Snowpocalypse De-Lurk--What Are You Reading?

Dearest readers. It's been a wild week and the wildness should continue for a while. I've been doing various betrothal-related errands, I caught Cathleen Schine's reading at Barnes and Noble, I had to finish all my work by Weds because I was due to serve a deadly boring period of voir-dire free jury duty (which I did, and it gave me a migraine), I attended a loud, late, fun pop concert which may have contributed to said migraine, I stressed out about the figure skaters and skiiers each night (seriously, the Olympics are not good for blood pressure), and although I happily got another MFA acceptance, I know that after the acceptances (and then the silences that equal rejection) comes my decision and so that very slight, but persistent pressure is mounting. Oh, and we've been hit with the most insane snowstorm yet! I was hoping for a weekend of skiing to purify my soul and perfect my technique, but it looks like conditions are keeping us stranded in the city.
Sigh.

Still, these manic periods in la vie moderne have a fun quality to them--they're exciting, they make you feel alive. So much is happening, you sort of have to surrender control. And I've been reading wonderfully inspiring literature throughout it all. I read a great review book for PW that is very EBC-ish and am now making my slow, tear-stained way through Jhumpa Lahiri's first published book, her Pulitzer winning collection of stories Interpreter of Maladies.

If there's one contemporary writer I want to be like, it's definitely she. Some day in the distant future, after my MFA program and the cruel realities of adult life have honed my blunt, youthful pen to a fine-tipped edge, I'd like to see myself as a Jewish Lahiri with a tiny bit of a satirical touch.

I love her writing because its brilliance lies in directness and honest rather than rhetorical flourish. Her style is so unobtrusive that 'we're launched right into the worlds of her character and often forget the conceit. She isn't afraid to "tell" us what her characters are feeling as well as showing us. She valiantly confronts the awful things in life like death and infidelity and bitter disappointment, but she does it lovingly, not cruelly. I just can't rave about her enough.

So what are you reading beneath these sleety, snowy drifts of weather and of life? Come check in with your harried blogstress and share.

Ciaran Hinds, AKA Captain Wentworth, is Aberforth Dumbledore

...in the next Harry Potter film. It's a great role for a great actor. Here is a great little interview with him. Love his Irish accent.
He also talks about some other projects, but the HP stuff is first.

Brave New World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this great dystopian book in my attempt to tick off great 20th century novels one by one. The conceptual aspect of the world Huxley envisions is imaginative, fascinating, and occasionally brilliant--government which controls its subjects through genetic engineering aided by pleasure, oblivion and ecstasy. Rather than pain and repression keeping people down, conformity, free love, and constant engagement of the senses are the weapons wielded by the powers that be.

Huxley's modern writing style, jumping around from one place and person to another at a lightning-quick pace, is fun to read and the book went by breezily and with a good deal of excitement.

But I just wasn't convinced by Huxley's characters, who were all rather detached and unpleasant (as opposed to the MCs in "1984" whom one just loves and identify with so much) nor did I buy his rather prudish concerns with the fate of humanity. Yes, it's true that we like to distract ourselves from life with drugs and sex, but no, the "everybody has everybody" philosophy his society espouses, and the breaking down of clans, friendships and family units such a philosophy entails, would never go over so easily with any populace, no matter when or where. We are too clinging, too imperfect.

I think Lois Lowry's YA masterpiece"The Giver" is a much, much better stab at the same concept--a world regulated without pain or loss, but without love also.

View all my reviews >>

Rules for Writing:

The Guardian gives us a series of lists, all of "rules" for writers elicited from famous authors, each of whom has listed 8 or 10 cardinal principles they write by, both mundane and profound, serious and amusing. Among the gems:

• Margaret Atwood says: Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
• Zadie Smith says: try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
• Hillary Mantel says: Be aware that anything that appears before "Chapter One" may be skipped. Don't put your vital clue there.

UPDATE: The New Yorker's Book Bench skims the list and comes up with some more great rules.

UPDATE 2: An attentive EBC reader who may or may not be sitting five feet from me asked me what MY rules for writing are. I'm still figuring them out, to be honest, which is a big and exciting and daunting part of the journey I'm on right now. But one of them may be "read other writers' rules for writing" ;)

Re-Liveblogging "Persuasion" '07

This is what I blogged when this inferior adaptation of the most inspiring of Austen's works aired in 2008. Enjoy, if you're watching or live-tweeting tonight!

A Woman's Wit

I finally made it to the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library today with Simon and our friend Zach, and am so glad I did.

It was a lovely and definitive collection of Jane's lively witty letters written in a tiny hand to save paper, and a full original draft of Lady Susan, plus tons of goodies, like original manuscripts of writing by Walter Scott, Nabokov and Yeats discussing Austen's works, as well as old editions of her books and illustrations. The exhibit ended with a video that showed a number of writers, thinkers, and artists visiting the exhibit and interacting with Austen's letters and legacy. Cornel West called Austen a "Shakespearean novelist" and said he'd like to give her a hug, because without her there would be no Flaubert, Dickens or Tolstoy, while Siri Hustvedt explained that Austen transcends "comedy of manners" to write about the relationships between ourselves, our perceptions, and others. Fran Lebowitz said that Austen hasn't aged or dated because her observations are true.

Zach took this shot of a Frances Burney subscription list,
the only time Austen ever saw her own name in print.

Simon and I were nodding like true devotees throughout the whole thing, and there was something rather moving about all the visitors filtering through the smallish room. I heard so many animated conversations about Austen and her characters, people explaining to their friends and family why she was so awesome. I've never done any JASNA events, so it was a nice feeling of kinship with my fellow Janeites.

It any of you are in the NY area before mid-march, check it out!

Question of the Week: Favorite Old Timey Romance-Movies?

Greetings, readers. Exciting news! You can now follow this blog using your twitter or facebook or AIM account. No google account required.


Thanks to TCM's pre-Oscar classics fest--31 Days of Oscar-- I've finally caught two movies I've long wanted to see: The Philadelphia Story and Roman Holiday. Both marvelous, funny, sad and romantic, needless to say, with great star turns by Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart in the first and Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in the second.

It got me thinking--you're a crowd with good taste in these sorts of things. So what are your favorite old-Hollywood romances?

Literary Birthday: Toni Morrison

One of the best writers living, Morrison's work combines poetry with prose, historical testimony with the supernatural, the specifics of the African-American experience with the universality of the human experience. She's a chronicler of the most brutal of crimes and a believer in love.

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger. -Toni Morrison

I've read a lot of her work, but still haven't read Jazz, Tar Baby, Love or Paradise. Must rectify that.

Falling softly, softly falling

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

Another snowy day on the East Coast. I've been working on novel edits all day and my eyes are getting all bleary, so time to venture out into the whirling white flakes and try to stumble to the gym and grocery stores before it gets too dark.

My favorite literary snowfalls are the obvious ones: Robert Frost and James Joyce. There's a wonderful snowy night in "Emma" in which our characters dine at the Westons and poor Mr. Elton is rejected in the carriage home. And there are dozens more. "The Giver" "To Light a Fire" "Sarah Plain and Tall"...

What, to you, are the most memorable snow scenes in literature?

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Re-Liveblogging Northanger Abbey

This is what I blogged when it originally aired in '08. enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day

To my readers who love smouldering 19th-century heroes.



And romance in corsets and breeches:

YOU'RE WELCOME.

My revision process--in vlog form!

So here is my first vlog (yes, I'm imitating you, my numerous blogging buddies who have started vlogging in recent weeks/months), wherein I talk about the part of the writing process I'm now in--revisions. So with lots of awkward hair-fussing and eye-rolling, (and no script) I discuss handing out the manuscript to my Beta readers, copy edits, and my favorite part of the process--the adverb hunt! Whee. This is an experiment, so the transitions were abrupt and the whole thing went perhaps a bit too long, but it was soo fun to play with and the editing and filming process will be on its path to perfection the next time I try it.




Oh, and a special shout-out to Simon, whom I omitted in my list of beta readers because I'm a moron and forgot he's really an alpha reader, in that he's always the first person to look at every draft after me.

Sense and Sensibility in Connecticut

A Different Kind of Love Triangle, on the front page of the NTYBR this weekend, is a review of "The Three Weissmans of Westport" a loose take on "Sense and Sensibility,' transplanted to a very Jewy family in that WASPiest of states, Connecticut (hmm, sound like a familiar premise?):

"In Cathleen Schine’s novel, two sophisticated Manhattan sisters, one wildly emotional, one smartly sensible, come to the aid of their beloved aging mother."

Good on the Times for putting this front and center.

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Introducing... My WIP. My plans for next year.

As you guys may have noticed, I'm constantly muttering asides about writing conferences and wanting to be a writer. Well as I mentioned a few weeks back, part of my New Year's resolution has been to own my identity as an aspiring novelist more fully, so here come a few announcements for those who care to hear them :)

1-I am writing a novel. It's called "French Lessons" and it's a loose modern re-working of "Persuasion," set in France during the Bush years with a put-together on the outside, confused on the inside young woman as its protagonist. Over the course of a summer backpacking throughout her adopted country with a band of merry expats, Annie has to face some truths about her love life, her future, and the reasons she's left home so far behind. Oh and her two love interests are a roguish French intellectual and an earnest American blogger ;)

2-I am enrolling in an MFA program next year. Right now, it looks very strongly like I'll be attending the well-regarded, and bucolically-situated low-res MFA at VCFA, because it's a top choice of mine and they accepted me! (YAY). What that means is I'll be around as usual and continuing to freelance, but also corresponding with my faculty mentor throughout each semester and attending two intense residencies each year in Montpelier, VT, (right near my favorite ski mountain, Stowe and home to the New England Culinary Institute. Uh-huh).

3-I'm currently in the middle of an umpteenth round of revisions on the aforementioned novel, and I'm hopefully going to describe that process in either a video blog or a post coming up.

And that's all for now. Time to geek out watching the Olympics, the sporting event for nerds.

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