Asheville musician/blogger Christine Kane has an excellent post on writing. Go over and check out her 11 Irresistible Reasons to Write Every Day. You owe it to yourself.

Labels: Literary Arts, Think Tank

19 April, 2008

"The world does not need another novel now, for God's sake, and I feel that I've done everything I can do. Please, can't I go home now?"

--author Kurt Vonnegut in an interview with J. Rentilly that appeared in Pages magazine just six months ago

Vonnegut also commented to the BBC News two months ago that he felt "embarrassed" to have lived to the age of 83, saying, "It's in terrible taste." He also joked, "I'm suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am."

For more on Kurt Vonnegut, check out the very apt illustration at www.vonnegut.com/ and the excellent collection of all things Vonnegut at www.vonnegutweb.com/.

Labels: Literary Arts

22 April, 2007

Steve Himmer entertains us with his blog about "reading, writing, nature, culture, and bears with bad habits." Fun, interesting and educational. We like it so much we put a link to it in our Wordscapes section, but you can just click here: Onepotmeal.

Labels: Literary Arts

31 August, 2006

Get-well wishes go out to author Donald Harington, who is currently recuperating from a broken ankle sustained in an auto accident. He's been working on a new novel (to be titled Enduring), and although this setback will undoubtedly delay it somewhat, we all eagerly await its completion.

In the meantime, I've just run across this piece at Shelf Awareness; it's an insightful and very witty address Mr. Harington gave at Toby Press's 5th Anniversary Banquet last December: "Are Sales Reps Human? Donald Harington Seeks an Answer."

For readers who may not be familiar with Mr. Harington's work, most of his books chronicle the history of the somewhat-fictitious Stay More, Arkansas, and its eccentric residents (affectionately called "Stay Morons"). If you're intrigued by the idea of hypnotically-regressed boy scouts, canine narrators, and alcoholic literature professors with a passion for tomatoes (and that's just scratching the surface), do yourself a favor: make yourself a pitcher of sweet tea, find a shady spot under a tree someplace, and spend the rest of your summer in the pages of Stay More.

Best wishes to Mr. Harington for a speedy recovery!

Labels: Literary Arts

29 July, 2006

"No one can deny, in face of the evidence, that it is easy, given military power, to produce a population of fanatical lunatics. It would be equally easy to produce a population of sane and reasonable people, but many governments do not wish to do so, since such people would fail to admire the politicians who are at the head of these governments."

--from Bertrand Russell's essay "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" in Unpopular Essays

Labels: Literary Arts, Subversive Ideas, Think Tank

15 June, 2006

"I like the 'positive hero' found in the turbulent trenches of civil wars by the North American Walt Whitman and the Soviet Mayakovsky, but there is also room in my heart for Lautreamont's mourning-clad hero, Laforgue's sighing knight errant, and Baudelaire's negative soldier.

"Beware of separating these halves of the apple of creation, for we may cut open our hearts and stop living. Beware! We have to demand of the poet that he take his place in the street and in the fight, as well as in the light and in the darkness."

--from Memoirs by Pablo Neruda, translated by Hardie St. Martin

Labels: Literary Arts, Think Tank

01 May, 2006