But reference books are, when Gwenda writes about them for PW.
So are Houston stoners, who decided a skull-shaped bong wasn’t authentic enough.
What exactly happened the night of August 19, 1994? Tell the best story, win an ARC of John Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale.
Jami Attenberg provides a virtual soundtrack for her novel The Kept Man at Largehearted Boy.
Today author Steve Gillis is blogging at The Syntax of Things.
I became belatedly aware of the kerfluffle over the Virginia Quarterly Review’s (over?)sharing of their readers’ comments on their slush pile — wish I’d seen them, and sorry that people were so huffy over getting a truthful peek behind the scenes at a litmag. Anyway, part of the fallout is this thoughtful post about the magazine’s (perceived) sensibility, which I find interesting, especially with the long comment thread. The complaint — which I’m not doing justice to by excerpting it — says, in part:
something that applies to these stories, and also to lots of other fiction published these days, and which accounts for this reader’s frequent lack of enthusiasm for fiction found in so many lit mags….: a lack of attention to character and a focus instead on culture and outside events
The call for attention to character is one that I think can be overemphasized in MFA programs, a plea for a naturalism and realism that I think is only “natural” or “real” in 20th century fiction. I’ll go think about it some more while I start putting books in boxes.
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