Category Archives: fiction
On Asteroids, Stereoscopic Novels and Time
Tuesday night, as an asteroid was coming very close to striking Earth, I was re-reading a graphic novel I was teaching, Asterios Polyp, that concludes with an asteroid hurtling at the main character, who is, yes, on Earth. I thought about … Continue reading
On Maud Newton On David Foster Wallace
Maud Newton astutely considered the legacy of David Foster Wallace in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. I thought it was an exhilarating read. She begins with a quote from “Tense Present” and then uses it as a mirror from … Continue reading
In My Book Bag This Week – August 12
Mike Albo’s hilarious tell-all roman-a-clef of life as a freelance writer, The Junket. Get it. For weeks now I’ve had a galley for The Stranger’s Child, by Alan Hollinghurst. I love it. Don’t you want me to review it? Yes … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, books, fiction, Korean American, novels
My Next Move
One winter, I moved to Brooklyn to figure myself out. I was escaping a situation I didn’t understand, by which I mean a job and a lover and an apartment that when they were all together left no place for … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, fiction, fiction break
Fear of the World
If I have a religion, it is probably bibliomancy, the practice of flipping books open at random and reading from the quote I find. Just now: Fear of the world produces crystals in writing. One seeks the faultless, crystallized phrases, … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, fiction, novels
Shark’s Teeth
1. The 2010 ‘Best of’ lists appear, like little angels of death. Little cuts on my will to get to the end of the year. Not now, I say, each time one appears. Not yet. I need to make use … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, fiction, go team, letters from away, novels, what I am working on, writers, writing
“Professors of Fiction”
1. I have a conversation with my partner Dustin’s Uncle Jack about how he fell on his good hip and, while painful, it reset his hips. The pain he’s been suffering from the former bad hip is gone. I wish … Continue reading
Filed under fiction, MFA programs, novels, politics, what is right with us, what is wrong with us, writers, writing
“I think there are a lot of American critics who try to pretend that I don’t exist at all.”
I’m at Ledig House up near Hudson, New York, with my edits on my second novel, going over them, preparing to turn them in soon. I printed it up single-spaced with wide margins, so it looks more like a book, … Continue reading
Filed under books, fiction, novels, what I am working on
Yield, by Lee Houck
About 8 years ago, I received fan emails from a young man and his librarian mother. Both had read my first novel, both loved it, both made a point of writing to me. Both emails were among the most lovely … Continue reading
News of the World
Note: this has been updated, 5/17/2010. Lately I kept thinking of what I thought was a quote of Susan Sontag’s from a posthumous essay, and wrote a post about it. Here is the actual quote, supplied by Joshua Benton over … Continue reading
