Atwood On The Book Selling Circuit; William Kennedy Lives

 Margaret Atwood: The 60 Minutes Interview

 Alice Munro won the Nobel, but I suspect Canadian literature means Margaret Atwood.

Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood celebrate Salman Rushdie's latest book, Victory City (PEN America, 2023) - several readings then Gaiman and Atwood discuss the book and writing.

For Albany, New York, there is William Kennedy. I had his Ironweed before my arrest, only I procrastinated in reading it. I can say I read Legs early on. What I had not known was there were a whole cycle of novels set in Albany, New York. I made up for lost time in prison. It may also be that the time had come where I could read with clearer eyes. 

Today, Google News put At 97, the Bard of Albany Still Spins Tales of Gangsters and Politicians (New York Times) in front of my eyes. A celebration, a bit of fluff, and yet.... For people like me, growing up when what we knew about writers and writing only from the finished work, that ignorance drove us away from writing. I had Faulkner with his cycle of Mississippi stories, but no one else. I did not think of people like Kennedy (or Joyce Carol Oates or John Updike or Zola or Balzac, they were still far in my future from my twenty-year-old self). One thing I have learned is: it is not the place that is important but the writing. Another thing is this: within the writing is the story of humanity around you and your locality, and means opening one's eyes, one's mind, one's imagination to the life around you. Check out what Willa Cather did for Nebraska and New Mexico; what Joyce Carol Oates did for western New York, what John Updike did for his Pennsylvania; what Michael Martone has done for Indiana; what William Kennedy did for Albany, New York. What I thought this morning while working on this paragraph: where are the stories of Indianapolis?

sch 11/14