You pull me into a dreamy wordy world with your gazettes, an 浮世絵 that passes over my indentured trench like a gilded zeppelin and to which I stop, briefly, and stare at in admiring silence, yearning for a rope ladder to drop down one day.
Ps on Facebook I just posted that New York Times article about how in the United States straight men are not really reading fiction anymore and that publishing has come to be dominated by women, including the powerful publishers. But it’s kind of sad to imagine a country women are not really reading stories anymore, but I guess they get their story from TV and honestly, I was always a non-fiction reader up until about a decade ago.
Really? You're relatively new to fiction? I am genuinely surprised. I read history, Buddhist history, Dharma, and four books in French, Italian, Spanish and German when I can. Sometimes 5 mins in each. I worked too long for many years. But I was working on my mind, via my body.
Yes, I was definitely a serious nonfiction reader and always considered myself an essayist! I turned to fiction only aftre I came back from Japan (reading seriously and writing!)
Well, you bring it out of me Madame...I despair of the cold world of transactions I inhabit. Only my own books, and the foliage that luxuriates around my dwelling, keeps me sane. Never stop penning!
Oh, thank you for the book recommendation! I've studied Kishotenketsu a little but a full discussion with examples is exactly what I didn't know I was looking for.
All the best for all your summer writing activities! And it's exciting that Xiaolu Guo may be in the running for the Booker Prize. While I haven't read any of her recent works, I absolutely loved I Am China & also enjoyed Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth recently.
Don't forget your band of hungry souls while you workshop your way round the nation at such an interesting time of transition - which way will USA go ?- will it become DSA - Dislocated, Deconstructed, Defederalised. Robie Macauley's The Secret History of Time to Come is one of my best books, so many people have never come across it. 160 years is not even teenage in the life of a nation, maybe still only in the "storming" phase . . .
I really enjoyed that article in Agni! It was so interesting and that led me to another one about the silk Road, which was also really interesting! I love Agni and I used to subscribe. I should probably resubscribe to it! And you’re right I had never heard of that author before I put the novel in my shopping cart on Amazon for now, so I don’t forget. He also went to Bread loaf and wrote and edited a craft book on fiction!
All his stuff is worthwhile, his short stories, some based on his experiences rounding up Nazis in Japan in '45. Plus Agni links me back to Sven Birkerts whose Gutenberg Elegies were so perceptive at the very beginning of the internet era, another bilingual American who began life speaking Latvian. Let me know when you have read Secret History, it won't wait on a TBR pile - I'm off to buy a copy of Spring, Summer, so a big thank you for that in return.
You have some exciting workshops coming up! You'll have lots of stories to trade there with other participants. I wonder do any novelists aspire to The Great American Novel any more? David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen the last?
Off the top of my head I actually think my mentor at Bread loaf last year, Jess Row aspired to that! His book is called the new Earth and it was definitely ambitious and very much a masterpiece I would say.
I haven't read that many non-Western novels, but I do recognize the twist, or pivot, from many K-dramas. It always amazes me how they turn characters and plots around multiple times and still manage to be convincing. I have always acknowledged this as dramaturgical sophistication, but now I learn that it's an integral part of their dramatic structures.
I know it kind of makes going back to a lot of American TV and American fiction incredibly predictable! I can almost always see where the story is going, and there are so many rules with American TV informed fiction especially as well as with TV. Japanese fiction and TV also really resists an elevator pitch or a concept because it really does have a more meandering kind of style.
You pull me into a dreamy wordy world with your gazettes, an 浮世絵 that passes over my indentured trench like a gilded zeppelin and to which I stop, briefly, and stare at in admiring silence, yearning for a rope ladder to drop down one day.
Ps on Facebook I just posted that New York Times article about how in the United States straight men are not really reading fiction anymore and that publishing has come to be dominated by women, including the powerful publishers. But it’s kind of sad to imagine a country women are not really reading stories anymore, but I guess they get their story from TV and honestly, I was always a non-fiction reader up until about a decade ago.
Really? You're relatively new to fiction? I am genuinely surprised. I read history, Buddhist history, Dharma, and four books in French, Italian, Spanish and German when I can. Sometimes 5 mins in each. I worked too long for many years. But I was working on my mind, via my body.
Yes, I was definitely a serious nonfiction reader and always considered myself an essayist! I turned to fiction only aftre I came back from Japan (reading seriously and writing!)
Well, your bulletins show that skill off well. One day I'll sharpen my quill.
You are such a poetic soul!!! ❤️❤️❤️ lol!
Well, you bring it out of me Madame...I despair of the cold world of transactions I inhabit. Only my own books, and the foliage that luxuriates around my dwelling, keeps me sane. Never stop penning!
I agree completely. You already know how I despair! And I will never stop penning and reading!!!
Oh, thank you for the book recommendation! I've studied Kishotenketsu a little but a full discussion with examples is exactly what I didn't know I was looking for.
All the best for all your summer writing activities! And it's exciting that Xiaolu Guo may be in the running for the Booker Prize. While I haven't read any of her recent works, I absolutely loved I Am China & also enjoyed Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth recently.
If you read it, I would love to hear what you think! I haven’t read I am China, but I definitely want to read it!
Ps i’m having trouble sending you a message — can you send me a message?
Weird! I just messaged you & it seemed to work.
Don't forget your band of hungry souls while you workshop your way round the nation at such an interesting time of transition - which way will USA go ?- will it become DSA - Dislocated, Deconstructed, Defederalised. Robie Macauley's The Secret History of Time to Come is one of my best books, so many people have never come across it. 160 years is not even teenage in the life of a nation, maybe still only in the "storming" phase . . .
I send you this from Agni on L1 / L2, emotion in language acquisition, growing up, translators and bilinguals: https://agnionline.bu.edu/blog/on-translation-bilingualism-and-squid-game/
I really enjoyed that article in Agni! It was so interesting and that led me to another one about the silk Road, which was also really interesting! I love Agni and I used to subscribe. I should probably resubscribe to it! And you’re right I had never heard of that author before I put the novel in my shopping cart on Amazon for now, so I don’t forget. He also went to Bread loaf and wrote and edited a craft book on fiction!
All his stuff is worthwhile, his short stories, some based on his experiences rounding up Nazis in Japan in '45. Plus Agni links me back to Sven Birkerts whose Gutenberg Elegies were so perceptive at the very beginning of the internet era, another bilingual American who began life speaking Latvian. Let me know when you have read Secret History, it won't wait on a TBR pile - I'm off to buy a copy of Spring, Summer, so a big thank you for that in return.
PS Going to get his latest--Gutenberg. Thank you so much for the reminder!!
I loved Birkert's art of time in memoir--short and sweet!!!
You have some exciting workshops coming up! You'll have lots of stories to trade there with other participants. I wonder do any novelists aspire to The Great American Novel any more? David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen the last?
Off the top of my head I actually think my mentor at Bread loaf last year, Jess Row aspired to that! His book is called the new Earth and it was definitely ambitious and very much a masterpiece I would say.
I haven't read that many non-Western novels, but I do recognize the twist, or pivot, from many K-dramas. It always amazes me how they turn characters and plots around multiple times and still manage to be convincing. I have always acknowledged this as dramaturgical sophistication, but now I learn that it's an integral part of their dramatic structures.
I know it kind of makes going back to a lot of American TV and American fiction incredibly predictable! I can almost always see where the story is going, and there are so many rules with American TV informed fiction especially as well as with TV. Japanese fiction and TV also really resists an elevator pitch or a concept because it really does have a more meandering kind of style.