Category Archives: novels
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
Sonata
After a year of residencies and travel, I find I do not want to leave New York, not right now. Sometimes I do not even leave my apartment. It was all I could do to agree to see my family … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, books, novels
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
Silver Sparrow
One of the moments I love best in my interview with Tayari Jones over at Algonquin Books’ blog is when I ask her about something she said in another interview about a year previous, right after she’d finished the novel: “It … Continue reading
100 Things About a Novel
1. Sometimes music is needed. 2. Sometimes silence. 3. This is probably because a novel is a piece of music, like all written things, the language demanding you make a sound as you read it. 4. Sometimes I have written … Continue reading
Hunger Games
1. I read The Hunger Games. So this is how America has chosen to process the power grab by the country’s richest 2%, I think, as I finish the novel. I buy it after I read that the author was inspired by … Continue reading
Filed under novels, politics, what is wrong with us
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
