Salinger, and Even More Seymour

Did the reclusive J.D. Salinger keep writing about the Glass family even after he last published? Perhaps it sustained him, at times was even a purgative. I knew people who criticized him for cashing in then going all Greta Garbo—I vant to be alone—but it never bothered me.  Sometimes you gotta do what you can to maintain the internal peace.

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Seymour — An Introduction

I encountered an old friend recently. Our re-acquaintance came about through this blog. Ms. Maria del Mar found my post on Salinger’s  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (Roof Beam, to us) which I had ended with a note on the odd wedding gift at the end of the story, wondering why anyone might send cigar ash.  She commented that it is explained in the next novella of that collection, Seymour — an Introduction.

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God’s Own Gadfly

 On my walk in to work in the mornings, I sometimes pass a Goodyear tire store at Turk and Larkin streets, Kahn & Keville, which maintains a large signboard out front, often with amusing or thought-provoking messages.  Up through the election it had something from Voltaire, on how uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one.

Before that, it had a note on the passing of Gore Vidal which I found poignant.

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When I Decided Joyce Carol Oates Is Not for Me

A very long time ago, so long ago we listened to music on vinyl and people still used typewriters, I had a very good writing instructor at City College of San Francisco. He was a published writer, and was very good about the nuts and bolts of writing: grammatical, thematic, plot development, all of it. He also didn’t hesitate to critique what he felt didn’t work, which didn’t endear him to some of the more sensitive students.

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Sherlock Holmes, As Doyle’s Ghost Recoils

 We saw a good movie over Christmas. Strong cast. Interesting plot. Gorgeous sets. And one of the best things about the experience was that I was well-prepared, before going in, for the worst of it. 

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Emma

 Have you ever felt like you were headed down the road in one direction only to see a number of signs luring you a different way?

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Of Left and Write

Yesterday I began a reply to Bloglily on how I plan my writing projects — to the extent what happens is actually planned. Here’s the rest of my answer.

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Planning? What planning?

My deficiencies in planning are revealed. My coworker Bloglily, she of the bright wit, well-turned phrase and sharp mind, had asked a number of us how we plan our writing projects.

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All watched over by elephants of love and grace

My little back-of-the-garage computer cockpit here has an adjoining “den” with an old couch, carpeting, a dogbed (chewed by Edie as a puppy), shelves full of books, and the new flat-screen visible from both cockpit and den. Our furnace is in the far corner, but the heat is piped elsewhere, so in winter I sometimes need the small space heater (as I listen to the furnace click on and off). The books are higgledy-piggledy right now, some grouped and stored neatly, spines out, some stacked, both spines out and bottom out. The titles remind me of various times in my life when they influenced me, when the topics or characters became even more real to me than you are. (Depending.)

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Kingsolver – and more porcine flights of fancy

While up in Inverness, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven to see how she had put it together. First I read through about a third of the book, then I went back and put boxes around the names of recurring characters, underlined good metaphors, drew a vertical line next to key passages that moved the plot, etc. Then I read some more, and kept going: reading, then going back and marking.

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