Counterbalance

Seth Greenland Nails It & Gets Me in Trouble

Seth Greenland, author of The Bones and the just-out Shining City, takes a stroll around the contradictory mess that is John McCain's brain as he weighs his VP pick options.

I laughed out loud - very, very loud - several times. In a very quiet place where serious things are taking place and I'm supposed to be quiet as a mouse or some other supposedly similarly quiet creature (Why always a mouse? I've never met a quiet one).  Not good. So not good. Lots of turned heads. Eye-rolls. Looks of utter disdain. Several throat-clearings directed my way.

But oh so worth it.

Do check it out.

Lit Bits & A Bit About Running Up Escalators in Heels Whilst Carrying Glass

• I have finished Natsuo Kirino's Out, finally. Thank goodness. Every night I'd race through it, only to find my dreams were labyrinthine and urgent and dark. I woke every morning of this week exhausted from my murder-mystery-esque dreams.  While many have praised Kirino for her writing style, that wasn't what impressed me. Instead, I kept marveling again and again at how she got me to root for truly evil, disturbed people.  I was questioning my own moral codes and beliefs with every page I turned. I didn't quite know what to make of it all.  That is the sign, at least to me, of a very fierce talent.  Grotesque has been moved from the bookshelf to the just-next-to-the-bed waiting stack.
• I have reached a stage in my novel-writing where I want to do little else but write it. I fear any interference (work, social gatherings, travel, other writing) that will take me out of my writerly tunnel. I've spent so many years involved in so many things, soaking it all in, making notes. Now, it would make me blissfully happy if I could state simply to the world (or at least, to all those in my little world): I'll be writing for the next three months, let's catch up at Christmas. Is that wrong?  No matter, it's not realistic.  Must find a way to not be a complete social outcast and disappointer of many by Christmas.
• Fresh off Kirino's Out, I thought a heavy dose of the September fashion magazines (they're so big! with all those new things! all those pretty pictures that don't involve murder or cutting people up!) would lighten things up. Yet after Vogue and Elle and W and Marie Claire, I found I was missing the fix of another plot-driven novel. After so many years of quiet tales and gorgeous sentences, I find I'm now up for any kind of tale, as long as it confounds me til the almost-end. (I suspect this is also because my greatest weakness as a writer is plot and I'm looking for clues.)  What to do? I devoured The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martínez in one sitting. It had me going until the very end and even when I suspected it might disappoint (which, ultimately, I think it did) I was still gloriously unaware of how it might end...which is very good. Quite often I can ferret out how things will wrap up well before I should...and it is my least favorite thing to discover at any point in a novel. Martínez did a great job of leaving just enough loose threads that could lead anywhere.  In the final summation, I didn't buy how it ended.  But I enjoyed the ride.
• As I cast about for to read next (forgoing all the things I am supposed to be reading for interviews and articles and the like), I find I'm scanning my bookshelves for unread mysteries or darker tales. I suspect it is time to visit Sarah's backlog of recommendations with a far keener eye.
• Maybe this focuse on crime novels is an obvious response to my post-Revolutionary Road, post-Human Smoke gaze?
• In between working and writing and taking an odd turn in my reading, I've been very focused on the election. I had questions about Biden, but yesterday's rally set most of my fears to rest. A new fear, however, has supplanted it: when did nearly every "straightforward, unbiased" news source get so out of whack? On NPR and CNN alone this week, I've seen terrible displays of partisan reporting - and not from their designated pundits but from reporters who are meant to deliver facts and unbiased analysis. Then, yesterday's hit by the AP's Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier hit it all home. Very troubling stuff. And lame points go to Yahoo for blindly (or not so?) running Associated Press stories. It has been interesting to see the central news box of the Yahoo home page become a shill as well, inadvertently or not.
• At least when Frank Rich writes something so heavily leaning to one side, it is placed accurately in Opinions.
• Despite all this activity of the week, the most time-consuming and painful of all has been this: falling on broken glass and moving escalator treads at the office on Monday, slicing my hand and arm and knees in several places, and spending a fascinating number of hours in the emergency room. There is a lot here to muse over, to ponder, to gain writerly inspiration from, but after a week of dressing wounds each day and finding new ways to function in the world with one side of my body in awful pain, the only clear insight I can offer now is that same insight I twittered once I returned from the emergency room: if you are wearing heels and carrying a glass bottle of Pellegrino, it is not wise to run up the escalator in a mad rush to start your conference call on time. It is not worth it. Really. This could be the universe telling me, in a rather blunt and literal way, to slow the hell down. For the rest of the week, I have stepped quietly to the side as I've watched countless hurriers race up and down the escalators. I have resisted the urge to hurry right along with them.
• I have also stopped getting Pellegrino with lunch.   

The Value of a Book

"'But then what is literature?'

'Well, for instance, Marcel Proust. Or James Joyce.'

'Joyce?' he asked, moving closer. 'The one who wrote Ulysses? I tried to read it. It's boring. To be honest, I don't know what books like that are any good for.'

'How do you mean?'

'Nobody reads it, that Ulysses. Three people have read it, and then they live off it for the rest of their lives, writing articles and going to conferences. But no one else has ever got through it.'

'Well now', I said, throwing Werewolves on to the floor. 'Let me tell you that the value of a book doesn't depend on how many people read it. The brilliance of the Mona Lisa doesn't depend on how many people file past her every year. The greatest of books have few readers, because reading them requires an effort. But it's precisely that effort that gives rise to the aesthetic effect. Literary junk-food will never give you anything of the kind.'"

       -The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin

Jonathan Evison Does LAist

Amid all my novel-writing nonsense and my "taking inspiration from non-novels" announcements, I did manage to ask a few quick questions of Jonathan Evison, author of the very good All About Lulu, which I raved about a few months back. 

Here's a quick peek:

"I’ve always thought bodybuilding was a very apt vehicle to explore the idea of self-improvement. If my views have changed recently with regard to the possibilities of bodybuilding, it is only in relation to the alarming rate of growth my man-boobs have undergone the last couple of years. I’ve started doing flies and push-ups to firm them up, so I don’t look like a lactating gorilla."

Evison will be reading at Skylight Books tomorrow night at 7:30pm. It should be a very unique (dare I say - raucous?) time and you will be very sad to have missed it if you don't get off your duff and go.

The Commingling of My Writerly Ambitions

As I struggle to maintain the many different writing hats I wear every day, I take comfort in Alice Feiring's (wine writer extraordinaire and self-proclaimed wine bitch) recent words on what she looks for in a wine:

"I’m looking for the Leon Trotskys, the Philip Roths, the Chaucers and the Edith Whartons of the wine world. I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them natural and most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue. With this messiah thing going on, I’m trying to swell the ranks of those who love the differences in each vintage, who abhor homogenization, who want wines that make them smile, think, laugh,and feel sexy. For better or worse, it seems as if I am a wine cop traversing the earth, writing and speaking my mind, drinking and recommending wines that are honest."

I, too, want my wines - and my novels and my films and my cookbooks (more on that later) - to tell a good story. As I find myself covering wine quite a bit more frequently than I used to, I've been struggling with maintaining my literary self whilst indulging in my vino self. I realize that the two are far more related than I had at first expected. Not only does Feiriing's description accurately describe what I want out of a wine, it captures (quite well, I think) what we are all looking for in a good story: the truth.

As I find myself ever closer to being fully immersed in my novel writing, I must also admit my right-now truth: when I'm in full-fledged writing mode, the idea of blogging about books and writing is terribly distracting and a bit of a chore.

I'm drawing inspiration from so many things these days...none of which are novels. I expect this is a fleeting phase and that I will return to "normal" soon. Until then, I do hope you'll stick around as I explore the many things that are feeding my writerly imagination.

BRB

It has been a busy week and a half here at Counterbalance - and very little of it is directly related to books...although much of it is related to music and film and cookbooks, if you can imagine that.  As always, time away has inspired more writing and ideas than I would have expected.  A very, very good thing.

I'll be back with posts later this week just as soon as I catch my breath.