Fact: These use numbers. Real numbers.

Are facts influenced by language?

If you’re John D’Agata they are, according to the Lifespan of a Fact, a book which contains correspondances between D’Agata and his fact checker, Jim Fingal, for the essay “What Happens There.” For example, thirty-four sounds better than thirty-one when counting strip clubs in Las Vegas.  So D’Agata wrote thirty-four rather than thirty-one; it’s just a number that happens to sound precise and has a good ring to it.

Numbers are so important to the essay—at least the first free chunk online—that the reader is overwhelmed with fear of a pending arithmetic problem. It’s 113 degrees outside. Water is five bucks a bottle. Someone plays one 35-minute game of tic-tac-toe. Meanwhile, there’s a sixteen year-old boy and a 1,149-foot-high building and it’s a certain time and if you don’t practice mathematics, and if vt=-gt+vo, your heart is pounding already.

You should probably have a cardiovascular response when you read about a suicide, so maybe the writer should work to create one. Remember, the argument in question is: it’s the mood, not the numbers, that matters. Read more »

In which the Little People Drink Sake, Say Ho ho. (Illustration by Rokuro Taniuchi)

I looked it up, ok? Wikipedia says it’s wordplay, that kyu (Q) and kew (9) are homophones. So it’s 1Q84, not 1984. I was compelled to look this up because a friend of mine had been calling it “IQ 84″ and I kept calling 19Q4 for the first five hundred pages.

They were a long first five hundred pages. I didn’t understand why the first book ended where it did, at a point which didn’t seem complete or suspenseful, and did not leave me hungering for the second book. I assume that’s part of the reason the trilogy came out as one book in the U.S. A lot of the information seemed redundant, like filler. I kept telling myself that maybe it had to be when sold separately, that with months between publishing books 1-2-3, the audience would have forgotten everything. I’m a slow reader, and carried the book with me through many airports and different cities. It sat unopened in a hotel room in St. Louis for a week. I learned to skim to survive the repeated passages.

I had been so excited when the book came out. I think it was the first time that I bought a book the day it hit  shelves. I felt smug. I like Murakami. His short stories are fantastic, I empathize with characters who must enter wells to think, and I had a most pleasant time reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World while on a Delaware beach last summer. Read more »

1. The essayist will take pride in neuroses. He will go on an on about the joy of scratching his ear with a pencil or brag about how long he hasn’t driven a car.

2. Everyday outings, such as going to the grocery store, will become overwhelming adventures. Huge adventures, like swimming with whale sharks off the coast of the Yucatan, will sound like everyday activities.

3. You will never know where she is. She will insist on trying a diverse range of activities, from accordion lessons to firing a machine gun, claiming it is research for a “Never Have I Ever” column.

4. You will realize that your world is more bizarre than a postmodern short story. You will start anecdotes with, “You can’t make this stuff up!”

5. You will not know whom you’re with at any moment: the character, the narrator, the persona, or the person. You will begin to wonder if you are a character or a person and sometimes narrate the recent past as if a memory from childhood. He will hear you and violate your POV.
Read more »

She's one lucky gal.

Last week, I got sucked into reading one of those articles that I hate to read. I’m sure you know the article: it’s the type that bashes MFA programs/workshops and thus the young writers who enter them. Last week, the article was one of the ho-hum arguments that such programs are nothing more than expensive group therapy sessions. As always, creative nonfiction received a heavy blow. Sigh.

Perhaps you read last week’s set of complaints, too, this time in the Huffington Post. Here’s a clip if you missed it:

“Creative writing is not literary writing as has been understood for all of the history of writing. Creative writing is a subset of therapy, with the same essential modalities — except, like everything else in our culture, it comes in a stripped, dumbed down version that partakes little of the rigors of psychotherapy.”
Read the full argument here.

I thought about responding with all of the merits of a creative writing program: a short immersion experience with a set of creative peers, a temporarily captive and enthusiastic audience, time to learn how to give and receive constructive criticism, experience teaching and/or publishing, tons of opportunities for success/failure/growth, participation in a sometimes bitter, in-fighting field, etc. etc. all of which are valuable experiences for any field. Maybe literary geniuses of the past didn’t need a creative writing program or workshop experience. I’m sure that their educational systems were much better than what’s currently offered in America.

But while I was making notes, I got distracted by beautiful, creative things. Specifically, Toilet Paper Magazine, which is responsible for the image above and the video below:

The surreal, the grotesque, the infectiously happy. I was moved. It was like therapy. Read more »

It’s a typical scene: while driving through the dense fog above the river, comparing price per ounce at the grocery, or composing a letter, this poem worms through the bottom of my brain and I must recite it in full to get the stanzas to stop repeating.

I recently stumbled on Poetry Post, a project where people are requested to send in their favorite poem and a short note on what the piece means to them. I would send this poem in, but I’m not sure it’s my favorite. Perhaps I just remember it; perhaps it is catchy. Another dimestore obsession.

I had to memorize this poem, “Poema de sete faces” by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, several years ago when I was taking a Portuguese class, which is a fairly standard assignment in foreign language classes. This means, too, that whatever I think the poem means might not be exact. It goes like this: Read more »

Our top linguists from the American Dialect Society are gathering tonight to vote on the best words from last year. The words themselves don’t have to be new, but suddenly prominent or notable. Tweet has won in the past, as have google (as a verb), Dracula sneeze (covering one’s mouth with the crook of one’s elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape), and plutoed (verb meaning to be demoted or devalued).

Follow the fun here. And here’s their list for this year:

MOST USEFUL
**humblebrag – expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter
FOMO – acronym for “Fear of Missing Out,” describing anxiety over being indundated by information on social media
occupy – verb, noun, and combining form referring to the Occupy protest movement
tablet – lightweight portable computer with a touchscreen to input data
Read more »

duplicate, reduplication, reproduction, identical, replicated, alternate, chain, continued, cyclic, cyclical, frequent, over, habitual, intermittent, isochronous, periodic, perpetual, recurring, regular, repeated, redo, rehearse, rehash, reconstructed, rerun, recapitulation, reiteration, tautology, imitated, echo, knock-off, indistinguishable, self-same, invariable, look-alike, clone, counterfeit, mirror, echo, ditto, dwell upon, many times, do it again, xerox, day in day out, same old same old, perennial, sing the same old song, two peas in a pod, chorus, come again, never hear the last of it, go over and over again, humdrum, blah blah blah, encore, long long ago happy new year, etc.

In less than 30 seconds, you’ll know how well you pay attention. Test your awareness now:

So, are you like a camera? Do you automatically record everything in your visual field? When you write, do you just relay the sensorium in which you live?

Probably not. We’re all inattentive to a certain degree, thanks to 4GADHD. And we’re selectively attentive by nature, e.g. tuning out Dizzy Gillespie at a cocktail party to listen to some interesting bit of trivia. (“Really, the latin for hummingbird means ‘no feet’”?)

When you think are being aware of everything, you are actually selecting what you pay attention to. Your (sub)consciousness fills in the gaps. That’s where intuition comes from–the feeling that arises from those hollows of actual observation. Read more »

Life Turns in a Sentence: That’s how I would sum up this Swiss Life ad campaign, which appears to have been written by poets:

I love my house now belongs to my ex-wife.
I never want children are great.
I’m not interested in getting married in church is more romantic.
She’s my everything went wrong.
I like working with you is impossible.
You are the only woman I love a man now.
            For all life’s twists and turns: flexible financial plans.

This week, the linguists have been astir, debating on whether to call this trick either shift anacoluthon (where you accidentally finish one sentence with a totally different thought, usually a speech thing) or phrasal overlap portmanteaux (putting two words together to form a new word: Brangelina. Sexting. Bromance.)

But when I read the ad copy, I thought, “Oh, how Kokinshu.” Those ancient poets loved to hinge a statement for ultimate elegant confusion. I bet a haiku master could sell you anything. There’s nothing like a cherry blossom to give one a sensitivity to ephemera, a desire to buy life insurance. Read more »

Send out holiday cards in DYI creep style.

Find your next favorite author with this literature map. Type in the name of an author you like and swirling cloud of writers settles on the screen. The closer two authors appear, the more likely someone would enjoy reading them both.

It was only a matter of time. Google is asking people to submit floor plans to Google Maps. Say goodbye to hiding out in that Batcave you have in the attic.

If you don’t want to submit that floor plan you drew for a memory exercise in a CNF workshop, submit it to these guys.

Find some curbside Haiku in New York City. Read about street safety in form:

A sudden car door,
Cyclist’s story rewritten.
Fractured narrative
Read more »