Category: Things You Should Be Reading
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Post# 34: Utilitarian Description
I read a short passage in Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box the other night and I liked it so much, I wrote it down and am here to burden you with it. It’s a short passage. Here it is: “She glared at Jude, saw he was dressed, black Doc Martens,…
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Post #11: Assignment Afghanistan
Elliott Woods is another amazing writer (and photographer) I met at Bread Loaf this past August. He is a journalist and former soldier who covers America’s war in Afghanistan. I knew that Elliott reported regularly for Virginia Quarterly Review on the subject and recently discovered a website he’s put together…
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Post #9: You Should Be Reading More John Fowles
I first discovered John Fowles via his marvelous and twisted novel of obsession and sexual gamesmanship The Magus. It scrambled my brain. Freaked me out. Turned me on. It’s a wild ride. But as good as The Magus is, Fowles’s first novel, The Collector, might be even better. I read it recently…
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Post #6: Revision and the Clock
A writing teacher once told me that you know a piece is done when you can’t stand to look at it anymore. For a long time, I thought that was about the best writing advice I’d ever heard; it distilled a lot of my own beliefs about revision to a…
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Post #3: Flash This
As a novelist (mostly), I come to short stories a bit cautious, a bit weary. After a few years of attempts, I’m warming up to them. Which means that I come to flash fiction somewhere between mildly perplexed and scared shitless. The form, though, is a good counterweight to my…
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Post #2: DFW on the (sub) Brain
The umbrella topic to start the year in my classes has been “What Does it Mean to be Educated?” but after re-reading and playing the audio to my honors seminar, I’m wondering now if the entire theme and the subsequent class periods spent discussing and writing about it wasn’t subconsciously…
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Post #1: Fantastic and Twisted Individuals
I’ll begin my first blog post with a couple of tributes. First goes to my good friend (and Bread Loaf roommate) Alan Stewart Carl, who can be found on the interweb at alanstewartcarl.blogspot.com. Read his fiction, much of which can be linked to off his blog. It’s really good. And…
Benjamin Roesch 