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Entries from January 1, 2013 - January 31, 2013

Sunday
Jan202013

Word of the Day, or, Why I Love Etymology

From dictionary.com, emphasis mine:

sar·don·ic

adjective
characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering: a sardonic grin.
Origin: 1630-40...alluding to a Sardinian plant which when eaten was supposed to produce convusive laughter ending in death
Friday
Jan182013

An Unusual Graveyard

This, however, is a typical sight in Swedish cemeteries

So a couple of days ago I took my cross country skis and went just down the street to this giant field that leads to a giant park with paths through the forest and beautiful views of the Baltic Sea. (Why yes, I am bragging just a little bit. When you only get 7 hours of sunlight a day, you gotta take what you can get.) I'm very new at this, but fortunately, it's not that complicated, and since many, many Swedes had been there before me, there were nice trails already cut through the snow. So I followed them.

This is the same place where, in other seasons, I go running, and yet it looks so different under a foot of snow--etherial, otherworldly, gorgeous, you name it. And yet, after about forty minutes, I found myself in a place I'd never seen before.

It appeared gradually, as I climbed up a hill with my skis pointed to the side, leaning on my poles so that I didn't slip backwards. There, in the middle of the forest, were these small lanterns, and as I got closer, I could see snow-covered headstones. It was a cemetery, and I held my breath just a bit as I awkwardly approached, feeling as though I were walking into a poem. Probably one by Robert Frost.

When I got close enough to brush the snow from the headstones and take a closer look, however, things began to seem a bit...off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I found one that said (loosely translated), "To Penny. She gave me the best years of her life."

Penny, by the dates I saw, was only 16 when she died.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Jan162013

On my list

I'm very ready to pick up this one by Nick Turse, hopefully in physical form. The process by which we are capable of mentally shifting humans from the "human" category to the "essentially insect" category is both terrifying and fascinating.

I like to think that fiction is an exercise that helps combat that sort of thinking by requiring readers to humanize mere figments of a writer's imagination--training in humanization, 101, strengthening and inclining us towards empathy. However, it would not surprise me at all if the two psychological procedures are related more closely than I'm comfortable thinking about.

And if I'm on to something with that, it means, naturally, that it's critical we investigate further.

Wednesday
Jan162013

A George Saunders article--but not that one

There's been a lot of buzz online about the New York Times' recent piece on George Saunders in honor of The Tenth of December, his most recent short story collection. And while I read that article a couple weeks ago and enjoyed it, I don't actually remember all that much about it, save for his description of being on a plane that was quite likely to crash. (What can I say? I'm a mildly nervous flyer who lives abroad.)

However, I absolutely adored this other George Saunders piece in Slate, an author-editor book review that's a conversation between Saunders and his longtime editor, Andy Ward. Fellow Stockholm writer Angela Mi Young Hur sent this one my way, and it's definitely worth your time. (No matter who you are, if you read this blog at all, ever, I can guarantee the time-worthiness.)

Saunders is a devotee of the short story form, pointing out that "...at least three of the stories in this book were 'novels' until they came to their senses. That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn’t yet discovered a way to be brief." We don't have this in common, him and me; I wrote short stories in grad school, because it seemed as though that was What One Did (and they were way easier to discuss and review in workshop), but they couldn't make me like it. Nor could they make me particularly good at it. However, he goes on to talk about knowing when a piece is done, and it rings so very, very true for longer pieces as well:

I have an internal standard for when a story is done that I can’t really articulate. Maybe it’s just: I know it when I see it. Or: I know it when I don’t see it. It has something to do with making the action feel undeniable. There’s a feeling I get when (in the rereading) the language passes over from language to action: What was mere typing before starts to feel like something that has actually happened. So that can take a while and it’s not just about the language—it’s also a structural thing. If the story is tight and all the scenes are necessary, it helps me to understand what the current section is supposed to be doing—and hence I can know when it’s right and done.

People say this over and over, but there's just this feeling of rightness that comes when things begin to fall into place of their own accord, and this man, as any of you who've read his stories knows, is pretty good at getting his work to that place. He's also very good at talking about that work. So I'll finish with his words:

Part of the process of moving on and doing more work is to regard all past stories as these small clay rabbits you have made and brought to life, which you loved very much during that process, but which then go running off across the barnyard into the mist, with your blessing. So no favorites. I just feel slightly fond of them all.

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