The question came up, not for the first time among writers of my acquaintance, of whether readers actually buy books on the basis of great opening lines. As my friend Dirk says, "There is amazing pressure from profit-making publishers and agents to begin with something that hooks the reader. The theory is that how books are sold is: people walk into bookstores, pick up books at random or on the basis of the cover, read the first couple of pages. If they are intrigued they buy the book, if not, not. A while ago I asked a New York agent if he thought this myth were true. He replied, 'I don't know if it's true or not, but I know publishers believe it is true so it may as well be.'"
Dirk, who both reads and writes respectable amounts of prose, does not choose his reading matter in this manner, and finds it an annoying assumption on the part of the publishing world. He points out that some of the best-loved and most admired books do not begin with any kind of dazzling hook. From Proust, for instance, we get "For a long time I used to go to bed early." I think that it is safe to say that Dirk and I are not alone in finding this quite an acceptable opener.
I too am always annoyed by this rampant notion that readers buy books based on the opening lines. I can understand how gatekeepers (publishers, agents) find it useful to do so--in reading a stack of student papers, I find that the opening paragraph is usually indicative of the overall quality of the rest--but as a reader of entire books, I pay next to no attention to the opening lines. When considering a book to buy or check out from the library, a good title and good cover art draw my attention (anything emphasizing pictures of high heeled shoes is not a good sign). I may take a quick look at the back cover and flap copy, again to see if the book sounds tempting or not like my cup of tea, and then I open to random middle pages and get a sense of the prose style.
I have also, of course, been known to read books that got positive reviews either in a publication or from friends, if the said books sounded like something I'd like/find interesting. And I try to be good about reading books by people I know, although I could improve in that realm.
Unlike Dirk, who relies mainly on reviews, recommendations, and familiarity with the author, I don't usually buy novels without having skimmed at least a paragraph or two (again, it will be in the middle, not page one). Therefore, I like to go to bookstores, and also to the library. The book fairs at scholarly conferences are also dangerous places for me to go (how much can I fit in my suitcase?), especially AWP where novels are everywhere and many of the small presses have invested in very appealing cover art.
I want novels to have openings that suit them, which is not to say that I have never enjoyed a snappy opener, such as "Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions." (Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means.) But usually I have no recollection of how the novels I have enjoyed began.
Monday, November 18, 2019
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Novels and More Novels! And Scholarly Stuff Too!
This semester has been an unusually easy and pleasant one, as in addition to a full and reasonably engaged class of students for North American Art to 1900, I've been teaching a smaller Honors course on Surrealism, which has been simply delightful. This lighter than usual load has enabled me to get a lot of writing done, which is a very fine thing.
As noted awhile back, over the summer I succeeded in finishing one of the novels that I'd been working on off and on over the years. Once it had been read and commented on by one of my fiction-writer friends, I made some fixes and have now submitted it to a small number of contests and presses.
Meanwhile, a novel completed earlier--In Search of the Magic Theater--which I've been submitting with some vigor to small presses after giving up on agent submissions (these people apparently can't figure out how to use Submittable to send polite rejections, but simply let one wonder, month after month), was named a finalist for the Eludia Award. This award is given to a woman over forty who has not yet published a book-length work of fiction. The list of finalists was fairly long, but still, it was neat to find myself on such a list. The winner of the 2019 competition is Elise Atchison, for Crazy Mountain, which will be published by the Hidden River Arts Sowilo Press.
I had expected to spend August slaving over course prep and scholarly projects, but felt compelled to get going on what I thought would be a novella, set in the Trump Era. (Era? Well, it has seemed long enough to call an era.) It turned out to be a short novel rather than a novella, and was done in mid-October. As it begins with the 2016 election, it's not something I exactly enjoyed writing, but I hope that readers find it at least reasonably interesting. Parts of it are, at least--to my mind--funny. On the other hand, it doesn't leave out climate crisis, the Mueller Report, or ailments often suffered by persons nearing retirement age.
And then there have been the scholarly projects! During the first week of school, I escaped for a brief period to attend the second annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, where I presented a paper on Toyen during a panel on Central European female surrealists. I meant to blog about this conference, which was fabulous, but was (apparently) too busy writing fiction to do so.
I then had to get cracking on my paper for the ASEEES conference, where I will be presenting on the Czech surrealists Nezval and Štyrský as Prague flâneurs, for a panel Chad Bryant and I put together on walking in Prague. I have now sent it to the discussant and merely need to do the Powerpoint; and also read the papers on Toyen that I will be discussant for.
Finally, or perhaps not so finally, I have a book chapter on Toyen due in December for an edited volume. I have got this just about wrapped up, but not quite.
As next semester I can expect to be teaching over 100 students and reading over 200 papers, 200 essay exams, and about 100 (since not everyone turns them in) exhibition journals, it is safe to predict that I will not be getting nearly as much writing done. C'est la vie.
As noted awhile back, over the summer I succeeded in finishing one of the novels that I'd been working on off and on over the years. Once it had been read and commented on by one of my fiction-writer friends, I made some fixes and have now submitted it to a small number of contests and presses.
Meanwhile, a novel completed earlier--In Search of the Magic Theater--which I've been submitting with some vigor to small presses after giving up on agent submissions (these people apparently can't figure out how to use Submittable to send polite rejections, but simply let one wonder, month after month), was named a finalist for the Eludia Award. This award is given to a woman over forty who has not yet published a book-length work of fiction. The list of finalists was fairly long, but still, it was neat to find myself on such a list. The winner of the 2019 competition is Elise Atchison, for Crazy Mountain, which will be published by the Hidden River Arts Sowilo Press.
I had expected to spend August slaving over course prep and scholarly projects, but felt compelled to get going on what I thought would be a novella, set in the Trump Era. (Era? Well, it has seemed long enough to call an era.) It turned out to be a short novel rather than a novella, and was done in mid-October. As it begins with the 2016 election, it's not something I exactly enjoyed writing, but I hope that readers find it at least reasonably interesting. Parts of it are, at least--to my mind--funny. On the other hand, it doesn't leave out climate crisis, the Mueller Report, or ailments often suffered by persons nearing retirement age.
And then there have been the scholarly projects! During the first week of school, I escaped for a brief period to attend the second annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, where I presented a paper on Toyen during a panel on Central European female surrealists. I meant to blog about this conference, which was fabulous, but was (apparently) too busy writing fiction to do so.
I then had to get cracking on my paper for the ASEEES conference, where I will be presenting on the Czech surrealists Nezval and Štyrský as Prague flâneurs, for a panel Chad Bryant and I put together on walking in Prague. I have now sent it to the discussant and merely need to do the Powerpoint; and also read the papers on Toyen that I will be discussant for.
Finally, or perhaps not so finally, I have a book chapter on Toyen due in December for an edited volume. I have got this just about wrapped up, but not quite.
As next semester I can expect to be teaching over 100 students and reading over 200 papers, 200 essay exams, and about 100 (since not everyone turns them in) exhibition journals, it is safe to predict that I will not be getting nearly as much writing done. C'est la vie.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Moving on to Copyedit with Magnetic Woman
Not long ago I received word that Magnetic Woman is now moving forward to copyediting. While it is true that I had thought it was doing that back in May or thereabouts, I am grateful that it is, indeed, moving ahead, and that its estimated release date will be Fall 2020 and therefore presumably during my lifetime. And now to update the Author Questionnaire that I turned in a year or so ago...
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Fixing Tenure-Track Hiring
Being that I am, in my day job, a professor, I read a certain number of articles relating to life in academe--all too many of which are fairly depressing. Even if the article isn't depressing, the comments often are. I was mildly skeptical, therefore, that an article entitled 5 Easy Fixes for a Broken Faculty Job Market could possibly offer anything useful.
I'm very pleased to report that this is actually a great and practical article. Whether the fixes are "easy" depends mainly on the extent to which departments choose to apply them.
First, the author recognizes that scholarly job applicants (and indeed search committees) are presently obliged to spend an insane amount of time dealing with job applications. I remember this well from both sides of the game (but especially from the applicant side). When I was on the job market 10+ years ago, we had to send off ridiculous amounts of material, and it usually had to be customized further than just inserting the correct names of school, department, and position in the cover letter. Not that I'm a foe of a good specific cover letter, but that should really be the only thing that has to be customized. In any case, if the author of this article is right, which I assume s/he is (not making any gender assumptions about a first name of Chris), things are worse now than then. When I was applying, for instance, the cover letter was supposed to be no more than two pages, and one was considered somewhat better than two. Now, apparently, the cover letter is expected to be two to four. Egad! That's criminal! Then there is a whole pile of other crap to send--much of which I had to send too, but I never had to send a Diversity Statement, and it wasn't normal to have to send transcripts.
I won't break down everything suggested in the article, but I'm all in favor of knocking the initial application down to just a few pieces, like cover letter, c.v., writing sample or a sample syllabus, and list of references. That's enough for the committee to whittle down to a list of initial interviewees. And while I do prefer in-person interviews, it is unquestionably kinder to applicants to do the first interview by phone, because yes, it costs a lot to go to professional conferences. Yes, people should try to attend for professional development and networking, but not everyone can afford to go when on the job market. Also, while video interviews are now fairly easy to do, my department chair has pointed out that they are not as fair as phone interviews; he had recently had the experience of realizing he was biased against an administrative candidate because he thought her home decor sucked. Obviously, said he, her home decor was irrelevant to whether she could do the job she was interviewing for, and he didn't want to be distracted by that.
Waiting to get references until the middle or final stages of a search also sounds great to me. It is, indeed, a time-sink for references (some of whom write very detailed, individual letters) to write masses of such letters each year. It should be enough to agree to be on someone's reference list and then provide the reference (written or oral) only if the candidate is under serious consideration. (Reference letters for students applying to grad school are a different matter, I think, and should be done at the start. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
There are other important suggestions here too, but even just implementing the above would be a huge step in the right direction. So thank you, Chris M. Golde of Stanford, for making such a practical, kind-to-all set of proposals. Here's hoping they take hold!
I'm very pleased to report that this is actually a great and practical article. Whether the fixes are "easy" depends mainly on the extent to which departments choose to apply them.
First, the author recognizes that scholarly job applicants (and indeed search committees) are presently obliged to spend an insane amount of time dealing with job applications. I remember this well from both sides of the game (but especially from the applicant side). When I was on the job market 10+ years ago, we had to send off ridiculous amounts of material, and it usually had to be customized further than just inserting the correct names of school, department, and position in the cover letter. Not that I'm a foe of a good specific cover letter, but that should really be the only thing that has to be customized. In any case, if the author of this article is right, which I assume s/he is (not making any gender assumptions about a first name of Chris), things are worse now than then. When I was applying, for instance, the cover letter was supposed to be no more than two pages, and one was considered somewhat better than two. Now, apparently, the cover letter is expected to be two to four. Egad! That's criminal! Then there is a whole pile of other crap to send--much of which I had to send too, but I never had to send a Diversity Statement, and it wasn't normal to have to send transcripts.
I won't break down everything suggested in the article, but I'm all in favor of knocking the initial application down to just a few pieces, like cover letter, c.v., writing sample or a sample syllabus, and list of references. That's enough for the committee to whittle down to a list of initial interviewees. And while I do prefer in-person interviews, it is unquestionably kinder to applicants to do the first interview by phone, because yes, it costs a lot to go to professional conferences. Yes, people should try to attend for professional development and networking, but not everyone can afford to go when on the job market. Also, while video interviews are now fairly easy to do, my department chair has pointed out that they are not as fair as phone interviews; he had recently had the experience of realizing he was biased against an administrative candidate because he thought her home decor sucked. Obviously, said he, her home decor was irrelevant to whether she could do the job she was interviewing for, and he didn't want to be distracted by that.
Waiting to get references until the middle or final stages of a search also sounds great to me. It is, indeed, a time-sink for references (some of whom write very detailed, individual letters) to write masses of such letters each year. It should be enough to agree to be on someone's reference list and then provide the reference (written or oral) only if the candidate is under serious consideration. (Reference letters for students applying to grad school are a different matter, I think, and should be done at the start. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
There are other important suggestions here too, but even just implementing the above would be a huge step in the right direction. So thank you, Chris M. Golde of Stanford, for making such a practical, kind-to-all set of proposals. Here's hoping they take hold!
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Writers Gonna Write
I know that it is August, and my primary task for the month is to ensure that my courses are ready to teach by later in the month (and that I have trimmed down my ISSS conference paper to 20 minutes and created the Powerpoint for it), but although I have done some work on my courses--which are, fortunately, all courses I've taught before--my mind has not yet quite settled into course-prep mode. It remains, mostly, in fiction mode.
Now, if I were a sane person (but are writers sane?), I would see about making progress on another of my close-to-done novels, which currently number two. In fact, I know which one ought to be finished next; it is the one I had intended to finish this summer, but which lost out to one that was closer to done. (There is some, if not much, method in my madness.)
Perversely, however, a new idea popped into my head. And it's not even the only new idea for a novel to come up in recent months; my cousin Cheryl and I have been plotting another one that we think I should write one of these days. That one, admittedly, will be a major project and I am not ready to embark on more than preliminary planning for it.
This one is a smaller project, I should hope (maybe a novella, even), and it began to percolate in my mind as I contemplated the fact that all of my novels (completed, underway, planned) are set between ten and ninety years in the past. (Well, one also has some portions set much further back than that, but the main action occurs in the 1980s.) Surely it might be a fine thing to, for once, dash off something that is still about the present day by the time I finish it?
I attempted to quell this feeling, which has so much against it (too many other projects, too little time, too much climate change and other life-destroying unpleasantness), but next thing I knew, I had an actual idea and some actual characters. For this, I blame Muriel Spark, as I had just reread her last novel Finishing School. Finishing School is quite short and mildly strange, and while I wouldn't class it as one of her best, it had made me say to myself "I too can dash off something about this length, provided I can write the damned thing start-to-finish rather than in my usual patchwork manner." (As I tend to plot as I go, starting at the beginning and moving along to the end is only sometimes an option, but when I can do it, I can write quickly.)
It may not be fair of me to blame Muriel Spark, who has been dead for 13 years now, for my own demented hubris. It may also seem bold of me to imagine that just because one of the major writers of the 20th century could dash off sometimes fairly short novels in very reasonable amounts of time, that I should aspire to do the same. Still, I know I can do it, because I've done it before. The novel that is out being contemplated by editors and contest judges is one I wrote in a three-month period, and it is not even remarkably short. (Having stolen the plot from a classic of Western literature helped immensely.)
It is fair to say, however, that while there are many authors that I love and admire, or even simply devour as light reading when tired, there are relatively few who give me that sense of get-up-and-write, and Muriel Spark is often one of them. If I could become some sort of amalgam of Muriel Spark, Robertson Davies, A.S. Byatt, and Italo Calvino, for instance, I would not be at all displeased. (Note that these writers are not all that similar.) I note, too, my Complete Works of Nathanael West lying carelessly nearby and we could throw him, too, into the mix.
However, literary name-dropping is not the point here, beyond that I want to announce that everyone ought to read André Alexis, who is actually still alive, unlike most of the above-mentioned.
No, in the back of my brain I'm sorting through things about this novel(la), which I've begun, and which could perhaps be written quickly, if I don't have to get bogged down in looking at old emails about political and ecological matters that will need to be mentioned in it. It's not a project I expect to find especially delightful (delightfulness can extend the writing process), but as I'm ahead of the game on writing my fall conference papers and suchlike, there's at least some possibility that I could write this item in a reasonable span of time.
No promises, but it could happen.
Now, if I were a sane person (but are writers sane?), I would see about making progress on another of my close-to-done novels, which currently number two. In fact, I know which one ought to be finished next; it is the one I had intended to finish this summer, but which lost out to one that was closer to done. (There is some, if not much, method in my madness.)
Perversely, however, a new idea popped into my head. And it's not even the only new idea for a novel to come up in recent months; my cousin Cheryl and I have been plotting another one that we think I should write one of these days. That one, admittedly, will be a major project and I am not ready to embark on more than preliminary planning for it.
This one is a smaller project, I should hope (maybe a novella, even), and it began to percolate in my mind as I contemplated the fact that all of my novels (completed, underway, planned) are set between ten and ninety years in the past. (Well, one also has some portions set much further back than that, but the main action occurs in the 1980s.) Surely it might be a fine thing to, for once, dash off something that is still about the present day by the time I finish it?
I attempted to quell this feeling, which has so much against it (too many other projects, too little time, too much climate change and other life-destroying unpleasantness), but next thing I knew, I had an actual idea and some actual characters. For this, I blame Muriel Spark, as I had just reread her last novel Finishing School. Finishing School is quite short and mildly strange, and while I wouldn't class it as one of her best, it had made me say to myself "I too can dash off something about this length, provided I can write the damned thing start-to-finish rather than in my usual patchwork manner." (As I tend to plot as I go, starting at the beginning and moving along to the end is only sometimes an option, but when I can do it, I can write quickly.)
It may not be fair of me to blame Muriel Spark, who has been dead for 13 years now, for my own demented hubris. It may also seem bold of me to imagine that just because one of the major writers of the 20th century could dash off sometimes fairly short novels in very reasonable amounts of time, that I should aspire to do the same. Still, I know I can do it, because I've done it before. The novel that is out being contemplated by editors and contest judges is one I wrote in a three-month period, and it is not even remarkably short. (Having stolen the plot from a classic of Western literature helped immensely.)
It is fair to say, however, that while there are many authors that I love and admire, or even simply devour as light reading when tired, there are relatively few who give me that sense of get-up-and-write, and Muriel Spark is often one of them. If I could become some sort of amalgam of Muriel Spark, Robertson Davies, A.S. Byatt, and Italo Calvino, for instance, I would not be at all displeased. (Note that these writers are not all that similar.) I note, too, my Complete Works of Nathanael West lying carelessly nearby and we could throw him, too, into the mix.
However, literary name-dropping is not the point here, beyond that I want to announce that everyone ought to read André Alexis, who is actually still alive, unlike most of the above-mentioned.
No, in the back of my brain I'm sorting through things about this novel(la), which I've begun, and which could perhaps be written quickly, if I don't have to get bogged down in looking at old emails about political and ecological matters that will need to be mentioned in it. It's not a project I expect to find especially delightful (delightfulness can extend the writing process), but as I'm ahead of the game on writing my fall conference papers and suchlike, there's at least some possibility that I could write this item in a reasonable span of time.
No promises, but it could happen.
Monday, August 5, 2019
Goodbye Opossum
I am sad to report that the hybrid literary journal Opossum, a beautifully designed "marsupial" which published a story of mine last year, has ceased publication. This is, unfortunately, a not uncommon fate of literary journals, especially those bravely founded by individuals and small editorial teams without university backing. Opossum not only featured gorgeous cover art leading one into the fiction and poetry, but in most of its issues included a 7" single, as the auditory was very important to the editorial team.
According to the former editor, "If we published your work or you are an educator and you want a box of Opossums, send me (opossum.jedgar@gmail.com) your address and I will ship it out to you via media mail in the coming weeks. Opossum was used in at least two university classes as an example of a literary journal and of mixed media in literature, so if you want issues for a class, let me know and they will come. After this first round, I will open it up to the general public."
According to the former editor, "If we published your work or you are an educator and you want a box of Opossums, send me (opossum.jedgar@gmail.com) your address and I will ship it out to you via media mail in the coming weeks. Opossum was used in at least two university classes as an example of a literary journal and of mixed media in literature, so if you want issues for a class, let me know and they will come. After this first round, I will open it up to the general public."
Sunday, August 4, 2019
El Paso and Dayton, Too
It's time to change policy and begin to return the USA to the civilized world.
Friday, August 2, 2019
And How Many of these Literary Fiction Tropes Do You Use?
This little checklist, on Electric Lit, caught my eye: Who Needs an MFA When You Have This Literary Fiction Trope Checklist?
As a non-MFA writer of literary fiction (and one whose first story was published before quite a few of today's adults were even born--yes, I'm admitting to being ancient, as I have a big birthday coming up), I could not resist taking a look. The 25 tropes are amusing in their way. The author suggests that if one can manage to cram all 25 into one story, one might even snag a Pulitzer.
Aha, now we know why I have not yet won a Pulitzer for the fiction that has been appearing in various little magazines over the past few decades!
I am pretty sure that the only one of these tropes that I have ever perpetrated was #10, "Woman who looks good without trying compared to female protagonist who looks bad despite trying." I feel mildly guilty at having ever included such a thing--why couldn't I have done #21, "Dogs bark in distance," instead? But I know I do have one instance of #10 in one of the close-to-done novels and I am not taking it out, because it's very brief and I think it works.
Oh, and I may possibly have used #22, "Upset character barfs," in a story I wrote during my freshman year of college. I kind of think I did, because I had a good friend who barfed when upset and I found that strange and evocative back then.
It's also true that I've had characters look out the window relatively early in the story (#2, "Starts with character looking out of window, describing scenery"), but not immediately upon waking (#1, "Starts with character waking up"). Perhaps I'm closer to Pulitzer-dom than I had thought.
Still, I just can't see myself ever using #16, "Villain who is kind to pet." My stories just don't really go in for villains, other than one I wrote at the age of 11 which involved a hyper-lustful nobleman in an imaginary world. The number of times Lord Evil managed to rape the Angry and Plucky Protagonist alongside the road in a short period of time made clear that the story was decidedly set in another world. I don't recall him being cruel to his horse, but I doubt he was kind to pets beyond making sure that the horse was properly maintained for jousting and such.
#15, "White savior," is also not likely to happen in my fiction unless we interpret this fairly broadly. I mean, I'm not likely to employ a "Black savior," a "Brown savior," or a "Yellow" or "Red savior" either. Saviors just aren't my kind of fictional trope. Well, apart from that one of my protagonists mentioned Warner Sallman's much-reproduced painting Christ at Heart's Door as a common household ornament. If you are my relative and are reading this, I am sure you know this work well, whether or not you know its name or artist.
Finally, #3, "Protagonist is writer with writer’s block," is very unlikely to crop up in my fiction. I admit that I should try to make my protagonists less like myself (and some of them certainly are strongly unlike me), but the only time I had a serious case of writer's block, I cured it by starting a different writing project. So all right, as a result of doing that I lost Agent #2 because I never finished the book I'd become blocked on, but win some, lose some. I just don't have much desire to write about protagonists who have writer's block. (Other characters with writer's block, perhaps. Minor characters. Not protagonists.)
And now we can see why I am not headed for a Pulitzer, and apparently also why I am not yet a household name among the North American literati.
As a non-MFA writer of literary fiction (and one whose first story was published before quite a few of today's adults were even born--yes, I'm admitting to being ancient, as I have a big birthday coming up), I could not resist taking a look. The 25 tropes are amusing in their way. The author suggests that if one can manage to cram all 25 into one story, one might even snag a Pulitzer.
Aha, now we know why I have not yet won a Pulitzer for the fiction that has been appearing in various little magazines over the past few decades!
I am pretty sure that the only one of these tropes that I have ever perpetrated was #10, "Woman who looks good without trying compared to female protagonist who looks bad despite trying." I feel mildly guilty at having ever included such a thing--why couldn't I have done #21, "Dogs bark in distance," instead? But I know I do have one instance of #10 in one of the close-to-done novels and I am not taking it out, because it's very brief and I think it works.
Oh, and I may possibly have used #22, "Upset character barfs," in a story I wrote during my freshman year of college. I kind of think I did, because I had a good friend who barfed when upset and I found that strange and evocative back then.
It's also true that I've had characters look out the window relatively early in the story (#2, "Starts with character looking out of window, describing scenery"), but not immediately upon waking (#1, "Starts with character waking up"). Perhaps I'm closer to Pulitzer-dom than I had thought.
Still, I just can't see myself ever using #16, "Villain who is kind to pet." My stories just don't really go in for villains, other than one I wrote at the age of 11 which involved a hyper-lustful nobleman in an imaginary world. The number of times Lord Evil managed to rape the Angry and Plucky Protagonist alongside the road in a short period of time made clear that the story was decidedly set in another world. I don't recall him being cruel to his horse, but I doubt he was kind to pets beyond making sure that the horse was properly maintained for jousting and such.
#15, "White savior," is also not likely to happen in my fiction unless we interpret this fairly broadly. I mean, I'm not likely to employ a "Black savior," a "Brown savior," or a "Yellow" or "Red savior" either. Saviors just aren't my kind of fictional trope. Well, apart from that one of my protagonists mentioned Warner Sallman's much-reproduced painting Christ at Heart's Door as a common household ornament. If you are my relative and are reading this, I am sure you know this work well, whether or not you know its name or artist.
Finally, #3, "Protagonist is writer with writer’s block," is very unlikely to crop up in my fiction. I admit that I should try to make my protagonists less like myself (and some of them certainly are strongly unlike me), but the only time I had a serious case of writer's block, I cured it by starting a different writing project. So all right, as a result of doing that I lost Agent #2 because I never finished the book I'd become blocked on, but win some, lose some. I just don't have much desire to write about protagonists who have writer's block. (Other characters with writer's block, perhaps. Minor characters. Not protagonists.)
And now we can see why I am not headed for a Pulitzer, and apparently also why I am not yet a household name among the North American literati.
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
A Promise to Myself, Kept
I'm very pleased with myself at having finally finished, this afternoon, the complete first draft of a novel I've been working on (along with several other books, including my scholarly book Magnetic Woman on the Czech surrealist Toyen, an anthology of Czech modernist writings on art and visual culture, and numerous shorter projects!) for a long time.
This novel and two others had been knocking around for awhile in a not-too-far-from-done state. As I have even more novels planned, and no longer have to focus most of my attention on Magnetic Woman and tenure/promotion, back in May I made a promise to myself that this summer I'd finish at least one novel. It feels pretty good to have done so.
Now, of course, a first draft is not usually a submittable finished work, but in this case I think it is pretty close to one. I'll have a few friends read it over and offer comments. If they find it pretty much ready to go, then it will join the other finished novel that is currently being considered by the readers for various novel contests and literary publishers.
I'd like to simply proceed to finish another novel now, but with August beginning tomorrow, I've got to turn my energies to the courses I'll be teaching in the coming school year.
This novel and two others had been knocking around for awhile in a not-too-far-from-done state. As I have even more novels planned, and no longer have to focus most of my attention on Magnetic Woman and tenure/promotion, back in May I made a promise to myself that this summer I'd finish at least one novel. It feels pretty good to have done so.
Now, of course, a first draft is not usually a submittable finished work, but in this case I think it is pretty close to one. I'll have a few friends read it over and offer comments. If they find it pretty much ready to go, then it will join the other finished novel that is currently being considered by the readers for various novel contests and literary publishers.
I'd like to simply proceed to finish another novel now, but with August beginning tomorrow, I've got to turn my energies to the courses I'll be teaching in the coming school year.
Monday, July 29, 2019
Jane Friedman at
Midwest Writers Workshop 2019
As it won't be long until Magnetic Woman comes out (at least, so I hope... to the best of my knowledge we're in the copyediting stage), I thought it couldn't hurt to update my knowledge of book promotion tactics. This is one of those areas that, while the fundamentals don't change, always has new means of approach, new venues, new ideas, and all that. So although I like to think I did a pretty decent job of helping promote my friend Milt Wolff's autobiographical Spanish Civil War novel Another Hill back in the mid-90s (I created and distributed a press kit and set up a successful local book tour), I wouldn't say I've been remarkably au courant on how one promotes a book in 2019.
However, since I've begun attending the annual AWP conference for the benefit of my fiction projects, I'd seen Jane Friedman speak at a book promotion panel there and had signed up for her Electric Speed newsletter. When I saw she was doing an all-day Author Platform and Development Bootcamp at the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, I signed up.
I was not disappointed. Jane helps authors of a wide range of types of book figure out good ways of reaching their readership, and the focus at this session was on how we, as published or near-to-publication authors, can use our existing knowledge and contacts, and use smart but readily learned internet tactics, to build our name and title recognition. In other words, things like targeting readers who will be interested in our work and communicating with them. We were asked to think in terms of a specific book project, not about everything we write, so I focused on how to promote Magnetic Woman rather than the novel for which I am currently seeking a publisher.
Now, some of this was fairly straightforward for Magnetic Woman as I have a pretty good idea who the main audiences will be--people interested in Czech studies, art history (especially female modernists), surrealism, and women's/gender studies. Most of the exercises we did were quick and easy for me--but were nonetheless useful in focusing my thoughts. But I certainly wasn't aware of most of the tools Jane showed us that are available free online! Clever tips on using Amazon.com and Goodreads, for starters.
All of this will also be useful for promoting my novels, when they come out, but first things first.
Jane kindly encouraged us all to get selfies with her which we can post, and I did so, but for reasons unknown to me, initially Blogger was not cooperating and posting the photo here. Fortunately, days later, Blogger has consented to post it. It's a really nice photo of Jane and an acceptable one of me.
However, since I've begun attending the annual AWP conference for the benefit of my fiction projects, I'd seen Jane Friedman speak at a book promotion panel there and had signed up for her Electric Speed newsletter. When I saw she was doing an all-day Author Platform and Development Bootcamp at the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, I signed up.
I was not disappointed. Jane helps authors of a wide range of types of book figure out good ways of reaching their readership, and the focus at this session was on how we, as published or near-to-publication authors, can use our existing knowledge and contacts, and use smart but readily learned internet tactics, to build our name and title recognition. In other words, things like targeting readers who will be interested in our work and communicating with them. We were asked to think in terms of a specific book project, not about everything we write, so I focused on how to promote Magnetic Woman rather than the novel for which I am currently seeking a publisher.
Now, some of this was fairly straightforward for Magnetic Woman as I have a pretty good idea who the main audiences will be--people interested in Czech studies, art history (especially female modernists), surrealism, and women's/gender studies. Most of the exercises we did were quick and easy for me--but were nonetheless useful in focusing my thoughts. But I certainly wasn't aware of most of the tools Jane showed us that are available free online! Clever tips on using Amazon.com and Goodreads, for starters.
All of this will also be useful for promoting my novels, when they come out, but first things first.
Jane kindly encouraged us all to get selfies with her which we can post, and I did so, but for reasons unknown to me, initially Blogger was not cooperating and posting the photo here. Fortunately, days later, Blogger has consented to post it. It's a really nice photo of Jane and an acceptable one of me.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Prague: Crossroads of Europe
Derek Sayer. Prague: Crossroads of Europe. London: Reaktion Books, 2019. 280 pp. $22.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78914-009-5.
Reviewed by Karla Huebner (Wright State University)
In the years since the Velvet Revolution, Prague—for forty years a near-mystery behind the Iron Curtain—has become one of Europe’s most visited cities. Praised in the early 1990s as an expat destination rivaling Paris of the 1920s, then infested in the 2000s by drunken British stag parties, Prague has nonetheless remained a site too little understood by most of its visitors, many of whom have very little awareness of its complex history.
Derek Sayer’s Prague: Crossroads of Europe should help travelers gain a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the city and its context. Part of Reaktion’s Cityscapes series (other titles address Beijing, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Chicago, New York, Paris, and San Francisco), it combines history with travel guide. Titles in this series are written “by authors with intimate knowledge of the cities,” provide “a unique overview of a city’s past as well as a focused eye on its present,” and offer “essential cultural companions to the world’s greatest cities.” To accomplish this, the usual travel-guide format is reversed: instead of a short overview of the city followed by endless listings of sights, lodgings, restaurants, and shops, here we have 226 illustrated pages of urban and national history followed by twenty pages of listings, five pages of chronology, fifteen pages of citations for quoted material and additional sources, two pages of suggested reading and viewing, and a ten-page index.
As a scholar who often writes about Prague and the Czech lands (notably, the prize-winning books The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History [1998] and Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History [2013]), Sayer is an appropriately knowledgeable author for this title. His background as a sociologist, combined with decades of research on Czech cultural history, gives him an unusually broad basis from which to prepare a guide for the intelligent, nonspecialist traveler. He writes in an accessible, jargon-free style and has a fine eye for the telling detail and illuminating anecdote.
But as this book is a travel guide, we may reasonably ask whether it is useful beyond that specific purpose. What does it offer scholars of urban history, or for that matter scholars in general who may or may not be planning trips to Prague?
Prague: Crossroads of Europe is, actually, a worthwhile addition to the urban historian’s library. While it is not conceived as an analytical text and (unsurprisingly) does not offer detailed accounts of population shifts, annexations of suburbs, construction of sewers, waterworks, or electrical grids, nor maps of the city’s growth, fortifications, or metro, Sayer is nonetheless alert to such matters and weaves them into his text. The meat of the book consists of an informative prologue, twelve chapters of history, and seven essays about aspects of the city today. The twelve historical chapters take us from the legendary birth of the city up to a brief look at the Velvet Revolution and its aftermath.
Against this larger backdrop of the history of Bohemia and Moravia (necessary to properly understand the history of Prague), much material of interest to the urban historian can be found. For instance, the second chapter, “Přemyslid Prague,” overviews developments from the ninth through the thirteenth century, with information on the establishment of churches, monasteries, and synagogues, as well as notes on markets, bridges, fortifications, and flooding. This chapter also points out that with a population estimated at around 3,500 in 1200, Jews, Germans, and Italians as well as Czechs were part of the city from very early (Prague’s first pogrom occurred in 1096 and the earliest mention of a synagogue dates to 1124). In chapter 3, “The Golden Age of Charles IV,” Sayer focuses on urban developments under the celebrated fourteenth-century ruler, such as street paving, contracts for street cleaning and waste disposal in 1340, the foundation of Charles University, and ethnic and social differences between Old Town and New Town. Chapter 4, “Against All!” gives background on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, during which religious conflict was particularly significant for the city and for Bohemia more generally. Chapter 5, “A Poisoned Chalice,” similarly highlights religious conflict during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but also provides information on architectural changes, such as work on the Old Town Hall and New Town Hall, the foundation of the Jesuit Clementinum (now the National Library), Renaissance additions to the Lesser Town and elsewhere, the flourishing Jewish community of the turn of the seventeenth century, and Emperor Rudolf’s proclamations against dirty streets and rising crime. Chapter 6, “The White Mountain,” looks at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments, many of which relate to the re-Catholicization of the city after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, such as the expulsion of non-Catholic clergy and “the choice of conversion or banishment” for nobles and burghers (p. 88). The shift to German as language of state, literature and learning, and polite society, and the devastations of the Thirty Years War and plague are also noted, as well as the baroque construction boom, which involved the building of numerous churches, aristocratic palaces, and burgher townhouses; information on the subsequent lives of many of these buildings is provided as well.
Chapter 7, “The Homeland and the Muses,” moves on to the Enlightenment, with the beginnings of religious toleration; the rise in land patriotism (versus linguistic/ethnic nationalism); the establishment of purpose-built theaters; and the construction of highways, sewers, paved streets, parks, and bridges and embankments, not to mention the arrival of industrialization. Chapter 8, “Golden Slavonic Prague,” addresses the nineteenth-century growth in population and Czech nationalism, with attention to census self-identification and linguistic geography in the city, as well as rising Czech-language education, literature, and societies. The continued growth of industry; the departure of Jews from the ghetto and slum clearance there; the construction of railways, bridges, waterworks, the Negrelli Viaduct, and also the city’s first gasworks, electric lighting, and telephone network as well as major public buildings, a stock exchange, and important new churches; and the rise of art nouveau architecture are also outlined. Chapter 9, “At the Crossroads,” focuses on the First Republic (1918-38) and the establishment of Greater Prague, which annexed thirty-eight largely Czech suburbs to the city, shifting its demographics; the retitling of German and Habsburg place names is also mentioned. The contributions of modernist architects are noted, as are developments in industry, transit, social housing, garden city suburbs, department stores, and traffic lights. Chapter 10, “Into the Shadows,” covers the Nazi occupation of 1938-45, extermination of the Jews, and the postwar expulsion of ethnic Germans. Chapter 11, “Prague Moves East,” addresses the city under Communism and includes discussion of monuments; the massive construction of suburban prefab housing; the development of the metro and other improvements in transportation; the construction of Stalinist and Brutalist hotels, department stores, theaters, and the TV tower; and efforts relating to architectural conservation. Chapter 12, “Back into Europe,” primarily summarizes the Velvet Revolution, then mentions a few aspects of the shift back to capitalism.
The section “The City Today” provides essays on the Prague coffee house, beer, Cubism, modernity, the Karlín district, Little Hanoi, and the Dancing House. These provide looks at aspects of the present-day city that include much political, ethnic, artistic, literary, and historical information. They do not attempt to give an account of the entire metropolitan area, but rather use specific topics to convey important aspects of the city that include which cafes were frequented by particular famous figures, and the relationship between traditional pubs and wine bars to the likes of new Irish pubs and craft brewing. Czech modernist architecture from Cubism to Functionalism benefits from two essays; changes in neighborhoods are the topic of “Karlín Redux” (gentrification from a working-class and Roma district to a yuppie and hipster enclave); “Little Hanoi” addresses the city’s large Vietnamese population by introducing the reader to a huge market complex on the southern outskirts and the voices of some Vietnamese Praguers. The Dancing House essay looks at recent Czech-Western interconnections such as Frank Gehry and Vlado Miluniċ’s famous “Fred and Ginger” plus rock music and Prague anglophone literature.
While Prague: Crossroads of Europe is not a substitute for a scholarly text on the urban history of Prague, overall it provides a remarkably useful and very readable short history that will certainly be welcomed by scholars visiting the city; it can also be used as a quick reference. Sayer sprinkles information about numerous historical periods and topics into his chapters, which makes for a more engaging read but means the index is vital for readers who want to know specifics about particular structures or topics. Also, while quotations are cited and general sources are given, scholarly readers will have to hunt for sources of some of the information (such as data on street paving or electrification). Here, additional “Further Reading” titles would have been helpful. But so long as the reader recognizes the overarching purpose of the book, which is to give the traveler a historically focused introduction to the city, scholars as well as the general public should find this a worthy volume. In fact, it could also serve as a textbook for a course on the city, if supplemented with suitable additional readings.
Originally published at H-Urban, H-Net Reviews, July, 2019, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviewed by Karla Huebner (Wright State University)
In the years since the Velvet Revolution, Prague—for forty years a near-mystery behind the Iron Curtain—has become one of Europe’s most visited cities. Praised in the early 1990s as an expat destination rivaling Paris of the 1920s, then infested in the 2000s by drunken British stag parties, Prague has nonetheless remained a site too little understood by most of its visitors, many of whom have very little awareness of its complex history.
Derek Sayer’s Prague: Crossroads of Europe should help travelers gain a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the city and its context. Part of Reaktion’s Cityscapes series (other titles address Beijing, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Chicago, New York, Paris, and San Francisco), it combines history with travel guide. Titles in this series are written “by authors with intimate knowledge of the cities,” provide “a unique overview of a city’s past as well as a focused eye on its present,” and offer “essential cultural companions to the world’s greatest cities.” To accomplish this, the usual travel-guide format is reversed: instead of a short overview of the city followed by endless listings of sights, lodgings, restaurants, and shops, here we have 226 illustrated pages of urban and national history followed by twenty pages of listings, five pages of chronology, fifteen pages of citations for quoted material and additional sources, two pages of suggested reading and viewing, and a ten-page index.
As a scholar who often writes about Prague and the Czech lands (notably, the prize-winning books The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History [1998] and Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History [2013]), Sayer is an appropriately knowledgeable author for this title. His background as a sociologist, combined with decades of research on Czech cultural history, gives him an unusually broad basis from which to prepare a guide for the intelligent, nonspecialist traveler. He writes in an accessible, jargon-free style and has a fine eye for the telling detail and illuminating anecdote.
But as this book is a travel guide, we may reasonably ask whether it is useful beyond that specific purpose. What does it offer scholars of urban history, or for that matter scholars in general who may or may not be planning trips to Prague?
Prague: Crossroads of Europe is, actually, a worthwhile addition to the urban historian’s library. While it is not conceived as an analytical text and (unsurprisingly) does not offer detailed accounts of population shifts, annexations of suburbs, construction of sewers, waterworks, or electrical grids, nor maps of the city’s growth, fortifications, or metro, Sayer is nonetheless alert to such matters and weaves them into his text. The meat of the book consists of an informative prologue, twelve chapters of history, and seven essays about aspects of the city today. The twelve historical chapters take us from the legendary birth of the city up to a brief look at the Velvet Revolution and its aftermath.
Against this larger backdrop of the history of Bohemia and Moravia (necessary to properly understand the history of Prague), much material of interest to the urban historian can be found. For instance, the second chapter, “Přemyslid Prague,” overviews developments from the ninth through the thirteenth century, with information on the establishment of churches, monasteries, and synagogues, as well as notes on markets, bridges, fortifications, and flooding. This chapter also points out that with a population estimated at around 3,500 in 1200, Jews, Germans, and Italians as well as Czechs were part of the city from very early (Prague’s first pogrom occurred in 1096 and the earliest mention of a synagogue dates to 1124). In chapter 3, “The Golden Age of Charles IV,” Sayer focuses on urban developments under the celebrated fourteenth-century ruler, such as street paving, contracts for street cleaning and waste disposal in 1340, the foundation of Charles University, and ethnic and social differences between Old Town and New Town. Chapter 4, “Against All!” gives background on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, during which religious conflict was particularly significant for the city and for Bohemia more generally. Chapter 5, “A Poisoned Chalice,” similarly highlights religious conflict during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but also provides information on architectural changes, such as work on the Old Town Hall and New Town Hall, the foundation of the Jesuit Clementinum (now the National Library), Renaissance additions to the Lesser Town and elsewhere, the flourishing Jewish community of the turn of the seventeenth century, and Emperor Rudolf’s proclamations against dirty streets and rising crime. Chapter 6, “The White Mountain,” looks at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments, many of which relate to the re-Catholicization of the city after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, such as the expulsion of non-Catholic clergy and “the choice of conversion or banishment” for nobles and burghers (p. 88). The shift to German as language of state, literature and learning, and polite society, and the devastations of the Thirty Years War and plague are also noted, as well as the baroque construction boom, which involved the building of numerous churches, aristocratic palaces, and burgher townhouses; information on the subsequent lives of many of these buildings is provided as well.
Chapter 7, “The Homeland and the Muses,” moves on to the Enlightenment, with the beginnings of religious toleration; the rise in land patriotism (versus linguistic/ethnic nationalism); the establishment of purpose-built theaters; and the construction of highways, sewers, paved streets, parks, and bridges and embankments, not to mention the arrival of industrialization. Chapter 8, “Golden Slavonic Prague,” addresses the nineteenth-century growth in population and Czech nationalism, with attention to census self-identification and linguistic geography in the city, as well as rising Czech-language education, literature, and societies. The continued growth of industry; the departure of Jews from the ghetto and slum clearance there; the construction of railways, bridges, waterworks, the Negrelli Viaduct, and also the city’s first gasworks, electric lighting, and telephone network as well as major public buildings, a stock exchange, and important new churches; and the rise of art nouveau architecture are also outlined. Chapter 9, “At the Crossroads,” focuses on the First Republic (1918-38) and the establishment of Greater Prague, which annexed thirty-eight largely Czech suburbs to the city, shifting its demographics; the retitling of German and Habsburg place names is also mentioned. The contributions of modernist architects are noted, as are developments in industry, transit, social housing, garden city suburbs, department stores, and traffic lights. Chapter 10, “Into the Shadows,” covers the Nazi occupation of 1938-45, extermination of the Jews, and the postwar expulsion of ethnic Germans. Chapter 11, “Prague Moves East,” addresses the city under Communism and includes discussion of monuments; the massive construction of suburban prefab housing; the development of the metro and other improvements in transportation; the construction of Stalinist and Brutalist hotels, department stores, theaters, and the TV tower; and efforts relating to architectural conservation. Chapter 12, “Back into Europe,” primarily summarizes the Velvet Revolution, then mentions a few aspects of the shift back to capitalism.
The section “The City Today” provides essays on the Prague coffee house, beer, Cubism, modernity, the Karlín district, Little Hanoi, and the Dancing House. These provide looks at aspects of the present-day city that include much political, ethnic, artistic, literary, and historical information. They do not attempt to give an account of the entire metropolitan area, but rather use specific topics to convey important aspects of the city that include which cafes were frequented by particular famous figures, and the relationship between traditional pubs and wine bars to the likes of new Irish pubs and craft brewing. Czech modernist architecture from Cubism to Functionalism benefits from two essays; changes in neighborhoods are the topic of “Karlín Redux” (gentrification from a working-class and Roma district to a yuppie and hipster enclave); “Little Hanoi” addresses the city’s large Vietnamese population by introducing the reader to a huge market complex on the southern outskirts and the voices of some Vietnamese Praguers. The Dancing House essay looks at recent Czech-Western interconnections such as Frank Gehry and Vlado Miluniċ’s famous “Fred and Ginger” plus rock music and Prague anglophone literature.
While Prague: Crossroads of Europe is not a substitute for a scholarly text on the urban history of Prague, overall it provides a remarkably useful and very readable short history that will certainly be welcomed by scholars visiting the city; it can also be used as a quick reference. Sayer sprinkles information about numerous historical periods and topics into his chapters, which makes for a more engaging read but means the index is vital for readers who want to know specifics about particular structures or topics. Also, while quotations are cited and general sources are given, scholarly readers will have to hunt for sources of some of the information (such as data on street paving or electrification). Here, additional “Further Reading” titles would have been helpful. But so long as the reader recognizes the overarching purpose of the book, which is to give the traveler a historically focused introduction to the city, scholars as well as the general public should find this a worthy volume. In fact, it could also serve as a textbook for a course on the city, if supplemented with suitable additional readings.
Originally published at H-Urban, H-Net Reviews, July, 2019, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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