The National Book Critics Circle award nominees have been announced. I still haven’t read Middlesex, but was happy to see a short story collection on the fiction list: Aleksandar Hemon’s Nowhere Man. I heard mixed things about it though. A few friends liked it, but others couldn’t get through it and really hated it.
I decided to put that story (working title “The End of Refraction”) away for a while and work on something else. I dug up an old scene I had written a while back, between a mother and daughter. I don’t have a story yet. I’m intrigued by what this character (a woman who’s abused by her husband) will do, given all the handicaps I’ve given her. We shall see. Much to my shame, it’s already 2 pm (the time when I usually start to panic) and I don’t feel awake yet. Was woken up at an ungodly hour by one of Alex’s work emergencies and then I had to drive him to work. My schedule got messed up, and I haven’t recovered. I feel exhausted.
I’ve been procrastinating for the better part of three hours. I lie to myself and say, it’s just news (shouldn’t a person stay informed?), it’s just industry stuff (shouldn’t a writer keep up with lit. news?), or it’s just email (am I supposed to ignore my friends?) Finally, I get up, get coffee and sit back to sip it, even though I’m supposed to be off the devil’s drink at the moment. Then a little mosquito starts pestering me. I swat at it. It comes back. I nearly spill my coffee on the laptop trying to get rid of it. Then it occurs to me it’s a divine sign: stop wasting time, get back to revising your draft. And, I ask you, who am I to ignore heavenly warnings?
In a June 3rd entry, I had mentioned the recent discovery that the New York high school exam questions included many literary passages (from the likes of Chekhov and Singer), which had been “cleaned up” to remove references to gender, race, religion, sex, (all the fun stuff.) You would think that the outcry over this would have made the board clean up its act, so to speak.
Not a chance. Today’s New York Times says they’re still at it:
“A review of the most recent state exam, given in August, reveals that they did it again, this time altering Franz Kafka and sanitizing Aldous Huxley.
Worse yet, a historian quoted on the exam believes that a test question based on his work has more than one correct answer. If he is right, it may mean that some high school students who failed the August test actually passed and could be eligible for a diploma.” (article requires registration)
P.S: On a related note, see a July 22nd post on how textbooks (not just exams) are altered in Texas to avoid “offending” people.
Families of September 11 victims don’t believe the official stance that Iraq is an immediate threat and are against the war. The irony is that Sep. 11 is exactly what’ll be used to justify the upcoming attack.
Now that Bill Buford has stepped down, fiction editing at the New Yorker is in the hands of Deborah Treisman, a young editor who’s been with the magazine for the last five years. Book Magazine conducted a Q&A with her, which you can read here.
Q: Have you ever rescued anything notable from the slush pile?
A: Someone who’s submitting themselves directly to the fiction editor probably isn’t all that savvy about publishing and probably not about writing either. Though I’m sure there are exceptions to that. Particularly in poetry. A lot of poetry comes from the slush pile, because poets don’t have agents. “
Can you hear the collective cries of thousands of unpublished writers everywhere as stakes are driven through their hearts?
Link via the Literary Saloon.
Elsewhere, and just as you think that September 11 could not be further commercialized for personal gain, Republicans announced today that New York City will host the Republican Convention in 2004.
“weapons of mass destructions,” according to the American Dialect Society. It’s been that kind of year.
MobyLives, the Literary Saloon and Bookslut are all back from their Christmas/New Year hiatus. I’m just happy things are back to normal. I’m working on my laptop, legs askew on top of the desk, and I just realized I’m wearing a pale green top with dark brown pants and fuschia pink mini socks. This is what happens when you don’t hold down a regular job anymore.
