Sarah Wrote That

“Victorian Relic in a Sea of Change”
Oceano, CA

From LIFE’s final issue, “The Year in Pictures 1972”

“Amanda tried writing a card or something. She wrote that she and her fiancé had decided not to marry. Then she wrote that her fiancé had decided not to marry her. She said that she was sorry for any inconvenience. She added that she would appreciate gifts anyway.”

— Allegra Goodman: “La Vita Nuova” : The New Yorker

Hits the ‘Lorrie Moore’ side of spurned-romance writing.

I loved teaching this story. It hits so many emotional registers with such finesse. That “or something”—I think we instantly understand that Goodman is using words Amanda might say to describe what she’s doing, but parsing the misalignment doesn’t inoculate us against its weird alchemy; as direct thought or dialogue—”I’ll write a card or something”—it would be sad but fairly flat emotionally. Goodman makes the thought and its failure simultaneous, Amanda’s fecklessness inseparable from her despair.

A well-deserved inclusion in last year’s Best American Short Stories.

Reblogged from Blogelstein!

the-mtblog:

Pennsylvania Station
New York City
September 6, 1962

Photographs by Walker Evans, commissioned by LIFE for “America’s Heritage of Great Architecture is Doomed…It Must be Saved” - published July 5, 1963. These photos were from a total collection of 141 that Evan’s shot for the commission.

(© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

With some things, nostalgia, golden age-ism, is merited. Come and go from Manhattan by way of a crystal palace? How would I!

Reblogged from Maury Postal

wnyc:

best. phone. bill. ever.

As tweeted by @garthj

-Jody, BL Show-

Get out of there cat. You are not a phone bill. You do not charge me for texts or change my terms of service, you are a cat.

Reblogged from WNYC's Transmitter

SW to NE, from the DuBois Library 23rd floor this morning. The gap in the middle is due west, where someone—the nerve!—was using a study carrel.

20,000 words

I’m handing in the first chunk (out of a likely 3) of my novel on Tuesday, just over 20,000 words, 90 pages with the formatting I’m using.* I’m hoping for an eventual ±60,000 words and really, really not hoping for 400-500 pp, but I’m consciously letting it find its own duration, and three times now this has been the point where initial arcs have progressed far enough that I could start to see an overall shape, what was working, what didn’t belong. The first time, I kept 4,000 words; the second, 12,000 words.** I suspect that now, if anything, I’ll be filling in gaps, developing b-plots, etc.***

The manuscript is too early on for real line editing, but one thing I did this weekend was check every place where—I’d like to think in the rush of first-drafting—I’d written that a character felt or thought something, instead of directly stating the thought or describing the feeling. It may seem gimmicky, but it made a striking difference to the flow of the prose. The only instance where it made sense to keep the usage was a character thinking about her own previous thoughts. Where it was me, the author, saying now we’re in [x]’s head!—gone; and even where I had to re-work the sentences completely, I prefer the new versions.

I’m acutely aware with this manuscript that I haven’t learned how to write “a” novel, only a bit about the one I’m working on.

* I remember sometime last year a lit blog, I forget which, derisively advising aspiring novelists not to dissuade passing agents by revealing to the Internets how far their projects were from completion. As if one is going to be able or want to hoodwink an agent! They do want to actually see what they’re taking on…

** I’ve read much inveighing against such editing while in progress—just write straight through, let it be bad, don’t lose momentum, etc. I agree to an extent; except when later events are going to result from events that are going to entirely change.

*** But I could be wrong! So wrong!

Q: Do you have exceptional literary talent?

A: I thikn so

[from filmsourcing.com]

by Wired New York contributor @ddny2k

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
40,613 plays

bzdurnik:

“Tonight” is the first track from Saint Etienne’s forthcoming album. Download this track for free at www.saintetienne.com (limited time only)

This brightens up a dark, rainy Friday…

Reblogged from Bzdurnik

Close-reading a Downton Abbey B-Plot

Mary and Sybil’s interactions in this week’s Downton Abbey (season 3 episode 2) b-plot were a particularly well-done bit of writing, very complex and real and satisfying, partly because the place where it lands us is for now relatively without consequence in a show that often limits its gratuities to shit the Dowager Countess says.

Read on →