The blether…
Sitting here in the kitchen nook, weans in bed, waiting for hubbie to come home, chicken in the oven, dog snoring on the floor, so what’s the blether?
Boldtype recently posted their thirty favorite opening lines in literature and are asking for more suggestions. Meanwhile at The Guardian authors share their ten rules for writing fiction, a la Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing due out this month, a project that has raised the ire of Mark Sarvas over at the Elegant Variation, who quotes from a 2001 TLS response to such lists, making a humorous and salient point. Discussion around writerly advice continues on the relevance of reading to writers, posted by Evan Maloney on The Guardian’s books blog. How important is it? Well, duh, need to think about that one….
Of course, there is a difference between reading for craft and reading to, well, pinch stuff. Or is there? Not according to seventeen year-old German literary sensation Helene
Hegemann who admits, blithely, that sections of her best-selling novel Axelotl Roadkill, are the work of another writer. Hegelmann’s talent for literary ‘synthesis’ shares the current scandal spotlight with Charles Pellegrino’s non-fiction work, The Last Train from Hiroshima, recently withdrawn from distribution by Henry Holt & Company due to some ‘concerns’ about the veracity of its contents.
Meanwhile Steve Wasserman considers the fate of books after the age of print, contemplating not merely the closing of bookstores and the folding of publishers, but the possible demise of literacy itself, and over at Salon.com, David Shields new manifesto, Reality Hunger, gets hauled over the coals for its antipathy toward the novel form.
Whew, the chicken’s burning…