Years ago, I discovered Fred Meyer, a giant everything-in-one-place store similar to Super Walmart but with less evil and awesome childcare. A few years later, the single California store in a predominantly Northwestern chain closed its doors. The mammoth building sat empty, in view of the freeway, forever while rumors swirled about its future. And then one day I came over a rise on the off-ramp and saw that the entire building had been leveled overnight. I was swept by nausea as I absorbed the magnitude of such obscene waste. Demolishing a ten year-old, up-to-code building merely because new commercial tenants (a Lowe’s built virtually in the footprint of the bulldozed warehouse) want something specific enraged me. I was angry for years. I’m still angry. I experienced a similar sucker-punch moment the first time I drove past Chico’s old Downtown Plaza Park and saw it laid bare in the name of progress,
raped of all the beautiful trees allegedly so “diseased” they had to be removed for public safety but healthy enough to be replanted on the property of the developer. I happen to unexpectedly like the metropolitan feel of the new plaza, but it took me weeks to picture the gaping hole where the gazebo had been without tearing up. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is not subtle. I guess the narrative master wanted the message to get through loud and clear: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
http://www.amazon.com/Lorax-Classic-Seuss-Dr/dp/0394823370
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Dr._Seuss/
You can't keep a good novelist down.
The LA Times reports on the return of Ross Macdonald, the private detective novelist who never got the respect he deserved and in my mind, holds a place in the Hardboiled Holy Trinity of Private Detective Novelists that includes Dashiell Hammett (who pioneered the form) and Raymond Chandler (who perfected the form).
But why take my word for it? Read the story! (Via Ed Champion via Sarah Weinman.)
Grace Paley, short story writer and poet, has died. Her stories have always supercharged my imagination, stretching the boundaries of both form and language. Read her stories and celebrate her life.
Over at Urban Muse, freelance Taylor DiMeglio has some advice about balancing a mountain of writing projects, urging you to just chill out. SlushPile has some similar advice for novelists, urging us to chill out on the research:
"If you’re working on the first draft, if your bit of needed info isn’t absolutely, positively crucial to the entire basis of your story, then skip it and move on."
These are gloomy days, between the war, the struggling economy, and our country's attempts to reckon with its place (and responsibilities) in this troubled world. Times like these call for hardboiled prose and hardboiled narrators.
Last night I had a long talk with a guy who liked private detective novels as much as me. I think these dark, crazy-metaphor-laden, and kinetic writers had the single biggest influence on my style, and I think they can help you write about our gloomy world.
Here are my Top Five Hardboiled Links at The Publishing Spot to help you explore this crazy genre and figure out how it can help you write:
1- The great hardboiled private detective radio and YouTube list.
2- My interview with pulp fiction loving novelist Paul Malmont
3- My interview with Vikram Chandra about his Indian detective in a hardboiled world.
4- My interview with Charlie Huston about his vampire private detective books.
5- My interview with Christa Faust about her hardboiled wrestling novels.
Private detective writers of the world unite!
There has never been a better time for hardboiled heroic narrators to guide us through our anxious world, and the 2007 Shamus Awards are celebrating the best private eye books of the year. Sarah Weinman has the roundup.
Ed Champion wrote a blow-by-blow account of the William T. Vollmann discussion last night, and Champion's essay included this ominous quote about the state of our anxious world:
"Vollmann stated that if he were to go to Iraq today, he would have to think about it. 'What good would it do? Would I have anything new to contribute?'"
Finally, Steve Bryant watches all the web videos so you don't have to. Today, he publishes an essential list of the six web videos that you should have watched. Do your YouTube homework!
Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.
Years ago, I discovered Fred Meyer, a giant everything-in-one-place store similar to Super Walmart but with less evil and awesome childcare. A few years later, the single California store in a predominantly Northwestern chain closed its doors. The mammoth building sat empty, in view of the freeway, forever while rumors swirled about its future. And then one day I came over a rise on the off-ramp and saw that the entire building had been leveled overnight. I was swept by nausea as I absorbed the magnitude of such obscene waste. Demolishing a ten year-old, up-to-code building merely because new commercial tenants (a Lowe’s built virtually in the footprint of the bulldozed warehouse) want something specific enraged me. I was angry for years. I’m still angry. I experienced a similar sucker-punch moment the first time I drove past Chico’s old Downtown Plaza Park and saw it laid bare in the name of progress,
raped of all the beautiful trees allegedly so “diseased” they had to be removed for public safety but healthy enough to be replanted on the property of the developer. I happen to unexpectedly like the metropolitan feel of the new plaza, but it took me weeks to picture the gaping hole where the gazebo had been without tearing up. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is not subtle. I guess the narrative master wanted the message to get through loud and clear: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
