Joan Didion
March 27th, 2008
I just read an interview with Joan Didion from The Paris Review Interviews: Women Writers at Work. Didion has said that “writing is a hostile act,” and the interviewer asked her why. She replied:
“It’s hostile in that you’re trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It’s hostile to try to wrench around someone else’s mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.”
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.
Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking is one of the most outstanding works of nonfiction I’ve read. Here is an interview with her and Vanessa Redgrave on the occasion of the play based on her work (from WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show).
Categories: Interviews, Literary Goddesses, Writers
Catalog
March 20th, 2008
The fish do sometimes swim in opposite directions on the same lovely sea. The cards said: be compassionate and work hard. Work harder.
It rained all day and evening. The earrings were peacock-feather ocean pools. I peered down and imagined diving into them. We sat close to the wall and, at table’s end, two women with wide cups stared down at tiny plates.
She sent a card with a bird—“Of course I had to”—and a painting of three fish. I remembered that time she gave us two different pictures—yours in color and mine in black and white—and I so desperately wanted to switch them. Yet the truth of it was, I couldn’t begin to refashion what she already believed about me.
This year, though, I don’t want to switch anything. Even here, it’s all perfect.
Categories: Catalog
Literary Goddesses
March 19th, 2008
Tara Roberts has a great new piece, “I’m Black and for Hillary. Get Over It,” published now on The Root. She also edited the wonderful collection What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Sex and Love, featuring the beautiful work of Lucinda Holt. A big and gracious thank you to these two literary goddesses for keeping me on track once a month.
Speaking of the track, a list of common blunders in short stories from the judges of the Willesden Herald short story competition. They compiled the list after failing to pick a winner from 850 short story entries (via Practicing Writing).
Categories: Essays, Literary Goddesses
Woods
March 14th, 2008
He went into the woods and changed his focus. When will I be in that cabin? Upstairs, upstairs, in the room. All the way.
I’m inside the cabin.
Categories: Music
Dream
March 7th, 2008
I dreamt of Barack Obama last night. I sent that missive off. I have not dreamed of Hillary yet (like you).
And then, commentary.
Categories: Culture
Belief
March 6th, 2008
I can’t believe we can walk this way. I mean, really, it’s like I had forgotten all about it. It’s like there was never a time when the road was as lit by clear ice, but still—walk right on it, never slip.
It’s like it was when we were smaller. When we went from house to house and you walked ahead (or was it stomped?) in your fake-fur coat and heels, and I followed along in my cat suit, and we heard the leaves move against the coming wind, and saw the boys in shadows up ahead, and knew that if we kept walking together—just like this, together—there would never be a time or a need or a desire to separate or turn back—or run.
Categories: Girlhood
