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Category Archives: On the State of the Civilization
13 Minds
13 MINDS 1 No Mind Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: I Nomind can most often be found growing along river beds and … Continue reading
Bullies
BULLYING: on the maddening popularity of Jane Austen novels or: Whether to Write Your Congressman Bear with me on this one. We’ll get there. If you believe that, then this is for you. A Jane Austen novel is driven by … Continue reading
Posted in On the State of the Civilization, Uncategorized
Tagged bullies, congress, congressmen, Jane Austen, marrige, sex, sex in marriage, Tao, Taoism
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On Reshelving Your Library
Friends: I never thought it and I wish it hasn’t happened, but my science fiction novel E has become a prescient critique of the threat to democracy we now face. It may be crass of me to use this crisis … Continue reading
Poetry is dead
——————————————————————– Poetry is dead. They say. I suppose we know what that means. What poetry is, what dead is. Maybe not. When people say something like poetry is dead they mean not buried in the ground, maybe with one of … Continue reading
Dictée
——————————————————————– It seems important to me now to remind people of the existence of this book. Perhaps other places in the world do not need instruction on how to write about fanaticism and other political evils, but we do. Theresa … Continue reading
Posted in Novels, On the State of the Civilization, Uncategorized
Tagged Dictee, fanaticism, occupation, occupied country, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, war
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Comma fault
——————————————————————– I take a lot of grief for not knowing where the commas are supposed to go, and for punctuation generally. I don’t put speech in quotes unless it’s reported speech, and in my stories it isn’t.But the most important … Continue reading
More on hard books
————————————————————————– Some time back I pondered the issue of why some books are hard to read. At that time I was particularly interested in difficult styles. But of course there are other reasons why a book might be hard to … Continue reading
Shibboleths for writers: 7
Know your audience A while back I posted some remarks on “Hard books” [28 Feb 2014] Part of the undertext there was the question of whether you should modify your writing when some people who might have been your readers … Continue reading
Posted in Big art and little art, Novels, On the State of the Civilization, Shibboleths (for writers), Uncategorized
Tagged audience, big art, creative writing, find you audience, For a new novel, know your audience, novels, resonance, science fiction, shibboleths for writers, The Arrow
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Going to see the Old Ones
A rare photo of two Old Ones, talking together. This blog has been up until now mostly about the origins of story, about the unfelt sense of the presence of the Old Ones which lifts art out of ordinary competence into … Continue reading
Posted in Big art and little art, Novels, On the State of the Civilization, Uncategorized
Tagged art, artists, artists books, big art, creative writing, lizard brain, novels, Old Ones, trees, Zen
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