2/29/08

DONNA TARTT from THE SECRET HISTORY

..."Years ago, in an old notebook, I wrote,"One of Julian's most attractive qualities is his inability to see anyone or anything in its true light. Julian was constantly in the process of reinventing the people and events around him, conferring kindness, or wisdom, or bravery, or charm on actions which contained nothing of the sort. ..... I loved him for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person I was when I was with him, for what he allowed me to be."


page 479 The Secret History Donna Tartt

2/28/08

MICHAEL VENTURA quote

"Don't make the "sophisticated" error of thinking that a negative voice is automatically smarter than a positive one."

Michael Ventura

2/27/08

HUMPTY DUMPTY Quote

From "In Through The Looking Glass" published 1871...

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more - no less."

2/25/08

COMMENTARY ON IN MY ROOM = CARLY SIMON, JIMMY WEBB, and DAVID CROSBY HARMONIZE

Every writer needs A ROOM OF THEIR OWN... And this is a favorite Beach Boys, Brian Wilson composition, done beautifully by three great singer-songwriters.

How I long for a room of my own...


2/24/08

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS on WRITERLY POVERTY

From Tennessee Williams - Memoirs., page 2 of the hardback, 1975, Doubleday. About finding an International Who's Who book that listed him and some facts, inaccurately.



"Among the list of my honors and awards was the astonishing announcement that in a certain year of the early forties I had received a grant of one thousand dollars, yes, what is called a "big one," from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. It is the year, not the donor, of the alleged grant that stands out so prominently in my mind, for that was the year (several years before my life was changed irrevocably by the success of "The Glass Menagerie") in which I had to hock literally everything I owned, including an old borrowed portable typewriter and dirty flannel shirt, riding breeches and a pair of boots which were relics of a term in the study of equitation I had taken in preference to regular ROTC at the University of Missouri. And it was the year when I bounced from lodging to lodging for nonpayment of rent, which was a minimal rent, and it was the year when I had to go out on the street to bum a cigarette, that absolutely essential cigarette that a living and smoking writer must have to start work in the morning..."

2/23/08

ERICA JONG's 20 RULES FOR WRITERS - HER WEBSITE

What do you think of her RULES ?

2/22/08

ERICA JONG "HOW DARE A WOMAN WRITE ABOUT HERSELF"

Erica Jongs' "Fear of Flying" was a book I read several times over the years since in came out on the heels of the 1970's feminist movement. The first read, amazingly perhaps for a woman who is not Jewish, a New Yorker, married, rich, or especially literary at the time, was a story I could relate to. Marketed for the sexuality (which is barely explicit) and considered controversial, I recall one marketing blurb that suggested that we (Americans? people? men?) didn't know women "Thought Like That." Like what? Exactly how distanced from our own bodies were we thought to be? Like saints, like ghosts...

I remember I had a male friend that saw me carrying the paperback around and said, "Oh that's that book by that crazy woman about a crazy woman." Hmm. The same male friend said I was "too liberated." (His wife wasn't. She knew her place as a stay at home mom and I came to find out he cheated on her.)




Over the years I've found Erica's Jongs nonfiction, in particular her essays about what it is to be a writer - a "woman writer," more interesting to me and inspirational than her fiction. This is a YouTube video about the punishment for success and celebrity in our culture...

Is it more difficult to be accepted as a "woman writer" than a "man writer?" I suppose yes in that we find "woman writer" is not silly to say and "man writer" is silly to say.


(Video down and removed summer 2016)

2/21/08

EMILY DICKENSON WAS NEVER PUBLISHED

IN HER LIFETIME.

I was reading Julia Phillip's "You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again," and she mentioned this. I was going to post the actual excerpt from the book but the book got lost or stolen before I could.

2/17/08

SYLVIA PLATH - DADDY - COMMENTARY

UPDATED SUMMER 2016  The video originally posted is long gone.  See commentary below


Sylvia Plath wrote some of the poetry that most effected me when I was sixteen or so and new to reading poetry that was not my own.

by SYLVIA PLATH

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time
--Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo
.And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two-
-The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

From "Ariel", 1966



COMMENTARY SUMMER 2016
One time a male poet suggested this poem, or my interest in Plath, had something to do with my own relationship with my father.  Not at all. Never.  The man described in Plath's poem and my father were not at all alike and I never had the feelings expressed here, which are hateful, about my father, whom I loved. Also, I never did think I could relate to Sylvia Plath as a person - or woman.  Not at all. Never.  Must we do so in order to find another person or their work interesting?

2/16/08

Christine Trzyna's LITERARY NEWS : MICHAEL MC CLURE AT THE SKIRBALL : BOB DYLAN HISTORICAL EXHIBIT

shiny sheet flyers are making their way around the Los Angeles Public Library to announce that an exhibit by EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT will present Bob Dylan's American Journey 1956-1966 at the Skirball (i.e commonly thought as that Jewish museum). Beat Poet Michael McClure is one of the people who will present a related program, very likely on Beat Poetry. February 8th through June 8th 2008 are the dates, so plenty of time to run through this exhibit that includes HANDWRITTEN LYRICS AND LETTERS Bob wrote.

As many of you know Bob Dylan has been elected to the LITERARY CANNON. Certain of his lyrics stand as poetry.

SKIRBALL is at 2701 North Sepulveda , Los Angeles, CA 90049

JESSAMYN WEST QUOTE


"Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking."



- Jessamyn West

2/13/08

DYLAN THOMAS I HAVE LONGED TO MOVE AWAY (Post for R.E.J.)

I Have Longed to Move Away by Dylan Thomas

I have longed to move away

From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;

I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.

Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.

By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.


*****

This Dylan Thomas composition is one of my all time favorite poems.

I once had a friend who subjected himself to experimental dentists, anything to preserve his teeth. And the truth is whenever I think of him I think of his wonderful smile and his teeth which were on their way to perfection, and I loved the crookedness of them. Now don't laugh, but truly this is about his character and his charm.

He was afraid to move away and I have been and am afraid to move away. The last time I moved away, I kept this poem on my refrigerator. And I moved and got unexpectedly homesick for LA. When I flew across the country and I looked down and began to see the ground, the high mountains, the smog layer, I would cry. I have a love hate relationship with Los Angeles. I dream of escaping it. But who gets to escape twice?

AMMA LOVE OF HUMANITY

Unexpectedly I had "darshan" with Amma at the Hindu temple in Calabasas. It was a few years ago. I knew nothing about her or that she would be visiting that day. Driving the back roads of Malibu and walking in the mountain parks, going to the beach at Paradise Cove, was a way for me to hit my reset button. Coming home from the beach I sometimes stopped at the temple for the evening sundown blessing - arati. I was there with a friend when one of the priests said "come back tomorrow." So I did. And Amma was visiting.

People had come a long way, as far as San Francisco to see her. Several older men were crying at the sight of her. A mother's love for them, so long ago. Amma touched them and they cried in gratitude to be recognized as a child again. I think she's a living saint.

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA and the END OF THE SCREENWRITERS STRIKE

Maybe some of you have started reading books again since television was such a bore...

2/12/08

MATCHMAKER CAB DRIVER IN NEW YORK

Have you ever been matchmade?

2/11/08

A "REAL" WRITER ?

A screenwriter's pitch is not the same as the process a literary author goes through to sell their work.

This morning someone who was attempting to be beyond challenging hit me with his ignorance. If my work wasn't headed for the movies, it had no value to this man.

You see he knows a (one) screenwriter who is talking to important people, who is attending conventions, who is working towards a deal. I know several screenwriters who are also in this part of their process. I have met child actors turned screenwriters who are working their contacts, getting in there and making a pitch when their screenplay isn't written yet, and I have met a lot of people whose deal has fallen through at the last minute, or they were offered a small amount of money - a reduced amount - a couple years after their initial pitch and they backed down. All part of the process.

LA is so full of screenwriters that you can joke when you meet someone about hearing that they have a script in a drawer somewhere and they'll assume you are psychic. I've worked on a few projects that I think would be good screenplays, and maybe everyone "sees" their work on the big screen. Even me. It's not easy to know if what you find interesting or exciting in your life will translate to a great action adventure, mystery, or biopic, but I think that writing is still valuable to the writer as a process, as a way to exercize skills, even if the distribution of the work is limited to family members and rude copies from the local printer.

Still, the process of selling literary work - whatever that is - a novel, a memoir, fiction or nonfiction - which is destined for print media - a traditional book or an e-book - is about agents and publishing houses, sending manuscripts - partial or complete - still mostly via paper rather than electronic technology - and making it through the slush pile reader. You might be able to network into a deal, if you happen to be born into a family that's already into publishing - and some authors had just that in but most do not.

Like many authors I too have listened to others speak in classes, book signings, readings, and events such as the Los Angeles Times Book Fair at UCLA. I have asked or heard asked that important question "WHAT MAKES YOU A "REAL" WRITER?" Audience members want to believe that writing 3 pages or 500 words a day does. They want to know the habits of the successful. AND THE TRUTH IS THERE IS NO ONE WAY. There are those who write every morning while the children are sleeping, others who seem disorganized, the computer savvy and those writing with a pencil on recycled paper. Publishing may validate you to some extent, but you do not have to be published to be a writer.

I BELEIVE YOU ARE A WRITER BECAUSE YOU WRITE. THE MORE YOU WRITE THE BETTER YOU GET AT WRITING. YOUR CHALLENGE IS THE TIME TO WRITE, the more time the better !

IT's OK TO WRITE WHOLE NOVELS THAT YOU DON'T PUBLISH. NO SHAME IN HAVING THAT SCREENPLAY IN THE DRAWER. SOME WRITERS ARE BORN, OTHERS SELF MADE, most of us have recognized a talent and honed it.

I HAVE KEPT MOST OF MY WRITING and on occassion I reread what I have written. I am stuck with knowing I had talent long before I ever took a community college night class, and I see that a lot of what I wrote and thought was good at the time has been surpassed by experience.

2/9/08

YAHOO and RUETERS on WRITERS STRIKE - TENATIVE END?

The economic conditions here are pretty bad.

HELEN BOYD quote from SHE'S NOT THE MAN I MARRIED

SHE'S NOT THE MAN I MARRIED
My Life with a Transgender Husband
C 2007 Helen Boyd - author
Seal Press



Helen Boyd uses the term "trans" or "Transgender" to represent all types of trans people - self identifying transgender people, crossdressers, and transsexuals.... She writes about being married to a man who is one or all of these... He started out as a crossdresser.


Pg 25 of the paperback...

"Some days I'm convinced I would have been better off never having met him, but I can't even comprehend what I would be like now if I hadn't. I wouldn't be me. In some ways, I'm not. My name isn't even Helen Boyd. That's a name I picked up along the way, a concern for privacy yielding a little white lie that snowballed into a pseudpnym. While he's become Betty, I've become Helen Boyd. A non de plume gave me permission to remake myself, and that is the first thing I learned from the trans community: Given names are not carved in stone. On the way to becoming somethng and someone else, you may find that a name begins to fit awkwardly, like a pair of shoes after a pregnancy. It just doesn't suit you anymore, and if you're lucky - like I was - and find a good reason to try on a new name, you may find yourself growing into a whole new identity.

2/5/08

COMMENTARY ON DEAF FRIENDLY POETRY - REM's IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

It's the end of the world of the world as we know it and I feel fine! ELECTION DAY - OBAMA OR HILARY? OR NONE OF THE ABOVE?

BETSY COHEN quote

"Look for envy beneath the contempt of a snob." Betsy Cohen

2/3/08

WRITER, AUTHOR, PUBLISHED AUTHOR

What's the difference between calling yourself a writer, or an author, or a published author? I have sometimes felt so defensive of someone's attitude and behavior and words towards me when I say "I'm a writer," that I wonder if I should say author or published author. One writer I know answers that she is "a novelist." She's British and no one seems to question this as an honorable activity for an upper class British woman.

Now I am not a member of the Screenwriter's Union and Screenwriters have not been particularily supportive of me. Yes, this is true, and it is also true that I am for them and their strike.

I think the term writer covers us all, and is the most general and least defensive term. It's the one I use.

What people seem to be asking me/us when they ask us what we do and we answer writer is "Are you published?" "Have you sold?" As if that will legitimitze our activity.

Trouble is a writer has to write even if one never does get published, or published for money, big money. I also think that writers have a more difficult time with all this because an artists' work is more a product. An artist can show a drawing or a painting and it says what it says to the viewer without words, while words can help a reader see in their mind characters and the world of the novel. My writing partner on his memoir, Wes Bryan, got me into calling musicians, singers, anyone in the arts an "artist" but to me it still means painter.

What's on your business card?

COMMENTARY ON CYNDI LAUPER TRUE COLORS

Click on the words Cyndi Lauper above and don't forget to open to full screen using the far right button on the console...

This YouTube video features Cyndi Lauper on the television show, The View. Cyndi has aged gracefully since her "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" days, and her voice is still ranging and unique.

In a world where there is so much pressure to conform in a way that means going against your talents, we need songs like this one.

Your True Colors are Like a Rainbow...




2/1/08

WAYNE DYER quote

"Would you go to an 18 year old today for career counseling?"

Wayne Dyer