Reading About Writers & Their Lives & About Writing

 I never finished reading  Thomas McGuane's Ninety-Two in the Shade. Why is beyond my memory. I had read a couple of his short stories and I liked them. It may be that the last story I read in Playboy was one of his. He is one of those guys I know I should pay more attention to as the time gets away from me. Therefore, I am using my time and the space here to suggest you do what I haven't done enough of. 

Literary Hub published Thomas McGuane is Writing the Most Vital Literature of the Trump Era and perhaps this will make my case for reading and learning from McGuane.

McGuane’s subtle wonders work because of their brief length. Novelists in the Trump era combat the daily sturm und drang with extended responses defined by their reach and, at times, their inability to grasp. The novel must develop; nobody wants 250 pages of stasis.

The MAGA faithful, on the other hand, take pride in their intractability. In McGuane’s hands, this other “half of the divide” become ideal subjects for the short story. His characters confront moments of reckoning—some comic, others karmic, often both—where self-belief collides with a buckling status quo.

Which might make A Wooded Shore terribly outré at a time of incipient fascism. (As outré as using the word outré.) But if we engage with McGuane on his terms, our engagement with fiction will extend both our reach and our grasp. What else is a literature for?

One more time for Marcel Proust.

 

 

Eight Writing Secrets:

 

 Alan Moore's writing advice is a little strange, enough so that I think I need to come back to it to make sure I am correct about this: he takes a different approach to make points long-standing.

 I have heard of Pachinko, but knew nothing of Min Jin Lee until this video. Now, I am a fan after hearing what got her writing and what she wants to do with her writing and her life in general.

 

 

I cannot recall the last time I read either Rudy Rucker or Bruce Sterling. Longer for Sterling, and I came to Rucker after I had read William Gibson, Sterling, and Neal Stephenson. It had to be before prison. It is harder to find Rucker's books but do look for them. His cyberpunk is more surfpunk; that is more humorous. Check out Rudy's Blog's for Blog Archive Podcast #119. Writing Cyberpunk. Rudy vs. Bruce.

Read A Writer’s Life: A Life if you are a new writer. One thing I did not know when I was younger was what it was like to be a writer. I wish I had this collection of examples.

Everything you’ve wanted to know (but didn’t know who to ask) about Substack Lit Mags 

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