Monthly Archives: June 2010

A personal milestone for me– my very first rejection, an email from The Missouri Review. They said they liked my story and asked me to submit again so this is about the best result I could have hoped for short of acceptance.

Benjamin Percy gave me some great advice at the Seaside Residency– submit to the top mags and send the story to five more markets for every rejection I get. After logging this rejection, I immediately sent out three electronic submissions and will mail two paper copies (snail-mail? geez) tomorrow.  It’s a positive approach and I’d encourage others to try it.

Excerpt:

Descent

The wing can hold the curve of the earth
Tucked like a pillow under its hard arm.

Australia is passing me her endless
Biscuit prairie, patch scrub trimming off

To curly beach. Peninsulas are sharp
As holly. And then a rash of salt lakes,

A strange pox, turquoise then urine.
At such altitudes, reassurance arrives

Poetry mystifies me. I know what I like but not really why I like it– engaging a poem analytically has always seemed either too rigid or too vague. I really enjoyed the examination of this poem, though.  I just wish that it had come afterward so that the reader could engage the piece without a filter.

Thesis – I own an iPad.

Antithesis – I collect typewriters.

Synthesis = USB typewriter goes ‘clackity clackity clack DING’

I’ve been very impressed with the iPad as an e-book reader, preferring it over traditional paper books. But the technology is still evolving and, for those who choose to publish their work through Apple’s online store (a walled garden controlled by a single corporation), censorship remains a real hazard. A reminder of this at Daily Finance—

Rob Berry and Josh Levitas’s “Ulysses Seen” webcomic is, by all accounts, an ambitious undertaking, as any adaptation of the Irish author’s nearly 1,000-page tome would be. And with a readers’ guide, translation into foreign languages and other complementary materials, it would seem like a natural for the iPad and its multitouch user interface.

But Apple had a surprise up its sleeve, thanks to its strict guidelines about adult content, and the nudity present in “Ulysses Seen” was verboten.

The offending image can be found here.

David Mitchell, author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, discusses the process he went through in writing his 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas. His approach to narrative structure is especially interesting.

The first iPad edition of The Virginia Quarterly Review is now available for download with a 29-page sample to whet your mental.  $3.99 for a digital copy vs. $14.99 for the paper edition.

Earlier this year, VQR’s Editor Ted Genoways wrote a provocative article on the future of literary magazines– the comments after the article are especially interesting.

Marvin Bell has a poem in The New Yorker. I think he read this one at our Residency at Seaside, OR.

NPR has a review and excerpt of Aimee Bender’s second novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

Aimee Bender gave an excellent craft talk at last year’s MFA Residency in Forest Grove in which she discussed two different approaches to plot– one in which character is revealed through what a protagonist does (most modern literature) and an older tradition in which character is revealed through what happens to the protagonist (fairy tales). She then examined how this second approach could often reflect the protagonist’s inner self more accurately than a realistic plot and how the suspension of disbelief inherent in “magical” events and objects allows access to deeper currents of the human condition than is possible through realism. It was one of the best craft talks of the residency and I often refer back to the notes I took.

Just starting on Justin Cronin’s THE PASSAGE. The literary roots of the author are evident in the elegance of his prose while he simultaneously  creates a sense of forward momentum with sharp plot developments. So far it’s been a quality read– I’ll post a full review once I’ve finised.

Lots of buzz about this book (it’s been optioned by Ridley Scott), with the New York Times noting that the book,

“…has been hyped as one of the hottest books of the summer. At the annual book industry convention in New York last week, it was advertised on a banner roughly the size of a city bus, hanging from the ceiling in the vast convention hall. For those attending, 13,000 name tags were emblazoned with the title and a spooky image of a dark, empty forest that is also on the cover of the book.”

Bookslut has a review.

I’ve had my iPad for a few weeks now and have used it to purchase and read several books. The overall experience has been excellent. Buying books through Amazon, B&N, and iBooks is a snap and the convenience of getting a title downloaded and ready to read in less than ten seconds is really compelling. I even found myself buying the electronic version when a used copy was available for less. I justified this by telling myself that the author would get paid (unlike with a used book) and a little less carbon would be spewed bringing the book to my door, but really it was more a matter of waiting a week  for something I wanted vs. getting it RIGHT NOW. Delayed gratification? Ha!

Reading on the iPad is quite pleasant. I was worried that the screen would cause eye-strain so I bought an anti-glare film for it but I don’t think it’s really necessary (although it does keep scratches at bay and makes cleaning fingerprints easier). So far I have not had any discomfort, even after reading sessions lasting 5-6 hours. Additional benefits of apps like Kindle and iBooks include the ability to increase font sizes (very useful for those with diminished eyesight), adjustable brightness, highlighting and appending notes to the text,  and bookmarks to easily return to passages you want to refer back to. Drawbacks include the weight of the iPad which, over time, can be quite a burden on your arms. Holding the iPad is also tricky as it is very sleek– I bought a folio that has a hand strap which helps a bit. As for reading in direct sunlight, the iPad’s glossy screen simply has too much glare to be useful.

Besides the epub format, there are apps available for reading PDFs and other file types (one of the ebooks I bought had some minor formatting errors, but nothing too distracting). The on-screen keyboard is fine for light note taking but would be pretty irritating for extended writing projects.

One thing that I hadn’t anticipated was the increasing amount of magazines that are available for the iPad. I’ve subscribed to Electric Literature and several other literary e-mags and found them to be really well done, often incorporating music, video, and audio-readings to complement the text itself. Comics on the iPad also look terrific.

Finally there are other benefits for word-lovers– Crossword puzzles (a subscription to the NY Times crosswords is $17 a year and also gives access to all of their previous puzzles), word games, and reference material (the collected works of Shakespeare is a free app, is searchable, and has font increase/decrease). Lengthy web articles can be saved for later reading with a program like Instapaper, a very useful tool. The iPad is also great for getting your daily news from RSS sources or applications like the NY Times Editor’s choice or the excellent NPR app.

Despite some irritations with the iPad’s OS (no multi-tasking, clunky email reader, etc., which the upcoming iOS release should solve), I’ve found the iPad to be a terrific device for reading. A stylus is a necessary addition for navigating websites and doing other tasks– there are lots of stylii now available– as is a well-designed case. Battery life is as promised (about 10 hours or so).  It wont replace a full-sized notebook but it does have lots of advantages over a netbook. It’s an expensive purchase (for me at least) but if your needs fit in with what the iPad offers, I think you will be as pleased as I am.