Category Archives: NOTED
Noted: James Brown on memoir
James Brown, a creative writing teacher at Cal State-San Bernardino, is author of the celebrated 2003 memoir The Los Angeles Diaries, which was named a “Best Book of the Year” by Publishers Weekly. Brown’s new memoir, This River, is the … Continue reading
Robert Caro's "painstaking process"
Reblogged from Elizabeth Browne: I’m tinkering with a nonfiction book idea. By that I mean, I have a book in mind that I’d like to write, and in fact have written bits and pieces of it and collected some research … Continue reading
Filed under blogging, immersion, journalism, NOTED, working method
Dubus & Russo wonder: Why Memoir?
Just two (famous) novelists enjoyin’ their coffee & nonfiction Andre Dubus III and Richard Russo discuss their memoirs at The Daily Beast: “How strange to write a memoir to find out what happens.”—Richard Russo, author of the forthcoming Elsewhere: A … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, fiction, memoir, NOTED
How ‘Mad Men’ became a soap opera
What’s been interesting to me this season about AMC’s hit series Mad Men is how dead in a classically dramatic sense it seems, how spent its narrative arc. Yet it remains addictive for those who got hooked on its characters. … Continue reading
Filed under film/photography, MY LIFE, narrative, NOTED, sentimentality
Noted: ‘Steal Like an Artist’
Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.—Steal Like an Artist Austin Kleon is a writer and visual artist—collage and sketches and mashups—whose magical new … Continue reading
Filed under aesthetics, discovery, experimental, flow, NOTED, postmodernism
Noted: Why It’s OK to Be Naïve
Why It’s OK to Be Naïve. I found this guest post at Jane Friedman’s site very inspiring—and true—about writing or about following and developing any passion.
Filed under NOTED, working method
Emerson meets ‘A Girl Named Zippy’
So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean? Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the … Continue reading
Noted: Annie Dillard’s ‘Childhood’
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard . . . Throughout all these many years of childhood, a transpired sphere of timelessness contained all my running and spinning as a glass paperweight holds flying snow. The sphere of this idyll broke; … Continue reading
Filed under Dillard—Saint Annie, essay-expository, memoir, NOTED
‘Narrative’ blog honored
My standards are so low. I don’t feel like I am . . . protecting writing from amateurs or dabblers or those who are simply no good. My students have expressed a profound interest in writing. I let them write … Continue reading
Filed under blogging, electronic publishing, MY LIFE, NOTED
The 100 best nonfiction books?
The Modern Library on its website lists the “100 best” English-language books in fiction and nonfiction. Alongside each are the best according to an online poll—and the readers’ choices consist of much trash: the top three slots of each list, … Continue reading
Filed under Dillard—Saint Annie, fiction, journalism, memoir, narrative, NOTED, teaching
