Sunday reading: July 18, 2010 edition
I had a little more time on my hands in the newsroom than I would have liked for a Sunday, but it did give me time to peruse The New York Times Sunday Magazine Books sections of The New York Times and The Guardian. Let’s start off with what will likely be one of my [...]
William Faulkner tapes online, free
I will have to give this a listen: the University of Virginia has released – for free – audio of William Faulkner giving lectures, readings and answering student questions while he was a writer-in-residence in Charlottesville. This is the sort of stuff that keeps me in love with NPR.
Q&A with Susan Tepper
Fictionaut member and story contest participant (and April Fools’ Day challenge winner) Susan Tepper recently released a new collection of short stories called DEER and Other Stories, available at her website for $14. The book can also be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powell’s Books online. Tepper grew up on Long Island where [...]
David Mitchell in NY Times Sunday Magazine
Check out this interesting article from the NY Times Magazine on David Mitchell, a British author who I have yet to discover but is apparently awesome.
The Devil Does You In – Part 2
When Caesar got angry, he was a scary man to be around. Bad things tended to happen to people when he got angry; typically people died. He was angry the other night when he discovered these two meth heads – boyfriend and girlfriend it turned out – had been involved in the robbery of one [...]
Review of “King of the Mountain” by Kevin Myrick
By Susan Tepper Because we are in the midst of war, because the world seems always at war, we as writers often can’t help but become invaded within our minds, our stories becoming those of war and its aftermath. In Kevin Myrick’s amazing “King of the Mountain,” Daniel is a man at war. He served [...]
Review of “Did You Know? Fun Facts About Flaggish Things” by
By David Ackley Editor’s note: you can find the story here. The form: That of a lecture, maybe based on an instructional manual on flag handling read in the distant past, by now largely forgotten, the lecturer having with predictably disastrous results deciding to discard her notes and “wing it.” The voice that of a [...]
King of the Mountain
Daniel told himself to push. — push harder than he’d ever pushed himself before. He reminded himself of what his father once told him: don’t give in to pain. Be a real man. You can take it. But his arms felt like they were full of petroleum jelly; they were cramped from the already ten [...]
Review: The Grand Unfurl by Nathaniel Tower
By Susan Tepper What an odd and funny character, this Henry Forrester, the protagonist in The Grand Unfurl. If Jack Lemmon were still alive, I could see him playing Henry Forrester in a movie of this same title. This is a wonderful story. It’s America, at our best and worst, it’s satirical, and it’s earnest. [...]
Review: Four Thousand Dollars from Baghdad by Matt DeVirgiliis
There’s patriotism and then there’s stupidity. The main character in “Four Thousand Dollars from Baghdad” by Matt DeVirgiliis, is a writer of some sort, believes that experiencing war will be a romantic adventure like those of Ernest Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson. Baghdad is just down the road, but like “A Bridge Too Far” the [...]
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