May 8th, 2008 bhenricksen
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I drove to Crosby, a small city about 100 miles west of Duluth. This year is the 30th Anniversary for the Hallett Memorial Library, and Peggi, the lady who runs things with great energy, skill and good humor, had invited me as part of the celebration. On Thursday evening I spoke about James Wright, and on Friday I conducted a workshop on fiction for the Quill Masters.
The QMs are an enthusiastic group of local writers, and we had a lot of fun bouncing ideas around. I talked about how to tweak dialogue to suggest the things that characters won’t say outright, and how to shape plots so that what is unsaid at the outset rises to the surface as things heat up.
Then we discussed the first chapter of Bev’s mystery novel, which promises to be a good one. And after the group broke up, I met with Sharon about her wonderful manuscript for a children’s book (about an apple who falls to the ground while gazing at the stars) and with Linda about her newest poem. As we were about to leave, Candace invited my wife and me to join a group of regional poets who have chartered a bus to a poetry event in the East this fall. We are considering it.
An added bonus was the chance I had to spend an evening with an old high-school friend and his wife. Bob’s work in wood turning is superb, and Amy is a writer who publishes a magazine called Homespun. They live with their dog, Otter, in a lovely home out by a pond where they operate Ripple River Gallery.
Talent lives in unexpected places . . . like, say, Crosby Minnesota. I hope to keep in touch with my old friend, and my new ones too, over in that neck of the woods.
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April 29th, 2008 bhenricksen
Being an obscure writer with an obscure publisher puts you out there on your own. You’re a Willy Loman, chatting up the managers of bookstores, writing snappy letters to regional buyers, and leaving off fliers at libraries. Willy was out there on a shoeshine and a smile. I wear sneakers. Either way, you meet all kinds, and it can be especially exciting if you have a speech problem. Read the rest of this entry »
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April 26th, 2008 bhenricksen
Since I do a little writing, I enjoy metafiction, stories and novels in which the creative process itself is part of the theme. A great one from a couple of decades back was The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. In this tale a shadowy figure representing the author makes an appearance. In the excellent film adaptation, the movie makers become the story in the last act. Another fine novel was Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler. It is interesting to speculate on how the expectations of readers, not to mention the way minds process information, help to shape the story, and Calvino’s novel begins with the reader browsing in a bookstore. At every stage in If On a Winter’s Night, the reader steps in to have a say. Narratives are driven by the desires of the primary characters, but also, Calvino shows, by the desires of readers. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Minnesota Literature, Novels | 2 Comments »
April 13th, 2008 bhenricksen
The older I get, the more I value short novels. It’s a ratio thing. When I sit down to read, I wonder what percentage of my remaining life will be devoted to the book that is now in my hands. And what percentage of that remaining life am I willing to live vicariously? In college we read War and Peace, a hundred pages a week for nine or ten weeks. I read it all and was impressed with myself. Last year I decided to read it again, just to see how the characters were doing. The second reading was simply a chore. Tolstoy had become long winded–all that theory-of-history stuff! All that editorializing! And Pierre . . . how did Professor Ramsland ever convince us that Pierre was an interesting fellow? Or had Pierre simply become plump and boring from dozing there on my bookshelf all those years? If I were in the book bizz today, I’d put out an edited version of War and Peace–all the lame theorizing would go, and definitely Pierre would be off the team. Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark? I don’t think so–it would be War and Peace without the dumb guy. Read the rest of this entry »
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April 10th, 2008 bhenricksen
Graywolf Press of St. Paul, MN is publishing a series of books on the art of literary writing, each focusing on a different aspect of that art. Judging from the two I’ve read so far, this may well become the definitive collection for writers, teachers, and readers.
Ron Carlson Writes a Story, by (surprise!) Ron Carlson, takes us through the writing of one of his short stories, discussing his creative process in nearly a line by line fashion. The book is perhaps a more useful version of Robert Olen Butler’s video of himself writing, and it is also reminiscent of Roland Barthes’ S/Z, which offered a line by line analysis of Balzac’s “Sarrasine.” Carlson starts by talking about where the general idea for the story (”The Governor’s Ball”) came from, moves on to how he named his characters, and then to how he placed them in a specific setting. In discussing dialogue, he dismisses the old view that it should serve mainly to advance plot. Carlson’s advice is for the writer of a more modern, character-driven fiction, where dialogue exists as a window into the unconscious and the unsayable, a window into subtext.
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April 9th, 2008 bhenricksen
I live in Duluth, springtime’s last stop, so my wife and I looked forward to our short stay in the Twin Cities over the weekend. I’ve edited a collection of poems in honor of a great American poet, and we went 150 miles south to do a couple of book events and to see green grass. We called our trip The James Wright Mystery Tour, the mystery being whether anyone would show up for the events. From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright has contributions from some major American poets–Galway Kinnell, C. K. Williams, and others–and also from some fine poets with a more regional fame. A few in this latter group joined me to read both their own poems and Wright’s, and to talk about his importance to Minnesota. Wright had taught at our state university in the Sixties and wrote some of his best poems during those years. Read the rest of this entry »
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