Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
The demise of the novel? This has been predicted again and again over the decades, if not the centuries, yet people keep reading novels. Here’s a recent vote of confidence in their persistence:
… Read more“The book-length text is coded in our DNA and will never go away; it is the written version of the oral myths and histories told on consecutive nights around campfires for 80,000 years. In each new generation, roughly the same percentage of people is born with
So just the other morning I suffered something like a flash of cymbalalalazophobia, which is hardly surprising, Sara claims, given my lifestyle.
My recent “Hope in dark times” post elicited the following Facebook query: Is there an official fear of hi-hat cymbals phobia?
If there weren’t, it stuck me that I had a friend who might be uniquely qualified to coin such an expression. Dr. Anthony Alcock is not only a fine classical scholar, linguist, Egyptologist, jazz & blues … Read more
C.Y. “Gopi” Gopinath, a Bangkok-based writer of note, has just published his first novel, which promises even greater success than his globetrotting chronicle Travels with the Fish (HarperCollins India, 1999). The Book of Answers, released just this month, also by HarperCollins India, has already soared to #10 on the bestseller list in that country.
I’m going to don my “let’s pitch this book to a modern market” hat, something I … Read more
I’ve decided one of the comments on my last blog installment merits a post in itself, together with my response. This is from a friend and professional editor:
“Is “Eyes filled with disquiet” a full sentence or is it a noun modified by a phrase? Do you mean to say the eyes, they filled with disquiet? Or these are eyes that are filled with disquiet?”
My initial response:
“The latter, of course.”
Then, following further reflection:
If that isn’t “of … Read more
Bangkok Noir is enjoying favorable review, both locally and abroad. But I’d like to critique the second sentence of my own contribution to that story collection, “Hot Enough to Kill.” In fact, I suggest that readers take a pen and revise it.
Here’s the printed version (not mine—I swear that some gremlin on my computer vandalized the sentence; I have two copies of the story that read the way I wrote them, and two more corrupted versions):
Eyes are filled … Read more
Inebriation is a false Muse. As seductive as they may be, chemical substitutes for true creative intoxication don’t work.
Maybe there are exceptions that prove this rule. Malcolm Lowry, e.g., did much field research for his brilliant novel Under the Volcano, which included a main protagonist who was drinking himself to death. (Lowry, unfortunately, perhaps in his quest for verisimilitude, was himself to go all the way at an early age.) Emulating his own hard-boiled detective protagonists, writer … Read more
In my opinion, Chris Taylor’s Harvest Season is a better story, better told, than Alex Garland’s The Beach.
I compare the two books only because each involves “backpackers” on the Asia trail. Taylor’s story unfolds in relatively remote China, whereas The Beach is set in what are supposed to be islands in the Gulf of Thailand. With Harvest Season, though, I have a much surer sense that the writer is indeed familiar with his geographical and subcultural settings. … Read more
Dorothy Parker’s opinion of the most widely recognized writing style manual in the English language:
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
But those who nevertheless persevere and do become writers should understand this: One cardinal principle underlies all other rules of style, … Read more
She Kept the Bar Between Them: Stories from Thailand
by Steve Rosse
BangkokBooks (2011)
info@bangkokbooks.com
Long-time Phuket resident (now living back in the States) and frequent contributor to a variety of Thailand publications in years past, Steve Rosse has recently added an e-book collection of new stories to his credits.
These disturbing, often blackly comic tales issue from a darker side of human nature. Some of the stories chronicle encounters with bargirls, and some of these verge on the … Read more
Insights into the hobologoist mindset.
Money corrupts.
Impecuniousness rools, OK!
Artists must suffer.
I have my principles.
Solipsism means never having to say you’re being corrupted by money and prizes.
I like semi-colons; commercial editors can go screw themselves.
I like [literary practice of your choice]; commercial editors can go screw themselves.
Hobologoists don’t write query letters.
Nobody ever read Antoine Blorschacterforth either.
Save the trees, save the bytes, save having to explain to critics why … Read more