Sarah Wrote That

Night Scene, West from 500 Fifth Ave, showing Times, Paramount,...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:51:00 -0500

Night Scene, West from 500 Fifth Ave, showing Times, Paramount, Astor & Edison Hotels.
Byron Company, 1937 (photographer unnamed)

Chance and Attention

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:14:00 -0500

Chance and Attention:

I have a guest post over on HTMLGiant about teaching creative writing:

Ideally what happens in creative writing classes is less different from the way we write on our own than academic trappings and the rituals of workshop™ might make it seem. We’re hopefully reading widely and intently regardless, developing a personal canon and an ear for line-level nuance, an eye for overall shape. We identify techniques, try them out, learn to recognize our failures, and move on. We do most of this on our own, and presumably want to.

Read on →

Last week’s Hairpin piece reminded me I hadn’t had a...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:05:00 -0500

Last week’s Hairpin piece reminded me I hadn’t had a Grüner Veltliner in a while. I’ve yet to find a bad one.

yellow-glasses: A ‘Hygge’ Guide to Copenhagen Copenhagen is...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:43:00 -0500

yellow-glasses:

A ‘Hygge’ Guide to Copenhagen

Copenhagen is known for many things, such as the little mermaid or Tivoli Gardens, but one of the most interesting things about this place is actually indoors, and called ‘Hygge’.

Well, I’m ready. [h/t Autumn Watts]

"Language, in these instances, is regarded as a kind of afterthought or additive: first come the..."

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:37:39 -0500

“Language, in these instances, is regarded as a kind of afterthought or additive: first come the feelings to be embodied in words and only then does word choice kick in, designed to make the resulting discourse appear ‘poetic’.”

- Marjorie Perloff via Elizabeth Cantwell. I love this essay.

"Really, almost everything that’s been done since was done in Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy. So I..."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:52:00 -0500

“Really, almost everything that’s been done since was done in Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy. So I find that very heartening, too. Just remember this was invented as a flexible, strong and swaggering form that could do all kinds of things that other forms couldn’t do.”

- Jennifer Egan is hopeful about the novel’s ability to assimilate and adapt. In Capital New York [by Dan Rosenblum via @tmcgev]

granta: Granta 118: Exit Strategies out February 2! Includes...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:47:00 -0500

granta:

Granta 118: Exit Strategies out February 2! Includes new stories by Alice Munro and Anne Tyler, memoir from Claire Messud, John Barth and Alexandar Hemon and poetry by Adrienne Rich.

Hello, Granta!

“…and thus the whole suit lapses, and melts away....

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:41:00 -0500

“…and thus the whole suit lapses, and melts away. Jarndyce and Jarndyce… is no more!”

Recommended: watching the entire 2005 Bleak House at one go.

photo: Allison Devers I’m re-reading Howards End for the...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:52:00 -0500

photo: Allison Devers

I’m re-reading Howards End for the first time in a decade or more, and @andevers’s cozy shot of snowy London crossed my desk shortly after I’d gotten to Margaret and Mrs. Wilcox’s Christmas shopping expedition:

They drove from shop to shop. The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies. At times they passed through a clot of grey.

Last winter was exhausting but the snow drought we’re having here in New England is creeping me out.

From Chiltney [a fragment]

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:48:00 -0500

She’d been baptized Elizabeth Darby but at Chiltney Farm she was Lizzie, second youngest of ten, with lips that felt less outsized when she was moving them, and a broad face that to her oldest sisters’ secret astonishment boys couldn’t steal enough glances at. She took the longest time at the mirror, getting her reflection right. A blessing, the oldest sister said; a curse, said the next, the undisputed pretty one until Lizzie came along, not that anyone called Lizzie exactly ‘pretty’; not that you’ll do well to think pretty lasts or will do you much good, said their mother.

What did do Lizzie good—and if anyone wanted to argue they kept it to themselves—was that in June when she finished Third Form, her mother said a girl her age, with her face, would do better bringing home a few pence extra minding Galston’s High Street Shop than doing her sisters’ chores.

Tha knows best, Lizzie’s father said.

I guess I do, her mother said.

And so Lizzie had a new frock and sat on the back of Crulwich’s milk cart six mornings a week be dropped off at Galston’s, purveyors of fine teas and coffee, and millinery in the new extension down the wooden stairs and through the Corinthian columns (she knew the orders, Doric, Ionian, too). Plenty of time through the dark months, fluttering alone in the gaslight with those words: mill-in-ry; ost-rich feath-a; pur-vay-r; each a different coloured scoop of musky air.

Her schoolmaster had said he’d never taught a lass who took so to her lessons, who wrote with such a pretty hand or recited so boldly, in front of the entire school:

Courage! he said, and pointed toward the land,
This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.

All you had to do was not to focus on any one of the faces in front you. Same in the shop.

Take our Lizzie now, her father said, in the rainy kitchen.

Ost-rich feath-as.

There aren’t, her mother said. Naught in Galston’s.

Are, too! Lizzie said, hating herself for falling back into her mother’s accent. Sundays she was helpless, after a whole day in the house’s warm animal smell, and after service the soggy turf, the farmhouse rooms too dark to read in, oil for lamps too dear.

But then Monday came in the dark and for six days the town tilted towards the sea, and in summer she had nigh on a full day of sea-shine before the shadow of the bluffs spilled across the bay with the tall width of England behind them and even the pennants of the striped beach tents stilled. The sight of the beach—she could walk to it—was well enough, but no sooner, her sisters said, would she catch sight of those fine ladies and gents all done up proper-like to promenade than she’d no more be content, never.

But her sisters had no notion, did they? She had all day, daily, to imagine how it might happen. It might. Why shouldn’t she? Galston’s was two shop fronts wide from their brass, ladies from Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester, as Lizzie knew because she asked (and why shouldn’t she?) and took their packages to their hotels herself, no trusting Shuttlesworth’s no-good boy, and sometimes there was a toffee in it. Factory owners’ daughters. Solicitors’ wives. Aunties of Harrogate boys. Branded by every syllable they spoke to the North for those who knew, which Lizzie wouldn’t, not yet having gone further than York once by train.

Only York?

A gent, buying a silk scarf.

No sir. She knew how to wrap the Galston’s-emblazoned tissue paper by then without looking down: double crease like the front of a gentleman’s shirt and fasten with a black-bobbed pin.

A well-spoken lass. A bold little thing.

Yes, sir. A quick look up, then down at her quick fingers. Biting back a snicker so that he could see; you could tell he wanted to, sure enough he did.

What’s your name then? He was shuffling bank notes in a soft brown wallet.

Darby, sir.

The gentleman tapped his hat on, good day to you then. The milliner counter girl busied her hands wrapping and rewrapping a straw-hat black sash until the front door rang shut behind him, and then didn’t she bustle over ever so quick.

Do you have any notion who you’re talking fresh to?

A Scottish gent, I suppose, Darby said.

That was Mr. Galston. You talked fresh to Mr. Galston.

I wouldn’t call that fresh. Her voice slipping.

Then what would you call it?

The next week a note, from Mr. Galston. To Darby. He could use a smart lass in Edinburgh.

She would have turned eighteen, that summer.

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

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:03:00 -0500

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

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

jeanhannah: looceefir “Amanda tried writing a card or something. She wrote that she and her fiancé...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:17:00 -0500

jeanhannah: looceefir

“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.

the-mtblog: Pennsylvania StationNew York CitySeptember 6,...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:39:00 -0500

Photo: Walker Evans for LIFE Magazine

Photo: Walker Evans for LIFE Magazine

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!

wnyc: best. phone. bill. ever. As tweeted by @garthj -Jody,...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:18:00 -0500

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.

SW to NE, from the DuBois Library 23rd floor this morning. The...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:40:00 -0500

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

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:24:00 -0500

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...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:16:00 -0500

Q: Do you have exceptional literary talent?

A: I thikn so

[from filmsourcing.com]

by Wired New York contributor @ddny2k

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:09:00 -0500

by Wired New York contributor @ddny2k

bzdurnik: “Tonight” is the first track from Saint...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:44:00 -0500

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…

Close-reading a Downton Abbey B-Plot

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:36:44 -0500

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.

In Act I, Mary comes upon Sybil and Branson the chaffeur and realizes their attraction.

It’s a natural encounter, in the course of daily household life, and in addition to starting up the episode’s b-plot it prepares us for Mary’s tart line when she confronts Sybil while they’re dressing for dinner:

“That is why one talks to chauffeurs, isn’t it? To plan journeys by road.”

Mary just can’t help herself—she’s smart enough to be bitchy, and so she is, even when she has Sybil’s best interests at heart (albeit presumptuously). Sybil rejoins with principle, citing both her own independence and the wartime blurring of class boundaries—the high ground, with its attendant potential for naivete and priggishness and disregard for consequences, as Mary reminds her.

But in Act II, when the Dowager Countess broadly hints at suspicions regarding Sybil, Mary keeps her sister’s confidence. From the Countess’s phrasing, however (“Mary and I were talking about you the other day,” referring to her questioning of Mary), Sybil infers a conspiracy of her elders, making a confrontation with Mary inevitable.

In Act III, when they hash it out, it’s in the halls of the Abbey, as Sybil goes about her duties as a nurse. The staging adds a wonderful fluidity, the casual interest of the passing rooms, and the suspense of wondering who will overhear what (someone always overhears something). It gives us a chance to hear the doubts that Sybil hasn’t told Branson, and to see a practical side of her. But this time her talk is all personal; no high principles but simply, “I’m not even sure sure I like him.” Mary’s “What did you think, you’d marry the chauffeur and we’d all come to tea?” lands quite differently after that. She’s still pithy, but she’s correct, and she comes across as having considered things, while Sybil seems caught up in and flustered by a girlish dalliance. Mary gives her a frustrated ultimatum: she’ll keep Sybil’s secret as long as Sybil promises “not to do anything stupid.” Sybil agrees, irked, and her needing to be about her duties (implied) naturally close the scene.

At the end of the act (that the plot is resolved before Act IV reflects its relative unimportance, for now) Sybil tells Branson that Mary knows—that she told Mary, not that Mary figured it out or suspected.

Cynically, challenging her to deny it, he says:

“So that’s me finished, then; without a reference”

(we’ve had the too-tidily recent example of Ethel the maid for comparison). Sybil answers:

“No; she’s not like that. You don’t know her. She wouldn’t give us away.”

What a wonderfully complex line. Sybil asserts her independence from his cynicism and affinity with the sister she’s been more or less continuously sparring with and rebelling against. It’s the kind of place you want to get to as a storyteller, a character saying more than he or she realizes in simply describing another character, but with the history behind it to make the statement knot you up inside hearing it, because you know what she’s choosing to tell (or not). The affirmation of their safety frees Branson to take pleasure in her other sentence; it’s the first time she’s said “us.” Even that turn is not allowed to be unturned, and the exchange spirals into the kind of argument—a real couple’s argument—that they need to have. They both pull back into who they are with others, all of which they’ll need to negotiate if their relationship is to blossom outside the particular circumstances in which it began.