Annotation Published

Posted by on Apr 3, 2012 in Annotation, Published | 0 comments

Lehane’s gripping story and inconsistent prose might prove that sometimes, the plot is enough to keep the reader.

Shutter Island is worth the read – check out the annotation to see why, then pick up a copy of the book and keep the lights low while you read.

Thanks to friends at AnnotationNation for publishing the review!

 


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The Nutshell – New Annotations Uploaded

Posted by on Mar 8, 2012 in Annotation, Information | 0 comments

I’ve finally uploaded a handful of new literary annotations to The Nutshell! Check them out, and then consider reading some of the books I’ve annotated and share your thoughts.

 


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Annotation Published

Posted by on Feb 14, 2012 in Annotation, Published | 0 comments

What’s the first rule of Fight Club? If you enjoyed the movie, you’ll love the book. Read my annotation of Chuck Palahniuk’s amazing novel Fight Club, and then go find a copy and give it a spin.

From the annotation: (Palahniuk) gives writers, by example, permission to get away from the rules, to invent new styles, and to write passion, even ugly passion, into places where passion may be obscured.

Thanks to friends at Annotation Nation for publishing another review!

 


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Annotation Published

Posted by on Sep 30, 2011 in Annotation, Published | 0 comments

What would a dog say if he could talk? What does he think about? We all think we know, but maybe we’re only scratching the surface. Garth Stein has tapped into the mind of one lovable and loving canine to tell the story of a family torn apart in The Art of Racing in the Rain. Readers and writers alike need to read this story.

Thanks again to the wonderful folks at Annotation Nation for publishing these notes on a new favorite read!

 


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Annotation Published

Posted by on Sep 30, 2011 in Annotation, Published | 0 comments

Tobias Wolff’s unforgettable memoir This Boy’s Life moved me in a way few memoirs have. It’s not full of death or despair or medical calamity. It’s just the story of his boyhood – moving cross country with his mother, running away from bad decision after bad decision and learning lessons the hard way. It’s honest, it’s well-written, and it’s charming.

Annotation Nation CNF (Creative Non-Fiction) is doing some great work publishing annotations of some of the literary world’s most interesting nonfiction. Check them out, and then check out This Boy’s Life.

 


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Lightbulbs, Nuggets, Pearls, AHA!-s (at the SVWC 2011)

Posted by on Aug 23, 2011 in Conferences, Sun Valley Writers' Conference | 0 comments

The Sun Valley Writers’ Conference…what an experience! This was the 16th year it happened, and my first time running the full gamut. After more than 30 total hours floating around Sun Valley, talking with writers and literature (and politics) addicts, I can say I honestly had no idea what I was in for. Rather than bore anyone with the totality of my experience (buy me a cup of coffee or a beer and I’ll bore you then), I’ll sum up and list some of the wisdom and advice I noted while attending this year.

 

David Brooks:

Mr. Brooks spoke to the basis of his current book, The Social Animal in which he posits that human beings are irrational, emotionally wired and socially dependent creatures. NOT analytically inclined beings of reason understood by studies following the model of physics. Brooks is a talented speaker with a ridiculously quick sense of humor and keen eye for human detail.

Presentation points of interest:

  • Most of our actions are totally unconscious (and everything is wired emotionally). Example: sense of smell…study cited showed that subjects who lost the sense fell apart (irreparable) emotionally.
  • Reason is founded in emotion…emotion assigns value to things. What we like/want/desire/judge develops unconsciously, even though we feel like it’s of our control.
  • We are not individuals first: we are relationship based and our individuality is developed through relationships.
  • The KEY: our brains are mostly about understanding each other.
  • Interesting study: group of men was shown a number of kinds of movies (comedy, romance, drama, horror, etc) while their brains were scanned (FMRI machines) for emotional patterning. After establishing those maps, the same group was asked to do other things while scanned. When the married men were asked to open up emotionally to their wives, their brain maps (all of them) showed an identical reaction to that of when they’d been watching horror movies. No joke.

 

Colum McCann:

I was able to sit in on two of Colum’s presentations: one to the full audience of the conference, and one to a smaller group in a focused breakout session. The man is a gifted story-teller and admirer of people. His authenticity both on stage and in conversation were refreshing and encouraging. On the stage, he spoke about the importance of letting oneself get lost and find home again (metaphors abound). In the smaller discussion, he focused his attention on his approach to fiction, character development, and utilizing what he knows to write about what he wants to know. I’ll break this section into two sections to cover both of his addresses. It’ll be difficult to distill it all, but I’ll try not to get too wordy.

Presentation points of interest:

  • A healthy childhood is the worst thing for a novelist.
  • If we have a “home” it’s easier to get lost because we know we always have somewhere to which we can return.
  • We seem to have a strange desire for sadness. In the Portuguese: “Saudade” means “longing for absence” – it is here that we can begin to experience the “other”
  • In his opinion, the best stories are unfinished, not neatly wrapped.
  • GET LOST: we don’t need to always rely on the permanent GPS in our imagination.
  • Literature trumps other activities: it has the illusion of being able to wound us.
  • Don’t just write what you know: write what you want to know.
  • Sam Beckett quote: “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
  • There is euphoria of ignorance in story-telling: when we realize that we don’t know what’s coming.

Breakout Session points of interest:

  • Fiction means “to shape,” not to invent, to lie, or to create. It’s a shaping of reality.
  • Fiction writers are alternative historians, the peoples’ biographers.
  • Knowing the “most extreme detail” can give the illusion that the author knows every other detail.  Finding that detail can make everything else true.
  • Frank McCourt quote: “We must love this poor earth for we have not seen another.”
  • Fiction can be as true if not more true than nonfiction – often, nonfiction is not written as “emotionally true” as “shaped” truth.
  • Un-cited quote: “Literature is news that stays news.” (Ezra Pound – who was a Wood River Valley resident)
  • The only book you, as a writer, should love or be attached to is the one you’re working on at the moment.
  • As a writer, you cannot carry the burden of an entire culture. You can carry only the burdens of your characters.

 

David Grossman:

David Grossman is a remarkable human being. He is highly intelligent, emotionally grounded, and sensitive to his characters, his people, and his audience. He began his presentation by offering the audience the greeting, Shalom, peace. And ended urging the audience to work hard to imagine peace, for it is only in our thinking first will it be possible.

Presentation points of interest:

  • When writing, we feel protected and bold, regardless of our circumstance.
  • So much of our lives are congealed cliche. We must fight to avoid cliche in our lives and in our stories.
  • Describing the re-introduction of Hebrew as a spoken language in the early 20th century, he offered the thought that literature is the only thing that has the power to bring back the richness of language.
  • We are not doomed to live in this reality.
  • Shalom: it’s elusive: always in the future tense, always something that is coming but never here.
  • To be connected to anyone means you are vulnerable to him/her/them. If you’re not vulnerable, are you really connected?
  • Our only help will always come from the outside: we are incapable of saving ourselves.
  • If we survive to only live our lives, then we will live only to survive.

 

Rick Atkinson:

Rick addressed World War II as the “great myth of the 20th century.” It’s the most reported story in recorded history. There are more books about it as an event than any other event in history. 60 million people died. Yet, no one understands (with the exception of those deep in the experience) exactly what it was like. His approach in writing The Liberation Trilogy was to write the human story. The lecture was enlightening and engaging, but it was some of what Rick shared about his writing process (and some of the statistics) that I’ll share here.

Presentation points of interest:

  • We need to learn real humility. There is much to be humble about.
  • As a nonfiction narrative writer, the ultimate goal is to look at a story that many know and figure out how to tell it that no one has ever heard it before (duh, but a great reminder).
  • Historical narrative shows not a range of cultural change, but a sweep of individual decisions and failures.
  • There is no such thing as a foreseeable future.
  • Metaphor for truly revealing story: like a prism – it takes the familiar beam of light and splays it open to reveal the full spectrum.
  • War is our lot – it’s where we live, it shapes our lives, our politics, our education, our media.
  • In 3.5 millenia (3,500 years) of recorded history, there are only 268 years where NO war is recorded/happening.
  • When asked how the third book will end, Rick told that the end of his third book will show a soldier, after being shot, having dragged himself to a hut and dying slowly. It’s not the death that’s the focus, though, it’s the thought around it. Quoting the soldier (from a letter he scrawled as he died): “I lie here in this terrible place, wondering not why God has forsaken me but why he is making me suffer.” Rick finished: “That’s how it ends. That’s how it always ends.”

 

Kathryn Stockett:

Kathryn Stockett gave a short talk regarding her book and process and followed up with a long Q&A session. The focus of her talk (and, ultimately the impetus behind her book) was the general southern idea that the present and future will never be as good as the past. This is not, to say, the cultural or civil state of the past. Rather, the way things “were” will always hold a dearer place in southerners’ hearts than the way things are. She also admitted that she feels like she’s “slipped in under the door” in terms of her fame and presence among the other writers at the conference. She answered questions boldly, honestly, and with the quickest wit on stage.

Presentation points of interest:

  • Fiction writers should be interested wholly in the details, the “little stitches that hold two people together.”
  • Southerners genetically inclined to carry the “Wishing Gene” – meaning “things back then will always be better, more interesting than things now.”
  • The South is the most complicated place to discuss in America (especially for women)
  • Manners always trump the law
  • The ideas of a generation are likely not going to change until the generation begins to die off. She believes that real social, cultural, civil change is generational, not geographical.
  • Question: Why do writers (people uncomfortable in the population, even in their own skin) want so desperately for other people to read the work? We’re insane.

 

Siddartha Mukherjee:

One of the most impressive, humble presences I’ve encountered. It’s no wonder his book won the Pulitzer Prize. His presentation addressed his search for the full story of cancer and working toward its cure. Strangeness reigns in nonfiction. His claim: the truth of life is stranger than anything we can invent, especially when you approach the cellular level. In regard to writing, he filled the hour. Everyone is, has been, or will be affected in some way by cancer. Everyone should read The Emperor of All Maladies.

Presentation points of interest:

  • You will write large stories by telling small stories.
  • You will not impose artificial constraints on your story (such as where you write or when…write where ever/however it will work).
  • Never write for long if you’re not involving real characters (think about it…sounds no-brainer, but how easy is it to forget this?).
  • You will soon, if you haven’t already, realize that truth is infinitely stranger than fiction.
  • Mark Twain quote: “The only difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction needs to be believable.”
  • Medical papers are really just coded “people stories.”
  • Finding a cure is like finding a story: it exists while it does not yet exist.
  • There is a strangeness of self you discover when you write to something so different than yourself.
  • Cancer subsumes all life: the day to day of survivorship blots out the surviving.

 

John Burnham Schwartz:

Why is fiction important? Why are stories important? John attempted to answer these questions. While at the same time easy and impossible to give definitive answers, his talk offered some terrific points and great reminders. And it began and ended with his sharing his own struggle to create stories nightly that satisfied is young son (so, he’s got my vote).

Presentation points of interest:

  • In writing, we need to offer sentiment without sentimentality.
  • When we tell a story, we’re not asking the reader to believe it; we’re asking him/her to imagine it.
  • Strangeness (or, Alistair McCartney’s word “defamiliarity”) is seeing something you know, but it is new.
  • Put yourself in another’s shoes and describe something you know but he doesn’t as if he’s seeing it for the first time.
  • Strangeness in fiction cannot be faked or contrived.
  • The action can only be completed by the reader’s engagement, the reader’s imagination.
  • We all share the same tools: language/emotion/imagination. It’s the only art form where the receiver knows the tools the way the artist does.
  • There is GREAT beauty in the illusion of discovery.
  • Flaubert quote: “Even the smallest thing has something in it that is unknown.”
  • The novel is not expressing reality but existence: relates to all other existences, offers solace, prepares us for change.
  • Hope is what we practice despite our knowledge that things may not get better.
  • We tell stories to illuminate and assuage our otherness.

 


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Sun Valley Writers’ Conference Schedule

Posted by on Aug 19, 2011 in Conferences, Sun Valley Writers' Conference | 0 comments

The tents are up, the Pavilion’s staged, the writers are being handled, and the attendees are coming out in droves (over 800). I’ll share thoughts and nuggets of writing wisdom gleened throughout the weekend.  I feel very fortunate to attend this year as a scholarship recipient.

For now, here is my schedule (replete with links for more information – mouse over names and titles to see more) for the next four days at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference:

 

Friday:

6:30-7:30 pm “The Social Animal” with New York Times columnist and NewsHour commentator David Brooks

 

Saturday:

8:45-9:45 am “Battle Hymn of the Bunny Dad” with writer Mark Salzman 

10:15-11:15 am “My Mulligan Life” with Sports Illustrated columnist and ESPN host and humorist Rick Reilly 

11:45-12:45 pm “Literary Maps: Getting Lost, Finding Home” with author Colum McCann 

2:00-3:00 pm “Writing About the Mafia” with former prosecutor and Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware Charles Brandt

3:30-4:30 pm “The Great Migration and How It Shaped America” with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former New York Times Chicago bureau chief Isabel Wilkerson 

5:00-6:00 pm “My Darling Clemmie” Hugh Whitemore’s one-woman show, performed by Rohan McCullough

6:30-7:30 pm “Life and Literature in the Shadow of War” with Israeli writer David Grossman and Brookings Institution president and former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott 

 

Sunday:

8:45-9:45 am “Imagining the Real: Writing the News in Fiction” with Colum McCann about his National Book Award winning novel Let the Great World Spin

10:15-11:15 am “The Central Myth of the 20th Century” with three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Rick Atkinson

11:45-12:45 pm “Dixie Then and Now” with The Help author Kathryn Stockett 

2:00-3:00 pm “The Arab Awakening” with Strobe Talbott, diplomat and former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, and specialist on Iran at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy Suzanne Maloney 

3:30-4:30 pm “A History of Cancer” with oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Emporer of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

5:00-6:00 pm “Opera…from a Sistah’s Point of View” with soprano Angela Brown

6:30-7:30 pm “Making It Rhyme in Time” with New Yorker author, reporter and humorist Calvin Trillin 

 

Monday:

9:00-10:00 am “Enemies of the People – My Family’s Journey to America” with journalist and human rights advocate Kati Marton 

10:30-11:30 am “Why Fiction Matters: A Talk for People Who Love Literature” with novelist John Burnham Schwartz 

12:00-1:00 pm “A Life in Verse” with former U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, whose collection The Best of It: New and Selected Poems won this years Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

 

A reminder to valley residents: if it’s the same as it was in years past, then you can attend some of the Pavilion talks for free with a current student or teacher ID.

Anyone interested in the Pavilion talks can also purchase tickets to some of the presentations (listed on the SVWC website).


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