Friday, December 05, 2008

The Wound of Things

Hello. It seems like my life of finals keeps extending itself. I am finishing up a paper on Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" and starting to think about a Melville paper, which I image as a talk to writers rather than academics. I am thinking about Meliville's Billy Budd as a corrective to the problem of my book (or maybe I just mean "of writing") in relationship to the real world. Something I keep thinking about. For more on this, see the X Poetics feature (link to the left). But until I turn into the Handsome Sailor (I would like to exist that way, minus the hanging), my interview on the local NC public radio station show (The State of Things) can be heard
here.


Also, I want Jacob Russell to be my own personal critic. I feel like he really gets my book and I am grateful for all the time he has taken to write about it on his blog. It's very generous of him. And makes me feel understood, which is a rare feeling for anyone, I imagine. His latest post is
here.


And NY, I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Until then, think kindly of me.

3 comments:

Jacob Russell said...

Ha! Would it be ethical now or merely metaphorically incestuous if I were to ask you to blurb my novel... if I ever get anything back on my queries but "this is really good but too (fill in the blank) to market."

Boy have I got that line and its variants memorized by now!

I just hope you get the respect your book deserves. But be careful hanging around with sailors. I think Melville may have been trying to tell us something there...

Minor American said...

Send your book to FC2. They don't have a market!! And I'll happily blurb.

Jacob Russell said...

I did send to FC2... six months later they sent a generic reject.

And hey, I have what must be one of the most suck on your ego-tits letters ever! Let me know, she said, when (not if) you get this published... I'll buy a copy!

that was five years ago.

Never mind. I'm into the writing. I mean, you know... I want... but it's not what or who I am... I do my thing. And it makes me happy when someone says they'll buy your book causa something I wrote on my blog.

We'll all find our own level in the end. Ultimately, it ain't up to us. We just write the books.

Cause we have to.

That's what matters.

I got that with yours. Stuff you can't get into the critical formulas.