I saw this movie in the theater when it came out last year. Big Steve Carell fan. He plays "America's Leading Marcel Proust Scholar" (or maybe America's #2 Proust scholar). I have not read more than a few pages of Proust, and only in English at that, so I know very little about him or his work.
Christopher Hitchens, who is kind of a mini-idol to me, once wrote that Proust should not be attempted until one is at least forty. His reasoning being that "The Search for Lost Time" is a book that can only be truly appreciated after you've experienced life -- the ups and the downs and everything in between. Based on that recommendation alone, I have both held off reading any more of Proust, and also resolved to make a date with him on October 17th, 2012.
Back to "Little Miss Sunshine." It's funny how you see things in a movie the second time that you missed on the first viewing. I watched this on HBO today and this time it was the scene on the pier outside the hotel that stuck with me.
Steve Carell's character is talking to his nephew about Proust. Here's a bit of the exchange:
Frank: "Y'ever hear of Marcel Proust?"
Dwayne: "He's the guy you teach?"
Frank: "Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love
affairs. Gay. Spent twenty years writing a book almost no one reads. But he
was also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he gets down
to the end of his life, he looks back and he decides that all the years he suffered
-- those were the best years of his life. Because they made him who he was.
They forced him to think and grow, and to feel very deeply. And the years he
was happy? Total waste. Didn't learn anything."
Small comfort maybe, when things don't seem to be going your way. But it does sound essentially ... right.
“...and love has such a need to find some justification for itself, some guarantee of duration, in pleasures which without it would have no existence and must cease with its passing.”
-Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
My Enemy, the Adverb
I'm in the process of working through revisions on my current manuscript. Mostly this means that my agent (who is generally the first person who sees anything I write) goes through the entire thing and sends me back suggestions on how to improve it. I don't imagine any writer enjoys this, and I'm no exception. It needs to be done, but it's possibly the worst part of writing a book.
I hate almost everything I write anyway. Most of it is, I generally suspect, utter crap. The best rule of thumb I've ever heard is this: four-fifths of everything you write will be shit. Complete, unredeemable excrement. But if you have any skill at all, that last twenty percent will make the whole process worthwhile.
That's what I keep hoping, anyway.
Knowing that, the task of editing is rendered only slightly less painful than the average root canal. Essentially it means combing through every line of the manuscript to expose every possible flaw, every poor choice of words or awkward turn of phrase, and every typo or mistake that Spellcheck doesn't pick up. For someone who is already suspicious that almost everything he writes may turn out to be garbage, this process seems designed to do nothing more than confirm just that.
Fortunately it hasn't been all that awful -- so far. Except for one thing. My tireless grammatical nemesis: the adverb. I used to have several of these personal demons. My struggle to conquer the run-on-sentence, for example, lasted from third grade until late into high school. My love affairs with the multiple adjective description and the dependent clause were long and turbulent. The dissolution of those dysfunctional relationships was not easy. But I overcame them. I'm no Hemingway, I do still lapse into my own florid and occasionally turgid, prose. But the years of struggling to keep those monsters at bay has turned into a kind of habit. I can usually write with no fear of them popping up.
Not so my most resilient and nefarious foe, the mighty modifier, the old -ly.
I hate them. But for some damn reason I keep using them. A lot.
Now, my agent and I differ somewhat on just how evil these little buggers actually are. She sees almost no use for them whatsoever, and I think she would be happy if they were excised from the English language once and for all. Not me. I think the judicious use of one of these little fellas can be appropriate.
I agree that they weaken the narrative. Almost anything can be stated better without them. They're lazy and they really don't convey much, for the most part. My manuscript is almost always better for having removed them.
That having been said, my use of them is never anything close to judicious. And so I find myself flipping through hundreds of pages of text, trying to figure out ways to say what I want to say without resorting to the use of the adverb.
Other than that though, the editing process is going well, for the moment.
I hate almost everything I write anyway. Most of it is, I generally suspect, utter crap. The best rule of thumb I've ever heard is this: four-fifths of everything you write will be shit. Complete, unredeemable excrement. But if you have any skill at all, that last twenty percent will make the whole process worthwhile.
That's what I keep hoping, anyway.
Knowing that, the task of editing is rendered only slightly less painful than the average root canal. Essentially it means combing through every line of the manuscript to expose every possible flaw, every poor choice of words or awkward turn of phrase, and every typo or mistake that Spellcheck doesn't pick up. For someone who is already suspicious that almost everything he writes may turn out to be garbage, this process seems designed to do nothing more than confirm just that.
Fortunately it hasn't been all that awful -- so far. Except for one thing. My tireless grammatical nemesis: the adverb. I used to have several of these personal demons. My struggle to conquer the run-on-sentence, for example, lasted from third grade until late into high school. My love affairs with the multiple adjective description and the dependent clause were long and turbulent. The dissolution of those dysfunctional relationships was not easy. But I overcame them. I'm no Hemingway, I do still lapse into my own florid and occasionally turgid, prose. But the years of struggling to keep those monsters at bay has turned into a kind of habit. I can usually write with no fear of them popping up.
Not so my most resilient and nefarious foe, the mighty modifier, the old -ly.
I hate them. But for some damn reason I keep using them. A lot.
Now, my agent and I differ somewhat on just how evil these little buggers actually are. She sees almost no use for them whatsoever, and I think she would be happy if they were excised from the English language once and for all. Not me. I think the judicious use of one of these little fellas can be appropriate.
I agree that they weaken the narrative. Almost anything can be stated better without them. They're lazy and they really don't convey much, for the most part. My manuscript is almost always better for having removed them.
That having been said, my use of them is never anything close to judicious. And so I find myself flipping through hundreds of pages of text, trying to figure out ways to say what I want to say without resorting to the use of the adverb.
Other than that though, the editing process is going well, for the moment.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Review: The Devil's Rose
I finished Brom's book the other night. "Always leave them wanting more" is the saying that comes to mind, which is both good and bad.
On the down side, The Devil's Rose is just too short. Calling it a novel is even a bit of a stretch. Much of the book feels like a sketch of a much longer story, and one that should have been told. Reading it I came away with the feeling that the story had been written for the art, and not the other way around. This may not have been the case, but the impression bothered me. All of the characters could have been fleshed out more, only the main character, Cole the undead Texas Ranger, had any real motivation. The others were there to give him something to do. The "bad guy" a quasi-villian named Rath came across as a fascinating idea -- a lesser god once worshipped and now forgotten -- but an idea that the story just wasn't long enough, or deep enough to explore in any real detail.
Also, the story ends without any real conclusion. That may be in order to leave it open for future installments, which would be fine. I'd pay $25 for another one of these, despite the prior paragraph. Nonetheless, the story seems to end just as it should be picking up, so that was frustrating.
As I said, I wanted more.
Which brings me to the "up" side of that saying.
Everything in this book (as much of it as there is) is fantastic. The art is creepy and slightly surreal, and perfectly in keeping with the story. And there's a lot of it. This isn't a novel with the occasional picture here and there. This is more like a story told in pictures with some text to fill in the gaps.
The writing is crisp and concise, but effective. None of the self-indulgent descriptions and florid prose that you find in a lot of fantasy literature. I just wish there was more of all of it. More art, more writing, more everything.
All in all though, I recommend "The Devil's Rose". It's a tad pricey for a 110-something page book, but the art makes up for it.
On the down side, The Devil's Rose is just too short. Calling it a novel is even a bit of a stretch. Much of the book feels like a sketch of a much longer story, and one that should have been told. Reading it I came away with the feeling that the story had been written for the art, and not the other way around. This may not have been the case, but the impression bothered me. All of the characters could have been fleshed out more, only the main character, Cole the undead Texas Ranger, had any real motivation. The others were there to give him something to do. The "bad guy" a quasi-villian named Rath came across as a fascinating idea -- a lesser god once worshipped and now forgotten -- but an idea that the story just wasn't long enough, or deep enough to explore in any real detail.
Also, the story ends without any real conclusion. That may be in order to leave it open for future installments, which would be fine. I'd pay $25 for another one of these, despite the prior paragraph. Nonetheless, the story seems to end just as it should be picking up, so that was frustrating.
As I said, I wanted more.
Which brings me to the "up" side of that saying.
Everything in this book (as much of it as there is) is fantastic. The art is creepy and slightly surreal, and perfectly in keeping with the story. And there's a lot of it. This isn't a novel with the occasional picture here and there. This is more like a story told in pictures with some text to fill in the gaps.
The writing is crisp and concise, but effective. None of the self-indulgent descriptions and florid prose that you find in a lot of fantasy literature. I just wish there was more of all of it. More art, more writing, more everything.
All in all though, I recommend "The Devil's Rose". It's a tad pricey for a 110-something page book, but the art makes up for it.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Problem Solved....sort of
I'm fairly undisciplined. I know the Greeks said "everything in moderation" but I've never been able to really practice that. I frequently eat too much, sometimes drink too much (less than I used to, but still more than I should). I spend more than I should, show up late for almost everything and the one thing I never seem to get tired of doing is sleeping, which I do whenever and wherever I get the chance.
Apologies to Gary Frank then, (and no slight to his excellent book) because I couldn't let "The Devil's Rose" sit on my desk and not read at least some of it. I was too damn curious. Had I not just come back from the desert, and if I weren't so intrigued by the idea of undead things skulking about the sun-baked wilderness, I might have held off. But I didn't.
I only got through about half the book last night. It's actually more of a novella with pictures. I think it runs around 115 pages. This Brom guy really did pull it off. The thing's a great, quick read and the illustrations, which range from full-blown paintings to pencil sketches, are fantastic.
Also, having read a fair piece of it now, I feel a little less conflicted about my own plans for this kind of story. Since Arizona, I've been toying with a few ideas for a western-horror/fantasy. Brom's book, I was happy to discover, is set not in the Old West, but in a nightmare version of present day Texas. I'm reasonably confident that I can write what I want to write now without appearing to imitate his work. What I'm interested in trying to do is different.
The fact is, I hope that's the case, because once I get an idea in my head, there isn't much chance that I'll write anything else for a while. When I write I have to have some kind of personal connection to what I'm doing. Much of the setting for The Lucifer Messiah, as an example, was the result of walking to work every day in Hell's Kitchen, stepping over junkies curled up on the 9th Ave. sidewalk in half-dried pools of their own urine. Then spending the rest of the day listening to old union guys trying to either impress or scare (or both) the college boy from Jersey with stories about the neighborhood. After taking in all those tales about the Westies and the old time gangsters and severed hands kept in a freezer to place decoy fingerprints on murder weapons (I later found out that was in a book about the Westies, so I'm not sure if they told me that because they knew it already or if they read it too), I couldn't not write about the neighborhood. It was stuck in my head.
Same thing with the rest of the locations in Lucifer. I wish I could tell you that I set a scene in Venice because the story demanded it, or that I set another scene in Leningrad for the same reason. But I didn't. I wrote those scenes the way I did because I had to, because I loved being in those places, and because I couldn't really write without writing about them.
The book I just finished is no exception. Over the last year and a half I've been in Washington DC, Cleveland, New Orleans and New York. And it's set in all of those places.
So there it is, demons and ghouls in the Old West. My mind's made up.
Assuming I don't suddenly make enough money on this writing thing to quit being a lawyer any time in the next few years, and further assuming that I manage to write something decent, and even further assuming that the publishing industry continues to move at a glacial speed, you can probably expect to see this project in your local bookstore sometime after 2011 or so.
One last thing.
I'm getting a fair amount of international traffic on the site lately. I'm kind of curious, do any of you folks out there in France or New Zealand or Brazil or the UK actually have The Lucifer Messiah? If so, I'd love to hear where you got it. I'm always curious about how the book makes its way to different places once it's out there. Drop me a comment if you have a second and let me know. I love having visitors from all over.
Apologies to Gary Frank then, (and no slight to his excellent book) because I couldn't let "The Devil's Rose" sit on my desk and not read at least some of it. I was too damn curious. Had I not just come back from the desert, and if I weren't so intrigued by the idea of undead things skulking about the sun-baked wilderness, I might have held off. But I didn't.
I only got through about half the book last night. It's actually more of a novella with pictures. I think it runs around 115 pages. This Brom guy really did pull it off. The thing's a great, quick read and the illustrations, which range from full-blown paintings to pencil sketches, are fantastic.
Also, having read a fair piece of it now, I feel a little less conflicted about my own plans for this kind of story. Since Arizona, I've been toying with a few ideas for a western-horror/fantasy. Brom's book, I was happy to discover, is set not in the Old West, but in a nightmare version of present day Texas. I'm reasonably confident that I can write what I want to write now without appearing to imitate his work. What I'm interested in trying to do is different.
The fact is, I hope that's the case, because once I get an idea in my head, there isn't much chance that I'll write anything else for a while. When I write I have to have some kind of personal connection to what I'm doing. Much of the setting for The Lucifer Messiah, as an example, was the result of walking to work every day in Hell's Kitchen, stepping over junkies curled up on the 9th Ave. sidewalk in half-dried pools of their own urine. Then spending the rest of the day listening to old union guys trying to either impress or scare (or both) the college boy from Jersey with stories about the neighborhood. After taking in all those tales about the Westies and the old time gangsters and severed hands kept in a freezer to place decoy fingerprints on murder weapons (I later found out that was in a book about the Westies, so I'm not sure if they told me that because they knew it already or if they read it too), I couldn't not write about the neighborhood. It was stuck in my head.
Same thing with the rest of the locations in Lucifer. I wish I could tell you that I set a scene in Venice because the story demanded it, or that I set another scene in Leningrad for the same reason. But I didn't. I wrote those scenes the way I did because I had to, because I loved being in those places, and because I couldn't really write without writing about them.
The book I just finished is no exception. Over the last year and a half I've been in Washington DC, Cleveland, New Orleans and New York. And it's set in all of those places.
So there it is, demons and ghouls in the Old West. My mind's made up.
Assuming I don't suddenly make enough money on this writing thing to quit being a lawyer any time in the next few years, and further assuming that I manage to write something decent, and even further assuming that the publishing industry continues to move at a glacial speed, you can probably expect to see this project in your local bookstore sometime after 2011 or so.
One last thing.
I'm getting a fair amount of international traffic on the site lately. I'm kind of curious, do any of you folks out there in France or New Zealand or Brazil or the UK actually have The Lucifer Messiah? If so, I'd love to hear where you got it. I'm always curious about how the book makes its way to different places once it's out there. Drop me a comment if you have a second and let me know. I love having visitors from all over.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Weird Coincidences and Distant Visitors
This is strange.
Today is my first day back from an extended "vacation" of sorts. If you've read any of the recent posts here you'll know that I was in Toronto last weekend promoting The Lucifer Messiah at FanExpoCanada. From there I hopped on a plane for the desert southwest where I spent the rest of the week roasting in the Arizona sun. No book promotion there, just spending time with la famiglia, doing a lot of eating, as my family always does when we're together.
Yesterday, killing time at Sky Harbor, I mused about the idea of writing a western-themed horror novel. My bald head still scorched-red and only just beginning to peel, and the rest of my body exhausted from a week's worth of hot, dry desert air, I couldn't help but imagine the bygone days of Tombstone and the OK Corral. Of Geronimo and his band of Apache appearing like a mirage from the red-rock desert, striking at the white invaders and then disappearing back into the wilderness.
Of course, that isn't exactly what I write. In my world, those Apache warriors would probably be walking beyond the grave, or those unfortunate cavalry they massacred would be saved from death by a pact with some desert spirit, older than the Sedona hills and thirsty for human souls.
I think Neil Gaiman once said that he didn't set out with the intention of writing about angels, but every time he sat down to write, they just seemed to show up. That's kind of how I am with this monster/undead/weird mayhem thing. I don't necessarily want to be that kind of writer, but it seems to be the only thing that ends up on my screen when I open my laptop.
Which brings me back to the first line of this post. Strangeness.
Today I made my weekly trek out to Westlake to the nearest fake-downtown/open air shopping mall. I should mention that I hate myself for patronizing places like this, I think they represent everything that's soulless and empty about suburban living, but it's where the bookstores are, so I bite my tongue and go. All the time.
Anyway, after checking out what Borders had by Anthony Bourdain, whose audio-book version of Kitchen Confidential kept me company to and from Canada last week (and taught me never to order fish on Monday), I made my usual pass through the fantasy and horror sections. And what did I find?
A western-horror book. With pictures, no less.
The Devil's Rose, by Brom. I bought it, but I haven't started reading it yet. I'm still working my way through Gary Frank's maze of madness and mystery called Forever Will You Suffer -- which is a wild ride, by the way.
This Brom guy I've "read" before. I put that in quotes because I have several books of his, but not novels. They're all art. I love them. Whenever someone tells me my book is too weird or too odd, I tell them to look at Brom's work. He makes my sordid imaginings of bestial fornication and quasi-human sacrifice look tame. Apparently he's not just a fantastic painter though, now he writes too. That's kind of annoying. He does what I do (and sells much better, I'd bet) AND he illustrates his own work.
Oh well, I'm assuming he wouldn't know when to file a Motion in Limine under Evidence Rule 807, so there is still at least one thing I can do that he can't. All in all though, I think I'd probably trade my knowledge of Article VIII of the Ohio Rules of Evidence for the talent to paint like he does.
I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm a little conflicted though. I really want to write something set in the old west. And I want to get to it while I can still taste the desert air. But the last thing I want to do is crank out a pale imitation or a cheap retread of something that's already been done, and done quite well, from the look of things.
I'll have to mull it over.
Finally, I'd like to extend a little welcome mat to the international (from my perspective) visitors who have been checking this blog out over the last few weeks. Recently I've gotten hits from Malaysia and Brazil, and quite a few from Canada since FanExpo. Don't worry, you're not being tracked. I know nothing about you other than where on the planet people who visit my site come from.
Anyway, welcome.
One final, totally random note to all my Canadian visitors: I would like to thank each and every one of you both personally and as a collective nation, for the existence of Martin Brodeur. Without him New Jersey would be a crowded, toxic-waste dump and landfill state where the Gambinos used to send people on a permanent vacation. With him, my home state is still all of those things, but with three Stanley Cup banners to hang over all of it.
Today is my first day back from an extended "vacation" of sorts. If you've read any of the recent posts here you'll know that I was in Toronto last weekend promoting The Lucifer Messiah at FanExpoCanada. From there I hopped on a plane for the desert southwest where I spent the rest of the week roasting in the Arizona sun. No book promotion there, just spending time with la famiglia, doing a lot of eating, as my family always does when we're together.
Yesterday, killing time at Sky Harbor, I mused about the idea of writing a western-themed horror novel. My bald head still scorched-red and only just beginning to peel, and the rest of my body exhausted from a week's worth of hot, dry desert air, I couldn't help but imagine the bygone days of Tombstone and the OK Corral. Of Geronimo and his band of Apache appearing like a mirage from the red-rock desert, striking at the white invaders and then disappearing back into the wilderness.
Of course, that isn't exactly what I write. In my world, those Apache warriors would probably be walking beyond the grave, or those unfortunate cavalry they massacred would be saved from death by a pact with some desert spirit, older than the Sedona hills and thirsty for human souls.
I think Neil Gaiman once said that he didn't set out with the intention of writing about angels, but every time he sat down to write, they just seemed to show up. That's kind of how I am with this monster/undead/weird mayhem thing. I don't necessarily want to be that kind of writer, but it seems to be the only thing that ends up on my screen when I open my laptop.
Which brings me back to the first line of this post. Strangeness.
Today I made my weekly trek out to Westlake to the nearest fake-downtown/open air shopping mall. I should mention that I hate myself for patronizing places like this, I think they represent everything that's soulless and empty about suburban living, but it's where the bookstores are, so I bite my tongue and go. All the time.
Anyway, after checking out what Borders had by Anthony Bourdain, whose audio-book version of Kitchen Confidential kept me company to and from Canada last week (and taught me never to order fish on Monday), I made my usual pass through the fantasy and horror sections. And what did I find?
A western-horror book. With pictures, no less.
The Devil's Rose, by Brom. I bought it, but I haven't started reading it yet. I'm still working my way through Gary Frank's maze of madness and mystery called Forever Will You Suffer -- which is a wild ride, by the way.
This Brom guy I've "read" before. I put that in quotes because I have several books of his, but not novels. They're all art. I love them. Whenever someone tells me my book is too weird or too odd, I tell them to look at Brom's work. He makes my sordid imaginings of bestial fornication and quasi-human sacrifice look tame. Apparently he's not just a fantastic painter though, now he writes too. That's kind of annoying. He does what I do (and sells much better, I'd bet) AND he illustrates his own work.
Oh well, I'm assuming he wouldn't know when to file a Motion in Limine under Evidence Rule 807, so there is still at least one thing I can do that he can't. All in all though, I think I'd probably trade my knowledge of Article VIII of the Ohio Rules of Evidence for the talent to paint like he does.
I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm a little conflicted though. I really want to write something set in the old west. And I want to get to it while I can still taste the desert air. But the last thing I want to do is crank out a pale imitation or a cheap retread of something that's already been done, and done quite well, from the look of things.
I'll have to mull it over.
Finally, I'd like to extend a little welcome mat to the international (from my perspective) visitors who have been checking this blog out over the last few weeks. Recently I've gotten hits from Malaysia and Brazil, and quite a few from Canada since FanExpo. Don't worry, you're not being tracked. I know nothing about you other than where on the planet people who visit my site come from.
Anyway, welcome.
One final, totally random note to all my Canadian visitors: I would like to thank each and every one of you both personally and as a collective nation, for the existence of Martin Brodeur. Without him New Jersey would be a crowded, toxic-waste dump and landfill state where the Gambinos used to send people on a permanent vacation. With him, my home state is still all of those things, but with three Stanley Cup banners to hang over all of it.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Now THAT'S Hot
I'm sitting at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. I've been here for about a week. I left Toronto and got right on a plane for the desert. I've been here several times before. Half of my family has migrated out here over the last several years. But I have never been here in the summer. This is really something.
The heat here is intense. It's been above 110 all week (low to mid forties for the rest of the planet). I can't help wondering, maybe marveling, at how anyone moved out here in the nineteenth century. Or, for that matter, how any of the Native Americans lived here for millenia. I sweated through my shirt playing a quick 18 holes on a putting course yesterday. How the hell did anyone ride out here on a horse?
If not for SPF 30, lots of bottled water with ice and air conditioning in the cars and buildings this vacation would have been a sweltering nightmare.
A friend of mine claims she hiked Camelback Mountain in August last year. I'd like to believe her, but I can't even imagine being outside here for more than a few minutes at a time (unless in very close proximity to a pool).
This has me thinking. Cactus, scrub brush, red dirt baking in the summer sun, scorpions and rattlesnakes. This had to have been an extreme environment back in the old days. Makes me want to write a western. Maybe a western/horror or a western/fantasy. Maybe both.
The heat here is intense. It's been above 110 all week (low to mid forties for the rest of the planet). I can't help wondering, maybe marveling, at how anyone moved out here in the nineteenth century. Or, for that matter, how any of the Native Americans lived here for millenia. I sweated through my shirt playing a quick 18 holes on a putting course yesterday. How the hell did anyone ride out here on a horse?
If not for SPF 30, lots of bottled water with ice and air conditioning in the cars and buildings this vacation would have been a sweltering nightmare.
A friend of mine claims she hiked Camelback Mountain in August last year. I'd like to believe her, but I can't even imagine being outside here for more than a few minutes at a time (unless in very close proximity to a pool).
This has me thinking. Cactus, scrub brush, red dirt baking in the summer sun, scorpions and rattlesnakes. This had to have been an extreme environment back in the old days. Makes me want to write a western. Maybe a western/horror or a western/fantasy. Maybe both.
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