.
• You were a boy who were bullied or bullied others.  You would be hard pressed to find a book more capable of focusing on the everyday violence that rises out of this culture or one better at presenting a man who learns to curb his own desire to find power (and to right wrongs) with his fists.

Townie is a book that will stay with you.  Even if you feel you have no connection to the 70s, to either Dubus, to hardscrabble New England towns filled with thugs and drunks and complacent acceptance of failure, the book can touch you and make you think about the culture we have created and our propensity for violence (and maybe its opposite).

Ten Rules for Writing: Anne Enright

Anne Enright  (from The Guardian)
1 The first 12 years are the worst.
2 The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.
3 Only bad writers think that their work is really good.
4 Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.
5 Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.
6 Try to be accurate about stuff.
7 Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
8 You can also do all that with whiskey.
9 Have fun.
10 Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

‘Visit From Goon Squad’ Wins Critics Award - NYTimes.com

‘Visit From Goon Squad’ Wins Critics Award - NYTimes.com Yeah!!! I love this book. I've become its champion. Egan is simply brilliant, as GOON SQUAD and her earlier novels abundantly prove.

Convertible Bison

I know you thought this couple has to be from Wyoming, but in fact it is more evidence that Canadians may be crazier than Wyomingites.

Roddy Doyle: 10 Rules for Writing

Roddy Doyle (from The Guardian)

1 Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

2 Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph.

3 Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it's the job.

4 Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

5 Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don't go near the online bookies – unless it's research.

6 Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg "horse", "ran", "said".

7 Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It's research.

8 Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

9 Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven't written yet.

10 Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – "He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego." But then get back to work.

Rembering the Wisdom of a Mentor

Working on revision today, slugging through fat manuscripts and trying to find their zits and scars and blemishes, I'm reminded of a story a mentor, Don Murray, used to tell about how he could walk into an unfamiliar newsroom, observe reporters at work for the span of walking to the editor's office, and then boast to the editor that he could identify for him who the best writers in the room were.  Editors, shocked at Murray's accuracy asked him how he knew.  "I watched them while they wrote," he said.  "With the good ones, their lips move as they read their work."

I don't always know if my work is good or not, but I know this morning that my lips are moving.

Vonnegut Writing Rules

In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Kurt Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

• Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

• Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

• Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

• Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

• Start as close to the end as possible.

• Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

• Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

• Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Is This the Culture We Want?

A random compendium from a string of news stories in the cycle today:  a London opera about the life of Anna Nicole Smith, a lock of Justin Bieber's hair is auctioned for $40,000 (albeit for charity), a Detroit official has proposed one means of meeting budget needs is to cut funding for HALF of the city's schools, Fox News releases two likely Republican presidential candidates from its payroll (but continues to employ three others, two with their own weekly shows--no platform there, and clearly unbiased news gathering), oh, and yeah, don't forget Libya is bombing its own people for wanting democracy.

Let's hope the Libyan protesters succeed and win their freedom, and let's hope they form a democratic society to a bit higher standards than much of the west has done.  The Tunisians, now helping feed and house tens of thousands of fleeing Libyans seem to have set the real standard even in their fledgling days as newly freed people.  Should we have high hopes for Libyan futures?  Not if Iraq and Afghanistan are our measurements, or if by those examples, certainly not so if the west remains involved in the "nation-building" that follows, which essentially amounts to funding corruption in all corners.  I know we are more than the stuff that wants operas on big-breasted nude models and memorabilia from plastic-molded teenagers, but you have to wonder, is this any culture to aspire to?