Archive | January, 2009

Call for Help on Upcoming Library Talk, part 2

14 Jan

In 2006, the late David Foster Wallace wrote a story for The New York Times called “Federer as Religious Experience”. In the piece, in the place of the traditional “nut graf” he said this:

Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news to offer you about Roger Federer. He is, at 25, the best tennis player currently alive. Maybe the best ever. Bios and profiles abound. “60 Minutes” did a feature on him just last year. Anything you want to know about Mr. Roger N.M.I. Federer — his background, his home town of Basel, Switzerland, his parents’ sane and unexploitative support of his talent, his junior tennis career, his early problems with fragility and temper, his beloved junior coach, how that coach’s accidental death in 2002 both shattered and annealed Federer and helped make him what he now is, Federer’s 39 career singles titles, his eight Grand Slams, his unusually steady and mature commitment to the girlfriend who travels with him (which on the men’s tour is rare) and handles his affairs (which on the men’s tour is unheard of), his old-school stoicism and mental toughness and good sportsmanship and evident overall decency and thoughtfulness and charitable largess — it’s all just a Google search away. Knock yourself out.

As a postmodernist, DFW is aware of what you’re aware of and he’s going to make you aware of it (and that he’s aware you’re aware).  The point I’m going to make is that even if you don’t have to worry about nut grafs, you still ignore the information/ideas/opinions that are “just a Google search a way” at your peril. Search has raised the bar not only on what can be considered timely, but what can be considered novel, thorough, comprehensive, etc.

Thoughts on this?

Call for Help for Upcoming Library Talk, part 1

12 Jan

As mentioned, I’m giving a talk next Tuesday at the Central Branch of the Minneapolis Public Library as part of their People’s University series.

As mentioned in that aforementioned mention, I am turning to you for help in writing that talk.

One of the threads is about how every writer/artist has to decide their relationship to technology.

Do you live in the cabin in the woods and pretend computers don’t exist?

Or do you embrace blogging, social networking, etc., but only for marketing purposes?

Or do you completely open yourself up to technology, allowing it to inform your work (i.e. by “crowdsourcing” research) and perhaps the very way that you think?

On a related note, does the form/medium/genre/etc. force this choice? (I’m thinking of science fiction, which seems to require a certain amount of transparency in dealing with fans.) Or is a matter of the writer/artist’s own temperament?

Any thoughts/examples/citations/links/references/opinions would be helpful. Also, if the comments section makes you feel shy, you can always e-mail me directly at dennis DOT cass AT gmail DOT com.

Thanks and take care,

Dennis

Awesome Writing Prompt #4

7 Jan

Write a short-short story from the point of view of the gilded presidential pitcher in the upper righthand corner of this photograph.

Saul Loeb AFP/Getty Images

Saul Loeb AFP/Getty Images

The First Ten Books in Little, Brown’s Spring ’09 Catalog

6 Jan

A publishing friend of mine just sent me Little, Brown’s spring catalog. For those of you who haven’t seen a book publishing catalog, they are fascinating, part preview of things to come and part re-view of what editors thought was relevant/interesting/saleable 12-24 months ago.

And so I present to you, without comment or judgment, the first ten hardcover titles of the Spring ’09 Little, Brown and Company catalog (with marketing taglines):

1. THE HORSE BOY by Rupert Isaacson

“The remarkable, inspiring story of a father willing to go to the ends of the earth to heal his son.”

2. A LUCKY CHILD by Thomas Buergenthal

“The profoundly moving memoir of a young boy’s odyssey through the Holocaust.”

3. THE 8TH CONFESSION by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

“The only episode of the Women’s Murder Club this year!”

4. FOLLOW ME by Joanna Scott

“From one of today’s most captivating literary voices, an epic and unforgettable novel of a young woman’s search for herself in America.”

5. THE SCARECROW by Michael Connelly

“#1 bestselling author Michael Connelly—the best mystery writer in the world”*—brings back the hero of The Poet in a terrifying new thriller.” *GQ

6. INTO THE BEAUTIFUL NORTH by Luis Alberto Urrea

“Beloved bestselling author Luis Alberto Urrea returns with a brilliant, ebullient, and timely road novel about a young woman’s journey north, to America.”

7. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? by Rocce Mediate & John Feinstein

“The legendary Rocco Mediate teams up with America’s favorite golf writer to chronicle the golfer’s epic head-to-head battle with Tiger Woods in the 2008 US Open.”

8. DO-OVER! by Robin Hemley

“A middle-aged father conquers the embarrassments of childhood—by calling ‘do-over!’”

9. MIX SHAKE STIR by Danny Meyer

“Start any evening off on a glamorous note with stylish, unexpected cocktails from Danny Meyer’s world-renowned New York restaurants.”

10. THE MAN’S BOOK by Thomas Fink

“This manual of manliness is the essential gift for any self-respecting father, friend, graduate or groomsman.”

Stanley Fish, Wikipedia and My Rotten Soul

5 Jan

Back at work busily pretending to work. Fall for (as I often do) a Gmail Web Clip headline that takes me to Stanley Fish’s Think Again blog at The New York Times. In his post about the 10 Best American Movies of all time he praises Groundhog Day, smartly saying it’s a version of Pygmalion where “the the material the sculptor works on is himself.” Nice.

Without giving it much more thought I’m off again:

to pick up some Katamari Damacy wallpaper,

to find out if the puppets in the unofficial Dandy Warhols’ video for “We Used To Be Friends“ are as funny as I remembered,

to find out if Stanley Fish wrote Textual Power (he didn’t; Robert Scholes did),

then back to Wikipedia to read about Gilbert & Sullivan because I’m thinking of using Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy in my class,

which gets me thinking about Pygmalion because one of my books has a Pygmalion-esque element so maybe I should get some work done and see if there are is something I can learn from ancient Greece.

So: reading, reading, reading. Reading the Wikipedia entry about Pygmalion (mythology). Then I come across this line that makes my face hot. About how the movie Groundhog Day is a “Pygmalion story, but this time the material the sculptor works on is himself.” And I think to myself, “That’s a great line. I’ve heard that line before. Where have I heard that line before?”

I remember the Stanley Fish blog post and feel flushed with discovery. “Is it possible that a Renowned Intellectual Ass-Kicker steals quotes from Wikipedia?” What do I do with this information? Are there authorities (other than Fish, of course) who can be alerted?

Then more reading and I come to the end of the paragraph. There is a citation. Go back to the original Fish post and read it more carefully and quickly discover that the Wikipedia entry is, of course, a copy-and-paste job. You idiot. Stanley Fish doesn’t steal from Wikipedia. Wikipedia steals from Stanley Fish.

I know this, and yet in that moment it was easier for me to imagine a distinguished writer being a lazy thief than it is for me to imagine a total stranger taking a minute to improve a seldom-visited page of open-source online encyclopedia. It’s as if somewhere in all that linking around basic commonsense (not to mention giving a professional the benefit of the doubt) got left behind.

Does this kind of thing happen to you?

My New Year’s (Writing) Resolutions for 2009

2 Jan

1. Stop pitching

Two years ago I burned out on pitching stories. It’s frustrating to research a piece, craft the pitch, send it out, wait, then dicker with the editor over angle, length, and so forth.

But even though I’m sick of selling the work, I’m not at all tired of doing the work.

So last week I did something I swore I would never do: I wrote a piece on spec. It’s a reported essay about the death of the book business and it’s pretty tasty. Right now it’s with an editor at Mother Jones. If he buys it, then he buys it. If not, then I’ll try somewhere else.

This is the new way.

2. Get on a schedule

For years I’ve made fun of the writer you hear on the radio who claims to get up at the same time every day, and write for the same set amount of hours, and practices their craft even if it’s a weekend or they have the flu or it’s their child’s birthday or a holiday or the Rapture.

This is the year I (sort of) become that writer.

I didn’t pick this line of work because I wanted to punch a clock, but the realities of my overall schedule are pushing me into a less freedom-loving writing schedule.

2009 = less flexibility in favor of more productivity

3. Unleash the fury

I make this resolution every year and every year the teensiest bit more fury is unleashed.

Final thought:

As this site is for you and not for me, I’ll keep updates on my progress to a minimum. That said, if you’re interested in using this site as a forum for resolutionary discussions, then I’m game.

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