“Poverty taught me not to worry about money.”–Michael Caine. Tom McIntyre to Jameson Parker on the normal novel in the US: “They’re all written by middleclass kids from nice middleclass suburbs who went to good schools and good colleges, and then on to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and then moved to Brooklyn where they all …
Tag: Writing
He’s Baaack!
I was goingt to wait until after New Year’s Day, but I more or less have things in order, as much as is possible with the built- in chaos generators in my life. I have decided that the blog, while it doesn’t exactly bring in cash (and there must be some way to do a …
Book Review #2: Rifle Looney News
John Barsness and Eileen Clarke seem like such normal people that is hard to realize at first just how unusual their “lifestyle” is. They are ubiquitous in the hunting and gun magazines, more so than any other couple I have known (I dare say I have known many of the sporting couples of my time). …
Pluvi wins a big one
Helen Macdonald has just won the Samuel Johnson Prize, a VERY big deal. Nice to see prizes go to someone whose writing eminently deserves it, especially when her choice of subject is so quirky, even controversial, as falconry. It may say something about literary England– or nature loving England– that they would give a prize …
Quotes and a thought
Bear with me… Henry James appears, in this quote from this article , to be on the “Art”, not the “Theory” side: “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we …
Malcolm
I ma hoping you are all reading Malcolm Brooks’s Painted Horses, at least as much for your pleasure as because he is a friend who deserves it– for why would I be saying such good things about a bad writer? (There is a Russ Chatham story about beautiful women who are not quite as bright …
Roman a Clef?
Two characters from John Moore’s Looking for Lynne reading about themselves:
Congratulations Paula! (and reluctant self- promotion)
Friend of the blog Paula Young Lee, writer and hunter, traveler, sometime resident of Paris France, Paris Maine, and Wellesley Mass, has won the Gold Medal for travel book from the Society of American Travel Writers for her book Deer Hunting in Paris. I bet it could as easily win one for hunting book, or …
Break
Off to Denver for a reading by Malcolm Brooks, for Painted Horses. Not sure if, this fall, I might not take a short or long break, as things get more physically difficult and slow, as work gets shunted to the side by more ephemeral writing. ?? Bear with me, and wish me luck…
Charles Bowden, R.I.P.
“… But I don’t think so”, as he wrote of his old friend Edward Abbey in my favorite of all of his works, Desierto, the closest thing he ever wrote to a nature book. The inscribed flyleaf (double or right click to enlarge) beneath his terrifying later Murder City, is in that book; he had …