Posts tagged Novelist
Virginia Woolf’s house (by George Pollen)
Raymond Carver (1938-1988), was a poet before he was celebrated as a writer of short stories. Here is “Eagles,” from his 1985 collection Where Water Comes Together with Other Water.
Eagles
It was a sixteen-inch ling cod that the eagle
dropped near our feet
at the top of Bagley Creek canyon,
at the edge of the green woods.
Puncture marks in the sides of the fish
where the bird gripped with its talons!
That and a piece torn out of the fish’s back.
Like an old painting recalled,
or an ancient memory coming back,
that eagle flew with the fish from the Strait
of Juan de Fuca up the canyon to where
the woods begin, and we stood watching.
It lost the fish above our heads,
dropped for it, missed it, and soared on
over the valley where wind beats all day.
We watched it keep going until it was
a speck, then gone. I picked up
the fish. That miraculous ling cod.
Came home from the walk and—
why the hell not?—cooked it
lightly in oil and ate it
with boiled potatoes and peas and biscuits.
Over dinner, talking about eagles
and an older, fiercer order of things.Learn more about Raymond Carver’s Book Title and browse other titles by Raymond Carver.
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…and oh, hey, another Cavafy audio bonus arrives today.
As every writer knows… there is something mysterious about the writer’s ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is ‘hot’, an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another… Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from ‘inspiration’ or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
Richard Russo’s book The Straight Man made it into ShortList.com’s 30 Funniest Books Ever.
Straight Man – Richard Russo: “The male mid-life crisis is a rich playground for novels. The inherent comedic value in such a ludicrous Western capitalist notion gives authors room for plenty of manoeuvre. But to balance that with the needs of a weighty tome, that takes some skill. Russo has it in spades. Straight Man concerns the life of Hank Devereaux, an interim chairman of an English department. As he takes on his wife, the faculty, his daughter, his feelings for three women and the campus geese, Devereaux’s life slowly begins to unravel.”
The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone
Alexandre Dumas by Nadar
The core of literature is the idea of tragedy … You don’t really learn much from the good things that happen to you.
Happy Birthday Herman Melville
Born: August 01, 1819 in New York City, New York
Died: September 28, 1891
Genre: Literature & Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously only a few years later. By the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick — largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for Melville’s fall from favor with the reading public — was rediscovered in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.
Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.
I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one’s family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
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All the quotes on this site are marked with the author's name, except those marked with TBV; those quotes are my own.
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