by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Dec 20, 2009 | craft of writing, details |
Wanted to share this quote with you from Anne Enright’s The Gathering: “I love this undertaker. He has that thing that young people got, sometime after I grew up. He does not pretend. He does not judge. He talks about the caskets in a...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 12, 2009 | accumulation, craft of writing, details, place |
I discovered Snoop by Sam Gosling in a note by @piscivorous on Facebook. Its subtitle is What Your Stuff Says About You. I was interested in this book not only for what it could tell me about how to portray fictional characters but also for what it could tell me about...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 25, 2009 | craft of writing, details, reading |
So many things left unmentioned: David Foster Wallace’s skilled use of the French language: “Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rolants” (719) and hilarious translations from English to French: demi-maison (730) and from French to English: see Marathe...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 24, 2009 | details, life, time, truth |
David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest… On Humor: This book is often laugh-out-loud funny. Hal: “I do things like get in a taxi and say, ‘The library, and step on it.'” (12) Hal: “I’m an O.E.D. man, Doctor.” (29) The Narrator...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 23, 2009 | craft of writing, details |
Following from yesterday’s Shakespeare quote, it’s interesting to note that the first two words of Hamlet are “Who’s there?” and the first two words of Infinite Jest are “I am”. I didn’t catch this. I read it on the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 25, 2009 | details, memory, reading |
The Music Room by Dennis McFarland was published in 1990. I read it the first time in 1991, and then again at the beginning of August–eighteen years later. I enjoyed it just as much. Here, McFarland could be describing his own writing, instead of a feeling:...
