By no popular demand whatsoever, a return of one of those posts with links to things I’ve been reading, or planning to read, with little or no context whatsoever. Hopefully you’ll find something here worth reading. Read the rest of this entry »
As one of those (annoying) people who seems to prefer reading about writing to actual writing (1) I found myself reading this rather exhaustive essay about the writer and editor Gordon Lish. The author collates examples of Lish’s recommendations, thoughts and teachings on how to write, organising them into a coherent methodology for writing Lish-style.
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Amongst all the goodness in the first issue of the New Inquiry magazine, one article in particular stood out – The Resentment Machine, by Freddy De Boer. It is available in full in that link back there, so you should probably read that rather than this, but anyway, it challenged me in all number of ways (I should probably offer some sort of summary here, but even after multiple readings I won’t do it justice and you’d be better off just reading the real thing, or failing that reading what follows in the next paragraph…), but one quote near the end particularly got to me. Read the rest of this entry »
Finally, after much procrastination, I have finished Richard Ford’s Bascombe Trilogy. That is, The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land. It hasn’t taken me so long because the books were hard work, far from it. It has taken me so long because I haven’t wanted to leave the life of the narrator, Frank Bascombe. Read the rest of this entry »
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Wait until next year 