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WK35
Jan 12, 2023 15:22:45 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jan 12, 2023 15:22:45 GMT
Might be just me, but anytime a short story begins with someone waking up in the morning, I tend to bail. Even basically free novels at the Goodwill store, I'll fold shut and place back on the shelf. Kafka's Metamorphosis might be the exception. But usually some dude's waking up is just the VC clearing their writerly throat, as in Camden's The Game, in which the introductory several paragraphs of the 1st person narrator's philosophizing upon and about waking has nothing to do with the plot or his character's development. Neither, really, does his getting blown up by an atomic bomb at the end, which, and again it might just be me, makes one wonder how he managed to narrate the whole thing. Also, just as a scientific aside, I don't think you can see the mushroom cloud and be vaporized by the heat flash and other nasty wavelengths along the electromagnetic spectrum (as many will probably discover soon enough).
Nonetheless, save for some wrong (missing or superfluous) possessive apostrophes, the cap appeared technically, and even prosaically, competent to my perusal.
It did take me a second to realize "football" meant soccer, and a google search to suspect Ormonians were Romanians. It seems many Finlanders are not overly fond of Romanians. The whole cap strikes me as more of a political polemic than a short story, a quite literally and unmitigatedly hateful piece. A hard no. Into the deluge that is our Porthole it sails.
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WK35
Jan 16, 2023 22:34:58 GMT
Post by guevara on Jan 16, 2023 22:34:58 GMT
He vuelto.
“Broken Home” was a refreshing and entertaining undertaking. Today, in the world of postmodern indirectness, anti-narrators, and deconstructive writing habits, it’s a fine adventure to read a real a good, old-fashioned type of story that follows regular formulations—the time-honored methods that were more or less followed by from Dickens to Hemingway. Don’t get me wrong: I do like some of the newer techniques. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles is an example “historiographic metafiction” (say that at the cocktail party if you want to sound very educated)—that is popular in a lot of modern fiction and it is one of my favorite novels. But most people don’t know how to handle the techniques of this style properly, as Fowles does, and end up botching and wrecking a story in their attempts to be modern, hip, cool, and deconstructive.
Mark W. Jones writes a story that is old-style: straightforward plotline, rising action, crisis development, denouement, and final resolution. The formation moves forward quickly and has an intriguing premise. The main character is believable, the secondary characters eccentric and intricate. The plot, too, builds according to traditional writing methods. There is conflict, rising action, a climax (point in the story when something has to happen one way or another), the resolution, and the denouement (French for “untying”—the tag ending that signals the conflict is ended and there is resolution). So this is a good story that follows traditional literary standards.
It's quirky. We have in the character of Jack Winterburn a ghost-buster of sorts; someone on call when supernatural beings are attacking, haunting, or tormenting humans. What is amusing is that he is depicted sort of like a private detective from an old Humphry Bogart movie—a kind of occultic Sam spade. I could envision him in trench coat and pushed-down hat. He is called by a couple whose small son is being attacked and tormented by a spirit of some sort. The description tells him what he is up against and, like an old detective, he goes around to people who can help him solve the case—in this instance, who can help the people who are being assaulted by some kind of evil spirit. Like the informants and allies in the old movies, they are grumpy and unwilling to help, but in the end they lend a hand. All of this is amusing in a subtle sort of way. This anti-occultic “organization” fascinates the reader.
I won’t go into details. He finds out why the evil spirit (a lamia) is there and takes steps to confine it. We learn from what is said in his encounters with colleagues that battling such a creature almost led him to la puerta de la muerte a while back. But (again without details) he is able to prevail in this situation. Good story, plot advances nicely, characters are interesting, and the writing of the story to make it resemble an old-style detective film are entertaining and fun to read. I give it five stars, I’m all for it.
(Only flaw—lots of typos, needs a good editing.)
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WK35
Jan 17, 2023 14:17:55 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jan 17, 2023 14:17:55 GMT
(Only flaw—lots of typos, needs a good editing.)
Why VCs don't pass their work through Word, Google docs, or even just gmail, to snag obvious spag errors, typos and misspellings is a mystery to me.
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WK35
Jan 17, 2023 14:47:13 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jan 17, 2023 14:47:13 GMT
There's an authenticity to Things are Different, but that its second language problems and voice do not surmount. I got about 3 pages in and, unable to pick up any thread of conflict or plot, bailed. The MC's a writer, married, under some publishing agreement. But he is not, to say the least, Dostoevsky.
Here's a random paragraph from around where I threw in the towel:
"Yes, since Tingting got a boyfriend, I have never seen she order food deliverytake out. Her boyfriend will prepares dishes in advance, it was the amount of three meals in breakfast, lunch and dinner. Once we coerced her into giving us a bite. And it was combined with Chinese and Western dishes, those were gorgeous dishes! I definitely believe my fried rice was no longer delicious than her lunchbox." another female doctor also envies Tingting.
See? Not only riddled with punctuation and grammatical problems, but, worse, kind of boring. Calls to mind Vonnegut's "Don't waste your readers' time." Also, though through no fault of the writing, It had me humming rude personal variations of Chuck Berry's My Ding-a-Ling for about an hour afterwards.
Hey VC? You still with me? I know from considerable personal experience that having your work shitcanned here in TQR's sometimes insensitive way, especially when you're just starting out and your skin is very thin and you believe you're great, can be a real piss-off. (I've never admitted this to anyone before, but one of the reasons I signed on as a cartoon character here was to exact a vague kind of revenge on the art of writing for the rough handling of some of my early subs.) Let me mollify you with some free, and I believe okay, advice. Try writing in the 1st person, and let your narrator admit to working in a 2nd language. I'm impressed with your authenticity and English, but, for now, embrace rather than try to hide the 2nd language handicap. I believe that maybe you're using creative writing to exercise your English, which is no doubt a great exercise, but seems to result in a lot of superfluous (boring, needless, irrelevant) telling. E.g., I didn't read the whole thing, so can't say for sure, but I doubt the quality of Tingling's fried rice is important to the story. The hardest part of writing in any language is finding interesting, inspirational, enlightening, evocative, or just funny, stuff to say. Focus on that.
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WK35
Jan 17, 2023 19:30:45 GMT
Post by guevara on Jan 17, 2023 19:30:45 GMT
Aristotle, in his essay on literary fiction, said a story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Well, that sounds pretty basic, but it seems there are writers who don’t realize as much. Of course the Greek philosopher we still read four-thousand years after he died went on to explain what he meant; beginning: a conflict is showcased; middle: the results of the conflict begin to manifest themselves and the reader or watcher of a play sees the result; finally, at the end there, is resolution, and the choices made at the beginning are seen in their fullness in the middle, are resolved at the end. This is the template that writers have more or less used ever since then. Some depart from it, but when they do so it is usually for stylistic reasons, to play with the typical order of a story, or to create something that is particularly notable and innovative because it transgresses the usual form of a piece of fiction. In “What’s In the Paper Sacks?” the author doesn’t follow the tradition form of a story but not so the story becomes unique or novel.
It is a tale about drug dealers. They sell marijuana. So far so good. But as the endeavor unfolds, the plot never really develops past the level of conflict. A gang of drug dealers is selling pot. There is danger, conflict, double-crossing, and violence. This is okay, but the endeavor doesn’t develop. The violence, double-crossing, conflict, shooting, beating goes on and on. The plot does not take any twists or turns. The tale is one long saga of violence and conflict.
Nothing wrong with violence and conflict. But after a while simply reading about people being shot, robbed, double-crossed, beaten-up, and threatened loses impact. It’s rather like a cartoon I saw years ago in a book of two people on a Ferris Wheel; one of them saying, “This stopped being fun three days ago.” The story does not really develop a plot; the characters have thin personalities and do not present much more to the reader than that they are violent, cruel, and mean-spirited. Yes, criminals tend to be like that, but after a while, this, like riding a Ferris Wheel for three days nonstop, gets a bit boring.
And to be interesting, characters must develop. They must change in some way. Characters can get better, or they can get worse, but in order to interest a reader something must happen with the people in the story he or she is reading. In “What’s in the Paper Sacks” there is no change. The characters have little depth. They learn nothing, realize nothing, do not have a moment or realization, and do not change for bad or good.
What this creates is a continuum of violence. Violence can be entertaining. I love the killing of the heads of the Five Families in The Godfather. I love the gunfight at OK Corral in the movie Tombstone with Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer. But those two films, and the many well-made films that deal with crime and violence, have other features, other themes, ideas that are developed, characters who realize things and who change. This story has none of that. The non-stop drug-dealing with attendant shooting, beating, double-crossing, and treachery gets tedious after a while. I once had a story rejected because the editor said, “Nothing happens.” In this story a lot happens, but it’s the same things over and over again, which becomes boring. Not much appeal in it for this reason.
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WK35
Jan 29, 2023 21:22:08 GMT
Post by guevara on Jan 29, 2023 21:22:08 GMT
“Forks in the Road” by Alan J. Wahnefried, is long. It is so long, I thought it would be a boring, tedious tale. I was pleasantly surprised.
The story is a murder mystery told from the point of view of the police. Sherriff Karl Pederson investigates the Edward Lombardi. They go through the usual investigative procedures and discover his vehicle was sabotaged—forks bent back and put under his tires. They immediately begin investigative procedures.
There are dangers to writing a story like this. It’s been done and done, both in print and on television. Investigators discovers clues to the hazy, baffling death of someone. Then, slowly, by the use of evidence and ruthlessly logical deductions, they begin to dissipate the haze and fog of uncertainly and finally uncover the culprit. The process is slow and systematic. The reader is pulled into the effort, closely following as clues are uncovered, false starts and wrong theories ruled out, suspects suspected and then cleared, until finally, at the end, the real murderer is apprehended.
This is the type of story “Forks in the Road” is. It is not, however, cliched and formulaic. As a reader I was delighted by the quirks and turns of the story and the unexpected ending. The investigators get their man, and it is not the man the readers think it will be.
Una auténtica sorpresa--a real surprise!
The story is told in episodes as the Pederson and his associates look at evidence, follow leads, and build a case. The story also gets inside the heads of those who might be guilty of the murder. The reader comes to understand their possible motivations; as always, the reader begins to think he knows who did it because the evidence is obvious. In this story, we even get inside the head of someone who did go about to murder Lombardi—but it turns out in the end he did not do the killing, he tried, but the killer was someone else.
The building through episodes kept me reading. This is an old story tactic, but when it works, it’s delightful and fun to read. I felt like I was going along with the investigators and unraveling the mystery. Then there are unexpected twists and turns. Reading is a game, I was taught in graduate school; a contract between the reader the author in which the reader expects certain things and the author provides them. The best end to the arrangement, though, is when the author manages to surprise the reader when the reader thought he had it all figured out, was smugly waiting the unfolding of the who-done-it, and then discovers he was wrong and someone else did the crime--someone he never expected.
The story builds slowly. I liked the Sheriff doing the investigation. The other characters were interesting as well; all of them had possible motivations for murdering the victim. But in the end, the reader is fooled. The author never gives the story away. Even though I thought I knew who did—was sure, in fact, because of the thoughts of one character in particularly—I was fooled, to my delight!
The building of the tale is well-done. The pace of the story draws the reader into it more deeply with each passing section. And then the twist at the end. This is the delight of reading a “detective story,” and Mr. Wahnefried did it very well. At the end of the story, I, as a reader, was satisfied as well as surprised. The story was fun to read. It kept my attention and made me want to know who killed the guy. And I was surprised by who did.
I recommend this for publication. It reflects an old time-honored style of writing that began with the first detective story ever, Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” on through Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Father Brown, and Colombo (anybody remember him?). It is entertaining, doesn’t get bogged down in details, keeps moving, and offers a surprise ending.
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WK35
Jan 31, 2023 14:22:40 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Jan 31, 2023 14:22:40 GMT
Had a few minutes to kill last week, so started reading this One Planet cap, found it interesting, well researched, and was looking forward to finishing it last night. It's a cool concept, an intelligent race/breed of long-lived octopi having evolved in the cold, pressurized depths of the ocean. Civilizations that actually endure for more than a few centuries. Star-faring beings, way ahead of we relatively new and unstable surface dwellers. It made me think of Cixin Liu's The Wandering Earth collection. However, once the entire 2 million year history of this "Octo-sapien" took over in an expository narrative that abandons (for almost 30 pages, i.e. half the story) Dr. Miguel, the human MC, as sci-fi imaginative as it was, I began to lose interest. It's a cool what-if, coulda-been scenario that Doris Lessing would've surely grokked to, but the academic (non-existent) POV felt wrong, made it too much work. Over repetition of "She-of-the-Two-Blinks-Blue" also distracted. So, it is with a heavy heart and considerable uncertainty that I place these pages gently, respectively, into the abyss that is TQR's Porthole (longer reads face higher bars).
Cixin Liu (perhaps my favorite sci-fi author along with Charlie Stoss) I'm pretty sure would've found a way for Dr Miguel to communicate with the octo-sapient female and maybe even her domesticized giant squid, and let her narrate the history of their species. It'd probably take very little tweaking, and allow for better development of both his and her characters. For me, that'd probably have been all it took to send this bad boy up with glowing recommendations. But, for now, it's a soft no.
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WK35
Feb 1, 2023 21:36:30 GMT
Post by guevara on Feb 1, 2023 21:36:30 GMT
“Fox Shit" (título muy llamativo) de Adam Breckenridge, es una historia que tiene una buena premisa y una trama continua que capta el interés del lector de inmediato –oops, sorry! I sometimes forget that most of the people who read blog this don't know Spanish. Let's try this again.
“Fox Shit” (very catching title) by Adam Breckenridge, is a story that has a good premise and a plot that captures the reader’s interest right away. That is the story’s strength, but it has what a call a “story-wrecking” element that makes the tale fall short—an element that I think could easily be dealt with, and I hope it is.
The story takes place somewhere in the future and perhaps on another planet. The people of Absessia have shot down an aircraft carrying the president of Havastan, killing him. The story notes the hostility between the two nations. Havastan is obviously a powerful and aggressive land and bullies the nation of Absessia. The narrator of the story thinks this would be a good time to confront Absessia’s bullying enemies, but the rulers of his land are afraid of their enemies and “practically begged for forgiveness on bended knee.” The rulers of Haverstam set conditions: the assassins must be captured and handed over to them; and the president’s remains returned to his homeland. This might be easy to do, but they insiste that every bit of him be returned. His body is found, but it has lain out in the forest for some time and has been partially eaten by an animal. A crew sent to find the body notices that a fox’s den lies not far from the place the body was found.
Next comes the process of retrieval, which could only be accomplished by recovering feces from the fox that chewed on the corpse (hence the title). Only one fox lives in the lair, so this particular animal is identified as the culprit who chewed on the President of Absessia.
The reader wonders if the man will kill the fox and is relieved to find that he does not plan to do this. He watches him, waiting for him, and all the while he ponders the unacceptable political situation his nation has come into. He would like to see a war between Havestan and Absessia. Maybe, he thinks, if there were a war, his nation would be liberated from the tyranny of its neighbor.
Soon the fox warms up to him. It eats from the narrator’s hand, showing the reader that a bond of affection has developed between them. In other words, it becomes his pet. When the fox finally has to go, the man delights in delivering its excrement to the envoys of Haverstan and saying, “Here’s your President.”
But the representatives of Havastan demand to have to the fox as well. The animal may have some of the President’s body still inside, they say. Knowing the creature will be dissected if he hands it over, the narrator will not give the fox up to them. He throws fox shit in the face of the envoy. This, the narrator tells us, brings about a five-year war between the two countries.
The tale has a good plot line. I loved it. But there’s something lacking, and that is backstory. Is this a science fiction story and Havastan and Absessia two planets or two nations on planet? What is the level of technology? What were the two cultures like? What made Absessia so willing to submit to the bullying of Havastan? The reader doesn’t know all of this, but backstory of the variety I am focused on is vital to a story of this sort. Without it, the reader is left unsatisfied. Creating such sci-fi stories demands information about the cultures involved, their technological capabilities, etc. Leaving this out makes the story unsatisfactory and disappointing.
Maybe it can be rewritten and the missing information on culture supplied. Otherwise, the reader feels something is missing from the tale—and something is.
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Post by rockefeller on Feb 8, 2023 14:40:26 GMT
Ms. Rocks and I went to this little coin store the other day. Cash becoming so worthless and all, we like to gift progeny with precious metal for births and birthdays and whatnot, something that's, if not more apt to hold its value, then at least not guaranteed to eventually become worthless. So I've been dealing with them for a while. The other day, for the first time, there was an armed guard at the door who had to let us in. The pretty displays were all gone or covered with plywood. Turns out they'd enjoyed their first armed robbery a couple weeks ago. A gun waving, everyone-on-the-floor, smash-and-grab that lasted maybe 90 seconds. Apparently organized gangs of subcontracted kids have been hitting jewelry stores all over the province lately. Our salesman still seemed shaken if not traumatized. Which brings me to the cap under review:
Band of bad boys (and one girl) set out to pilfer some rich folks' bunker in this near future, realistic post apocalyptic sci-fi. But too much point-A-to point-B (banal) narrative and ping-pong (back and forth) dialogue weakens the POV and voice. Promises more big-picture world building than it delivers. I did like the (true) story of the titular dog that got cooked in space, even before reentry, that was never meant to survive orbit. But not enough to send it up.
Hey VC, There's some nice writing, nice description here. It could be that another reader will love it. More of my gatekeeping here hinges on my mood, what I did (or didn't) have for breakfast (i.e., how caffeinated I am), how well the embedded "truths" and views (e.g., Make the rich pay!) necessary to all fiction, and just how well the entertainments (sex, violence, nostalgia, etc.) line up with my own preferences, than any objective measure of writing quality, which is a pretty nebulous concept anyway, especially in creative writing. And even so, I probably have my admittedly biased and personalized bar unreasonably high. All I'm trying to say is that I think you write well, but that I just didn't like the story that much. Though I'm sure if I'd written it, gotten as close to it as you have, I'd love it, as you probably do, and should.
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WK35
Feb 8, 2023 16:31:59 GMT
Post by rorschalk on Feb 8, 2023 16:31:59 GMT
Capital title, por favor?
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WK35
Feb 9, 2023 14:08:07 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Feb 9, 2023 14:08:07 GMT
Hmm... I thought we were directed to not divulge specifics like title and/or author until the cap ascended. No problemo though. The title is Laika, after the sacrificed space hound.
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WK35
Feb 9, 2023 15:56:34 GMT
Post by rorschalk on Feb 9, 2023 15:56:34 GMT
No VC names, but I need the title so I can easily find the gmail thread to relay the news to. I may have said that before, but I guess rules are made to be broken, sometimes.
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WK35
Feb 16, 2023 15:14:02 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Feb 16, 2023 15:14:02 GMT
Here we have a collaborative work by siblings, sisters, one a "retired newspaper feature writer" and the other a "retired English teacher." Their cover letter, though very well written, and not un-compelling, struck me as beginner-ish for its literary vanity. E.g., "Your readers with an interest in literature will find this especially appealing." This is exactly how I felt, and actually do still feel, about my own body of writing. But, unlike when I was a beginner, I no longer project this feeling, this great love for and faith in my writing, onto others. I have long learned not to expect others to love my muses' work as I do.
I have an "interest in literature." E.g., but for the day after David Wallace hanged himself, I have not cried in 30 years. And I even like romance, and regularly read the back covers' synopses of lower-shelved Harlequin romance novels in Zehrs. And I (seriously) love relationship studies. I even love writing that examines writing. Wallace did a lot of that, like in his Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way where there's a poet who uses only punctuation. I also like competent prose, which this cap, a few grammaticals aside (e.g., "Bennett had already organized diner [sic] with other conference attendees...") that just pasting into a gmail would catch, demonstrates.
And yet... and yet... I did not like “Such an Alluring Thought.” It doesn't follow the standard romantic arc where the hero and heroine initially clash. But that's fine. Molds were made to be broken. That I disagree with almost everything its characters expound on the art of writing was subjectively a little irksome. Like, “If you’re compelled to write, that should tell you that writing is what you’re to do” is belied by my observation and experience. (But then I hate NaNoWriMo.) I'm more a, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people,” kind of guy. Also, every public (i.e., promotional) reading I've ever attended mostly sucked. But the real stumbling block on this "Alluring" cap for me was a seemingly complete want of conflict or plot. It's mostly just erudite, occasionally droll, chit-chat that comes and goes nowhere. Also, though it's possible I missed it after I began to skim, there's no sex scene. Again, okay. Forgivable. Maybe even redeemable. Unless you're Updike, good sex scenes are difficult and risky ventures. Still, aside from the 1st person female narrator's superficial obsession with looks and attire, to me it felt almost completely platonic. So, no.
The following is an old essay that only loosely addresses my admittedly biased thoughts and concerns on the above portholed submission's literary gist and themes. You will not like it nearly as much as I do, if you even read it, as I probably would not.
In Which I Attend a Private Reading by Sandra Birdsell
"WRITER n pl. –S one that writes" — The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary Third Edition
Attended a private reading by Canadian author, Sandra Birdsell, yesterday. I didn’t know it was a private reading though. I thought it was a public reading. But apparently she’d given an open lecture the night before, and yesterday’s reading was a “faculty reading” for Conrad Grebel College staff only. I learned about it through an email from my dad who probably also didn’t realize that, technically, I wasn’t invited.
A nurse friend who thinks she might have Alzheimer’s gave me Jeffrey Moore’s very excellent The Memory Artists for my birthday last year. Somewhere in it, through a character who became a famous writer when his parody of a romance novel became a popular romance novel and whose advice to “aspiring writers” is “don’t become one,” Moore says (and possibly I paraphrase): “Never read your work in public. One has only to listen to Margaret Atwood to understand this.”
At 12:20 pm, ten minutes early, I plopped down into one of the plush, high-backed swivel chairs around the conference room’s large oval table. The room was empty. Then, as others began to show, and the room filled, it became increasingly obvious I didn’t belong. For one thing, I was the only one not wearing any underwear. Of this I am almost certain. I was also the only Jesus look-alike and the only one not adhering to any sort of external dress code whatsoever either to say the least. But mainly I was the only one not on Conrad Grebel’s faculty. My brother-in-law, Lowell, an international lawyer who teaches Peace and Conflict Studies, showed up and sat beside me. We were both surprised: me, because I hadn’t known he was into literature, and him, because, like I said, I’m not on faculty (although I did reside there for a few semesters thirty-some years ago and was twice their ping-pong champion).
I was also the only one in the room who had not read any of Birdsell’s work. Although I am less certain of this than that I was the only one going commando. After her introduction, she read a half hour excerpt from her most recent novel. Personally, I found the pace slow, the point of view wandering, the descriptions and ideas banal to cliché and the humor predictable. Some of this could have to do with the fact that I read differently than she speaks. I am not used to having prose doled out word by word. It was like drinking through a pipette. It was like studying a painting from up close through a toilette roll.
In her excerpt, a Matis Indian man and his German Mennonite bride screw on the floor of their antique marital home. We are told she has very large breasts for her short stature. After first asking her husband in both German and English (for readers who don’t speak German I guess) if he loves her, and his affirmation, she begins to undo her buttons lest he tear them off and scatter them about (audience chuckling here). Then, I almost groaned aloud when, in the very next sentence, they’re lying on the floor spent—finis—engaged in post-coital pillow talk. I mean I almost raised my hand and asked her to reread the last couple paragraphs, afraid I’d dozed off or something. At one point during their sated cuddle, the wife whose large breasts we were told but never shown says, “snug as a bug in a rug,” to her husband’s idiomatic confusion (and more audience chuckling).
But, as much as I didn’t care all that much for her writing (what little I heard), I really, really agreed and identified with her as a writer. She said she dislikes being cast as a “Mennonite writer”—that as soon as you become a Christian writer or a Matis writer or a women’s writer, or any kind of writer, you become less. She described a scene at her family's dinner table in which they pass a Bible around her while taking turns reading from it; them telling her that they don’t read her work because they want to love her. She said (with a frown) that her mother was never the same after finding salvation in a tent revival meeting; that she finds the notion, “because you are a Christian, God wants the very best for you,” repugnant, and that she’s begun to question other religious precepts of her youth—that she does this through her writing.
After she finished, the audience was invited to ask questions. The guy to my left's incomprehensible three-minute long one incorporated the word “redemptive” at least six times. And to which I think she answered, “Yes” and maybe, “Thank-you.” Most were only erudite praises of her work disguised as questions. Mine was the only one that seemed to piss her off. I asked her if her decision to use an omniscient, as in head-hopping, 3rd person narrator was in any way related to her expressed religious ambivalence. Then I stood corrected.
Afterwards, in the atrium, Lowell approached where I was engaged in speculating to a colleague of his on the challenges a writer like David Foster Wallace might face in reading his work aloud, and asked me to come to his office. For a second I thought I was in trouble. But Lowell just wanted to show me where he worked and all the renovations the college has undergone in the last few decades—which was good, because I was lost and had no clue where the parking lot I’d left my car in was, and would’ve headed off in the exact opposite direction. When I told him so, he laughed and said I’m just like my sister in that regard.
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WK35
Feb 16, 2023 15:35:27 GMT
Post by rorschalk on Feb 16, 2023 15:35:27 GMT
Hey Rox,
Could you start wk36 with the above excellent critique and adjacent essay? Also, please re-send to me in gmail so I can respond to the sisters, I plum lost the original sub!
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WK35
Feb 16, 2023 17:40:22 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Feb 16, 2023 17:40:22 GMT
Damn is the UI here ever a confusing pain in the ass. The cut-and-pasted bbcode was totally mutilated with HTML garbage, and looked nothing like the original. I can see why the site has so many formatting issues.
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