The Story Prize 2011 Reading Extravaganza!

1. The crowd at Tishman Auditorium. 2. Mr. Elusive, AKA Don DeLillo, with Larry Dark.

 

Last night in the Tishman Auditorium at The New School, Robert Polito, Director of the Graduate Writing Program, said The Story Prize has “accomplished something incredible … a sophisticated evaluation of the form.” Now in its eighth year, The Story Prize selects three finalists, hosts a reading and conversation, and, at the end of the night, awards one book $20,000 in cold hard cash, and $5,000 to each of the two other books. If that sounds pretty sweet it’s because it is. Dish editor Julia Jackson and I made our way to Tishman to see and hear Don Delillo (The Angel Esmerelda), Steven Millhauser (We Others), and Edith Perlman (Binocular Vision, winner of the 2011 Wallant Award and PEN/Malamud Award) read from their 2011 collections. Later, we went to the reception and ate spicy meatballs, tried to photograph Don DeLillo, and talked about Livejournal communities. Yes, I repeat: Livejournal communities.

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Interview with Emma Straub — Glamour Out the Wazoo

Emma Straub is a bit of an anomaly in the publishing business: She’s smiley, she’s blond, she doesn’t wear all black. She likes social networking, especially Twitter. She isn’t afraid to get all lowbrow and confess her love for things like The Bachelor and the New Kids on the Block. And she’s nice—really, really nice.

Of course, she’s also a brilliant writer. The stories in her debut collection, Other People We Married, are witty, poignant, and concise, managing to often encapsulate a character or complex emotion in a few brief lines. As a result, we at EL are a little bit smitten with Straub—in fact, more than one staff member has confessed to me that they have a crush on her. And it doesn’t seem like we’re alone. Check out pretty much any literary blog — or literary lover, for that matter — and they will echo similar sentiments. Point being: if you haven’t read Straub’s collection yet, then you really, really should. Fortunately for you, Other People We Married was re-released on Riverhead Books yesterday (it was initially published on Five Chapters Books), and, before she got all wrapped up in the big lit-star hubbub, I got a chance to talk to her about her process, brownies, and, of course, Donnie Wahlberg.

 

Julia Jackson: The trajectory of Other People We Married kind of seems like a writer’s dream: Internet serialization, small press, critical acclaim, big press, and now you have a novel in the works. Can you tell us more about what happened? And what’s your novel like?

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Boy With a Blog in His Side – Largehearted Lit’s 10th Anniversary at WORD Brooklyn

1. WORD’s “Vandalized by Author” wall. There weren’t any phone numbers. 2. Jen Gillmore, Dead Heads, joints.
 
David Gutowski, of Largehearted Boy and most recently Book Boroughing, describes himself on his Twitter bio as such: “I read and write and listen to music. A lot.” This is all you really need to know about Gutowski and his blog, who celebrated 10 years (!) of lit/music blogging at Greenpoint’s fantastic WORD bookstore last night with readings from Emma Straub (Other People We Married), Jen Gilmore (Something Red), a musical performance from Alina Simone (You Must Go and Win), and a ridiculously sweet raffle benefiting Girls Write Now.

 

Happy Holidays from Electric Literature and Etgar Keret


Guava

by Etgar Keret
Translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger

There was no sound from the engines of the plane. There were no sounds at all. Except perhaps the soft crying of the flight attendants a few rows behind him. Through the elliptical window, Shkedi looked at the cloud hovering just below him. He could imagine the plane dropping through it like a stone, punching an enormous hole that would be sealed again quickly with the first breeze, leaving not so much as a scar. “Just don’t crash,” Shkedi said. “Just don’t crash.”

Forty seconds before Shkedi expired, an angel appeared, all dressed in white, and told him he’d been awarded a last wish. Shkedi tried to find out what “awarded” implied. Was it an award like winning the lottery or was it something a bit more flattering: Awarded in the sense of an achievement, in recognition of his good deeds? The angel shrugged. “Beats me,” he said with pure angelic sincerity. “They told me to come and fulfill, on the double. They didn’t say why.” “That’s a shame,” Shkedi said. “Because it’s absolutely fascinating. Especially now when I’m about to leave this world and all, I’d really like to know if I’m leaving it as just another lucky guy or if I’m leaving it with a pat on the back. “Forty seconds and you kick off,” the angel droned. “If you want to spend those forty seconds yapping, that’s fine with me. No problem. Just consider that your window of opportunity is about to close.” Shkedi considered, and quickly made his wish. But not before taking the trouble to point out to the angel that he had a strange way of talking. For an angel, that is. The angel was hurt. “What do you mean, for an angel? Have you ever heard an angel talk, that you dump a thing like that on me?” “Never,” Shkedi admitted. Suddenly, the angel looked much less angelic and much less pleasant, but that was nothing compared to what he looked like after he heard the wish.

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Jim Shepard On the Subject of Fiction Based on Non-Fiction

sp_aaib059_16x20_the-hindenburg-disaster-posters_707The first worry writers have when they consider working with something like historical events has to do with the issue of authority:  as in, where do I get off writing about that?    Well, here’s the good and the bad news:  where do you get off writing about anything?   Where do you get off writing about someone of a different gender?    A different person?   Where do you get off writing about yourself, from twenty years ago?

Writers shouldn’t lose sight of the essential chutzpah involved in trying to imagine any other kind of sensibility.  And that they should take heart from that chutzpah, as well.   The whole project of literature – the entire project of the arts — is about the exercise of the empathetic imagination.   Why were we given something as amazing as imagination, if we’re not going to use it?

We need to bear in mind, as we’ve been told many times, that we’re working from, but not necessarily about, our lives.   The poet Seamus Heaney had a nice way of putting it.   He said:  “I do not suggest that the self is not the proper arena of poetry.   But I believe that the greatest work occurs when a certain self-forgetfulness is attained.”

And here’s the happy paradox:  such distancing seems to enable a new – and often unexpected – version of emotional honesty and intimacy to be generated within the work.   Both of which are crucial.   Oscar Wilde had a great insight about that.   He said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own persona.   Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.”

An old student once quoted to me Allan Gurganus’ remark that it was the writer’s job to take the world personally.  I think that that’s true.  When I read about The Who or John Ashcroft, or the disaster at Chernobyl, I’m reading about it because I’m interested in the subject, and by interested I mean to suggest that not only my intellect but my emotions have been engaged.   And when I’m reading, I’m trying to read receptively; that is, I’m beginning, if I’m engaged enough, to pay attention to how what I’m reading is affecting me, and why.   You might say that, if I’m, for example, reading about the catastrophe at Chernobyl, I’m simultaneously storing away the facts about the disaster and keeping on eye on the spectacle of my own ongoing affective reaction to what I’m learning.

Suffering is everywhere.   Drama is everywhere.   Why do some things affect us so much, when others don’t?  Some things we come across and say, Oh, that’s terrible, and go on to the next thing.   Other events, experienced and imagined, stay with us.   The fact that they don’t go away is a hint about how important they are to our psyches.   That’s a hint to which the writer should pay attention.  What’s important about those things?   That’s for us to find out.

- Jim Shepard