Memoirous

  And now the viral video taking the world by storm. http://www.wellandtribune.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2852421 The Food Court Hallelujah chorus. Can I get a witness? Can something similar to this be done for literature?

I’ve been afraid of jumping into the fray or rather Frey. Mostly because I don’t want to give the bum any more media attention. But then I realized the kind of attention I might afford James Frey would be minimal compared to the hell the NY Times gave him. http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/69474/ Okay we already know he is a liar, but it seems as if the “author” of A Million Little Pieces is now a crook and a liar—and he’s not even a politician (at least not yet). I use the term author loosely. I guess he is an author, he wrote the above mentioned book and now a few others—but it’s how he got published and rose to fame that is the most galling. He lied. First he tried to publish his ms as fiction and when that didn’t work he merely tried to pass it off as memoir. And OMG it worked! He got picked up by Nan Talese who sold him and got big bucks and Oprah and more big bucks and visibility (something by the way that big bucks can’t always get you). I saw people on the train reading hi...

This past weekend I perused and read a couple of memoirs picked up on a whim from the library. One was the third memoir from Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove , and a screenwriter, most recently for Brokeback Mountain for which he won an Oscar. I was impressed with his memoir called Hollywood because one) he came off as a very likeable, balanced kind of guy, whose fame never went to his head. And two) he learned a lot about screenwriting that eventually influenced his novels. The book jacket said he was the author of thirty. He talked about the importance of an establishing shot, a quick pan that gives the reader an idea of location, a hint of the tension or conflict, and at least a cursory outline of the main characters. An establishing shot isn’t about backstory or setting up narrative, rather it is just that ESTABLISHING. For example: The camera starts wide on a school yard, comes in closer so that we can see we’re at the E.L. Stanley High School and then shifts to the ...

Conferences. I’ve been to too many. Here is a small list, in no particular order: Festival of Faith & Writing—Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI Pilcrow Literary Festival, Chicago, Lincoln Park neighborhood Prairie Writers Day, SCBWI-IL regional event Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, where I worked on waitstaff, which turned out to be a very BIG DEAL, Kevin McIlvoy and Ernesto Quiñonez were my workshop facilitators Sewanee Writer’s Conference, where I met Cheri Peters who championed me, I’ve always wished for someone to believe in me, thank you Cheri Green Mountain Writers’ Conference, headed back again to the piney woods of Vermont, and thanks Yvonne Daley to awarding me a scholarship Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, I attended on the Amanda Davis scholarship, Amanda was a truly gifted writer who had just come out with a YA novel and was beginning a book tour when her small plane crashed and she was killed Highlights Foundation Writer’s Conference, at Chautauqua, NY (look it up, it’s...

Congratulations Patti! News of the winners of the National Book Award just came over the wires (a euphemism, since technology today rarely involves wires) and Just Kids , Patti Smith, won for non-fiction. I read Patti’s memoir this summer and was WOW-ed. I guess in her speech or an interview she said that she wrote it for Robert Mapplethorpe one of the first people she met after leaving home (a dreary small town in NJ) and arriving in New York City. They lived together, were lovers, but mostly they were dedicated friends. She promised him before he died that she would write a book about their relationship. Forty years later she writes it and wins the National Book Award. Aren’t you WOW-ed? Oh yeah and art. They were both totally dedicated to art. Patti and Robert were young and trying to figure out if they wanted college or a factory job (was there a difference?) or a third way, making art. Coming as outsiders without experience, connections, or even a university degree (let alone a...