Fiction's compelling nature

My friend Allison directed me to this essay on fiction in The New York Times by Julia Glass who wrote Three Junes.

No lawyers?

Lawyers are ubiquitous, right? Not so in Frey's case. (I know, I know, I'm still writing about this. Forgive me!) It seems everyone wants to place blame on Sean McDonald or Nan Talese or James Frey. And while all of them are somewhat to blame, I suppose, the publishing house's in-house lawyer should be the one focused on, don't you think?

What about the laywer?? Prior to Pen on Fire being published, I had a long talk with Harcourt's lawyer. My book was being vetted--a writing book!

Didn't Frey's book go through a thorough vetting? So easy to place blame after the fact, isn't it?

Frey's editor wouldn't have been the one to ask all those questions. This is what lawyer's do--they ask those legal questions. Or should.

Just my humble three cents.

Oprah pregnant with Frey's baby???

Could it be? Click here for more.

Fiction or nonfiction? Who cares!

I keep going back to that Eleanor Roosevelt quote I like so well--one of my favorite quotes, really.

She said, "The reason fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature to those of us who really like to study people is that, in fiction, the author can tell the whole truth without hurting anyone--or humiliating himself--too much."

I don't get that memoir or nonfiction sells better than fiction. I read fiction for the essential truth. We all know that a lot of fiction writers embellish what happened with made up stuff. That's the fun of it. And certainly we know that memoirs--and not just Big Jim's--are replete with made up stuff. That's not so fun.

What about Hemingway's best book (in my opinion), A Moveable Feast, or Kerouac's On the Road? Are they fiction? Are they nonfiction? Who cares!

Mostly I care about the quality of writing and whether it moves me in some way--mostly whether it moves me to keep reading.

Right now I'm listening to Jennifer Weiner's Good in Bed, which, by the way, is not what it seems. I really wish she had given this first book of hers a different title. So I'm lying down at my acupuncturist's this morning listening to it on CD and he comes in to check the needles and he asks what I'm listening to. I couldn't say, "Oh, it's Good in Bed. It sounds like some sort of porno dealybob. So I say, "Oh, it's a book by Jennifer Weiner. Her movie, In Her Shoes, just came out on DVD," as if this has anything to do with what I'm listening to.

Anyway, getting back to my point--I think I had a point.... Oh! Yes! It is that so much of Weiner's book seems autobiographical--the main character is an overweight woman, she's a writer in college and afterward--and I think, This must be from Weiner's life. But so much else obviously is made up, and I like that about the book, and about fiction--that you can embellish what did happen with what didn't.

This is what I love about writing fiction, too: I can tell the truth in fiction in ways I could never do in nonfiction.

I think I'm feeling a little sorry for Frey about now. He obviously had a story that entranced so very many. Would they have been less involved if he'd sold it as fiction? Wouldn't it be nice to drop categories and focus more on good stories, good writing?

Five favorite books?

Quick! If you had to name five must-read novels, what would they be? What comes to mind immediately?

One of my Gotham students asked me to name just five. Impossible! But I tried.

I said:

Underworld by Don DeLillo

Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow

Good Grief by Lolly Winston

Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner

Then I said, Light on Snow by Anita Shreve comes before Good Grief

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Then I think I changed it to Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy)

And now I can think of dozens more that are favorites.

So, name the first five favorite books that come to mind.

Thus spoke Evashevski

Frey's agent goes on record in Publishers Weekly.com.

Astrology's take

I'm sorry--I just had to post this. My resolve wasn't that strong, I guess...

Here's an astrological take on the latest literary fiasco in Beliefnet.com.

Heart? Intuition? Fun?

Okay, so Blogger straightened some things out. My main headline is now black instead of hot pink. This is good. I don't like the brown headings, though, at the start of each post. Do you?

My friend Sara suggests I do my own blog and she says she'll show me how so I can just link it to my Web site and not be so reliant on Blogger. Did I tell you Sara is an angel? (Sara, if you check in here, post your blog URL under comments if you're okay with that so everyone can visit).

So it's Saturday morning and I read an email from an author friend whose book came out last year and has done respectably. He was working on another proposal that his agent thought would sell--sort of a sequel. He says he woke up, shaking in his PJs, afraid that it was the wrong thing to be working on, and told his agent he changed his mind and was going to go in another direction. His heart just wasn't in it, not like the first book which was straight from the heart.

I wrote back to him, said his email raised an important question: How do you know when what your agent has in mind for you is the right thing, or not? In this wooly world of publishing, whose advice do you take? It's hard even listening to your own heart, your own intuition amid the din of what's selling.

Does it come down to having fun? What do you enjoy working on? If you enjoy it, then that's what you should be working on, and if you don't, scrap it?

Let's hear your comments....

These heading colors are driving me nuts...

...and depending what browser you use, formatting is off. Frustrating! No matter which template I choose for this blog, the headings remain hot pink and brown. Ergh. I've written to Blogger. No reply. Anyone know how to fix this?

Regarding other things in the news (I said I wasn't going to write about you-know-who anymore), I liked what Michael Wolff said (I think it was him) on Larry King Live last night, that we'd stay focused on the current debacle until another one takes its place. That's how we are, isn't it? Gotta have drama in our lives, the bigger, the better.

Being one who so easily can see both sides of a situation, and who hates conflict, I say, Publishers: Learn from this. Writers: Learn from this. Readers: Learn from this.

And let's move on.

Something's funky here

Sorry--Blogger.com has made some changes and caused my blog to look tres funky! Don't blame me.....! Hopefully it will change back soon.

Okay, one last post: Frey on Oprah tomorrow

From Publishers Weekly.com:

Frey Live on 'Oprah'
Our earlier report of James Frey's rumored appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show has been confirmed by a release from Harpo Productions. The author of A Million Little Pieces will break his post-Larry King silence to appear on a live hour-long show that will air tomorrow (Thursday, Jan. 26). Other guests will include publisher Nan Talese and "some of the country's leading journalists"--to address the headlines and controversy surrounding his memoir. No word on whether the Smoking Gun's William Bastone will be among them.

I am so sick of Frey's name in the news

This is from Publishers Weekly.com:

Frey Headed to Oprah?
With James Frey continuing to be the subject of intense media scrutiny, the author of A Million Little Pieces is reportedly headed to the Oprah Winfrey Show. Two separate sources said that Frey will be in Winfrey's studio tomorrow (Thursday), though it was unclear if the appearance will be live or taped for a future date. No one at Random House/Doubleday was available for comment at press time.

.......

I want to say that after this post right here and now, I will not post anymore about Frey. (Some people are obsessed with Jessica Simpson; I seem to be obsessed with the Frey debacle.) If you want to read about him, you'll have to Google his name, sign up for a news alert, and every time his name hits the paper, you'll be notified. More and more I just see him as a creep, like my friend Amy said. Sorry--I liked him when he was no my show but the worm has turned.

What is memoir, anyway?

An ASJA colleague's piece in the Christian Science Monitor.

Now the drug rehab folks are mad: More (still) on Frey

Have you seen this one in The New York Times?

A cat in dog's clothing

Does our cat think she's a dog ... or does she simply like to play fetch?

Rosie, our seven-month-old kitty, has a little white mouse toy she will bring to me or my son, drop, and wait for one of us to throw it. She'll fetch it, bring it back, drop it and do this a number of times before she tires. As we play, I say to Travis, "Does Rosie think she's a dog? Or does she just like fetch?"

Travis says, "I think she thinks she's a dog."

And when I call her in a high sort of voice, trilling, "Rosita!" she comes running.

A cat in dog's clothing?

I was telling this story to my friend Elle and we got into, What makes us what we are? Are we who we are because we believe that's who we are? Are we who've we been told we are? Or do we explode stereotypes, move beyond who we think we are, because something else calls?

Rosie doesn't know that cats don't play fetch or come when called. Our other cat doesn't play fetch, doesn't come when called. He might grace us with a glance in his ever so aloof way, but that's about it.

All of us have roles that take hold, that seem to be more important: how we make a living, our obligations to our partners and children and pets. But what about our obligation to ourselves, to keeping the spark of creativity alive? It may mean writing, drawing, baking, playing music, lo que sea. Whatever it is we are drawn to do, whatever it is we think about daily, shouldn't we be doing it?

We've all seen people in which the spark has gone out. Their eyes look dull, lifeless. The spark has been extinguished. They have forgotten about the need to blow on the spark to stir it into a blaze. Or they have decided to worship the money god or the god of beauty, and forgot about their precious creativity that isn't quantitative, isn't showy.

Rosie does remember she's a cat. She remembers to huddle when she eats her meals on the floor under the old porcelain and wood island that reminds me of my grandmother's kitchen, remembers to laze in the sun on her bed in the front window where she also watches the great outdoors. And she remembers to lie on Travis' chest in the morning to urge him up. But she also knows there are other things she enjoys that are beyond cat-dom.

More on Frey in the Chicago Tribune

If you're not sick of the Frey fiasco yet (and obviously I'm not), read this.

Frey's publisher on Frey

Interesting. Glad Nan Talese put it back on Frey's shoulders.

In it, a quote by Tom Wolfe:

“Let me tell you something—George Orwell, probably back in the 1950’s, wrote that autobiography is the most outrageous form of fiction. It always has been, and probably always will be, and usually there’s no blogger to catch them,” said Mr. Wolfe. “It has nothing to do with the New Journalism.

“I mean, if it’s gonna be called ‘nonfiction,’ I don’t think there should be any doubt about it,” he added.

Here's the piece in The Observer.

More on typewriters

I think what I like most about this new (old) Hermes 2000 typewriter is that my son Loves It Loves It Loves It. He's never written so much. Because it's a gadget? I don't know--he's never written that much on the computer. Partly it's unusual and odd, I'm sure. And he, like me, loves the sound of the keys tapping away.

I wrote a little last night on it, and it was fun--and a little annoying. The apostrophe is not where it is on the computer; it shares the 8 key. And there's no "1" key; you have to use a lower case "L." Only time will tell if I'll get much writing done on it; it does Slowwwww things way down. But it's gorgeous and again, that sound: so much richer than the sound of tapping plastic iBook keys (much as I adore my laptop...).

Tools are so much a part of the writing experience. Liking--no, loving--our tools makes the experience of writing so much richer. I can move so much faster on my laptop. I type so fast my fingers keep up with my brain (thank you Mr. Ribble and Mrs. Fitzgerald, for those typing classes in high school).

I need to work on my fiction now, but can't decide: the typewriter or the computer? Maybe I'll just go check e-mail and some of my favorite blogs while I'm deciding. Ha!

My newest find: a Hermes 2000 typewriter

Isn't it lovely? I love it!!!

I did a piece on the Beat Hotel, in Desert Hot Springs (www.dhsbeathotel.com) where there's a manual typewriter in every room and I began salivating for a manual. It's been years.

I love the sound, the look, everything. Of course it's slower, it's rustic, but that could be a good thing.

When Shelby Foote said he used a dip pen because it slowed him down, that resonated with me. I love fountain pens, too.

And last night, on the Golden Globe Awards, thanks to Elle Brooks (I wasn't watching; she was), I learned that Larry McMurtry thanked his Hermes 3000 for 30 years of words. (McMurtry only uses typewriters.)

Travis also loves the typewriter and has been writing up a storm since I got it two days ago.

He says, "I like it more than a computer because ... I don't know... you press the keys harder than a computer. I really don't know why. It's just more fun."

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