This Stuffing--I Mean Dressing--Looks Awesome!

I've been enjoying Myfanwy Collins' blog. Not only is she a super-talented writer and perceptive reader, but she can cook a mean feast. She's posting the whole Thanksgiving project, with pictures, from her pre-prepped dressing (not stuffing, since it's not in the bird), to the turkey soup afterward. Enjoy vicariously with me. Scroll down to see her super-cute dog.

Don't Submit Until Dec 4, I've Been Told

Last night at my writer's class, another student advised not to submit any stories anywhere until December 4, because Mercury has been in retrograde since mid-November. Mercury takes no mercy, I hear, on communications, travel, systems, and logistics. So if you submit work, it will either get lost or misunderstood.

I don't hold much stock in astrology, given that I share a birthday with Vladimir Putin and Ollie North, and I'd like to think I share nothing more with those individuals. But evidence of Mercury in retrograde has been abundant this week. And it's been pushing my buttons. A sample:

1. My day job has been Sisyphusian and ridiculous. I've been trying to facilitate a simple data request with a counterparty, and have been unable to do so effectively, nor to understand their product explanations. It has involved long conference calls with lots of friendly and professional but also exasperated parties, email waylaid in spam folders, and me trying to translate traderspeak into programmerspeak, which is usually my forte. So I show no progress whatsoever, while my bosses are away this week, and when the cat's away, dammit, this mouse likes to catch up. Some traction, but not much. I ended up crying into my keyboard Monday. What a pathetic Libra careerwoman I make!

2. Wilbur needs a prescription, and my hubby could not find parking in Park Slope, a rather oxymoronically-named hood, for 45 minutes. Finally parks, hikes, goes inside, and the scrips promised ready on the phone aren't all there. So I confirm readiness again on the phone, go in myself, and they've filled it with something else. Maybe Friday?

(I interject: I don't blame people at the vet's office. I don't blame the contacts at work. This is all miscommunication, which I thought was my fault, but now I blame Mercury. )

3. Hubby had a 4-hour layover in Philly on Saturday, so we said ha! I'll drive down to meet him instead of the Laguardia pickup. Staten Island alone took 4 hours to cross (2 each way), prompting this control freak to bang her hand uselessly on the steering wheel.

(Interject: I kind of blame Staten Island. I know, that's prejudiced.)

4. Tons of little crap. Numerous work problems--upload/download failures, communication snafus, and this is with people I know well and love. My subway rerouted to from East Side to West. Uploading homework to my work machine, only to find it corrupted on the other end, so I go to class empty-handed. (See what I get for printing at work? Bad girl.) Zoetrope.com appears to be down (I won't bother linking for obvious reasons). Even the daffodils in the garden are confused--why are they sprouting in November? No joke.

Anyone else completely rattled and overwhelmed with trivial and/or bourgeouis difficulties this week, like traffic? It's not your fault! We have common enemy: the planet Mercury! And as I go into Turkey Day, I remind myself there's plenty to be thankful for:

1. I have a great damn job, where my paychecks don't bounce, and they even buy me lunch.

2. Wilbur's skin problem has been biopsied and diagnosed as an allergy, not a serious disease.

3. Most important: my sweet, smart, funny husband got back from Europe in one piece. And I should quit taking him for granted. Baby, I love you!

Literary Classics Condensed to Text Message

A new study aid in the UK condenses Shakespeare, Dickens, etc. into phone text messages. Wow!

Quiz, what novel is this:

Jane&MrRochster(eventuly)Fal4EachOtha.
Bt,DayOfWedin,
ItTurnsOutHeAlredyHasAWyfInThAtikHuIsMad.

Can I pay them to do this for my bloated novel? I need a new tagline.

Kitty Porn?

Stuff On My Cat has a cute one today. A little early for eggnog, but kitty has been nipping, I think. No shame!

Paris is More Than Just Burning

It's not just charred cars, and angry "immigrants," and racist cops and policymakers. Along with the unrest comes the art of a polyglot culture, and the music is getting really interesting. Let's honor the voices coming out of that multicultural nation.

In my opinion, for example, today's European hip-hop is leaving American mainstream hip-hop in the dust. Just listen to Excuse My French, a radio program out of Brighton, England, highlighting some cutting-edge stuff coming out of France.

Finally Read the Smiley Book

After a couple weeks on a NYPL wait list, I finally got my hands on Jane Smiley's 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE NOVEL, and I'll barely finish it in time to return it. It's big, it's dense, and it's been worth every second of my time. And I can't just renew it, it's a hot ticket item in our burg. (Question, are all the others on the waiting list writers too? Just how many of us are there?)

I'm buying it when it comes out in paperback, because it's a great reference book for any writer's shelf. Smiley read 100 novels, from THE TALE OF GENJI to WHITE TEETH, and recaps each in the 300-page 13th chapter of the 570-page book. While Smiley's recaps do fit the novels into a historical continuum, they are not academic. They are experiential, and come from a love of reading.

Smiley's list goes beyond the canon of American literary education, and she's got me jazzed to read a few older works I hadn't heard of before: THE HEPTAMERON, by Marguerite de Navarre; ZENO'S CONSCIENCE by Italo Svevo; KRISTEN LAVRANSDATTER, by Sigrid Undset. (All of these happen to be works in translation, and Smiley provides info on the edition of each novel she read.) I'm also inspired to read some more familiar stuff I never got around to: Proust's 7-volume quasi memoir (Smiley calls his narrator a "kindly narcissist"), and Forster's A PASSAGE TO INDIA, which has themes of particular interest in contemporary times, with the legacy of colonialism still playing out in our daily lives.

Her recaps are daring too. I nearly gasped when I read her suggestion that THE GREAT GATSBY should have been 100 pages longer, that it suffers from the shallow-character problem shared by many writers in their twenties. After so many years of living in the standard assumption that GATSBY is the pinnacle of American literary achievement, it was refreshing to hear this opinion, and in retrospect, it rings true to me.

The first 12 chapters of Smiley's book are thematic ruminations on the novel and its evolution. She defines the novel as a "lengthy prose narrative with a protagonist," which is the bare skeleton of this big analysis. One of the most interesting themes that she returns to repeatedly in the first 12 chapters is women and marriage, or the big question: can a woman act on her desires and still be virtuous?

My favorite of the thematic chapters is a case study of her writing process for GOOD FAITH. In a way, the relationship between a writer and her work is like romantic love: sometimes it's a honeymoon, sometimes it's a matter of pragmatism and/or habit. GOOD FAITH wasn't one of her honeymoon books, and since I'm in the process of revising a novel I kind of can't stand, this chapter comes at a very good time for me. Smiley advises:

If the novelist especially likes a book or feels a kinship to it, his attachments blind him to the independence of the novel and make him feel that his views about the novel are more primary or more important than other readers' views. In fact, they are only different. When I published a novel that I was satisfied with but did not like, I saw that no novel can help communicating many things to every reader, and that the novelist's ideas about what is being communicated are as valid as any reader's ideas, but no more so.

Thanks, Ms. Smiley, for helping me over this hump. And reminding me that I don't have to be on a honeymoon with this darn writing project every second of the day. That it may still have value, even though it's hard to see through the haze between me and my screen. And that I don't have to be in charge of what that value is. I only have to write the story.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you are working on a novel. Makes me realize how much the workshop system is skewed to short stories, which is a little strange given the appetite of most of the reading public for longer works. It's helpful to focus on "what is a novel" for 570 pages, to remind myself that everything can't be a honed, compact nugget. Some things need to spread out and breathe. And some writing projects take years, not months.

P.S. Check out Smiley's radio interview with Michael Silverblatt...

New Uke Stokedness.

Here's my cute husband holding my new uke, which is so cool I won't even have to know how to play it. Just plug it in, throw some distortion on, and stand there with a sustained chord, and the audience will be right there with me!

OK, so gimmicks like that don't last. Time to start practicing and getting used to this thing. It's a real different feel from the acoustic uke, but now I can do more with pulling-off/hammering on the fretboard, so possibilities are endless. It doesn't really sound like a uke, and not really an electric guitar either. Closest thing maybe is an electric mandolin (which of course does not sound like a mandolin).

I'm researching MP3 hosts so I can share some songs with y'all. Host recommendations welcome. Especially free ones.

Willie had to check it out too. "Woof!" Translation: "My dog has fleas!"

New Ukulele On Its Way! Celebrating.

After being held up at the manufacturer for a month, my new birthday uke has been shipped from Lansing, Michigan. Hooray!

(I'll save pics for when it arrives.)

In the meantime, enjoy with me these episodes of Midnight Ukulele Disco.

Mucho Literary Weekend, November 5 & 6!

Care to join me on any of these NYC literary excursions? It's a conflagration of interesting readers. I'm going to both of these, maybe I'll see you there. I'll probably be the one with the Hello Kitty accessories and/or loud crowd.

Sat. November 5 - 6:00PM
ZIRYAB: THE ARAB-AMERICAN WRITERS ASSOCIATION
Featuring:

Poet & playwright NATHALIE HANDAL, author of The Lives of Rain and The Neverfield

SHOLEH WOLPE, poet and author of The Scar Saloon

LAILA LALAMI, author of Hope and other Dangerous Pursuits and the popular blog Moorishgirl

Poet, educator, & activist MATTHEW SHENODA, author of Somewhere Else

Host: Nada Taib
Cornelia St. Cafe
29 Cornelia St.
212.989.9319
Cover $8 (includes one house drink)

November 6th - 7p.m.
ATOMIC READING SERIES
featuring:

LISA SELIN DAVIS, author of the novel Belly

ANDY HORWITZ, professional Potty Mouth and author of groovy blog Andy's Chest

CHRISTINE HAMM, poet who grows literary culture in a milk carton

TSAURAH LITZKY, icon of literary erotica

Curated and Hosted by Cheryl B., brilliant memoirist & keeper of The B List.

Lucky 13 Saloon
273 13th St. (5th Ave.)
Park Slope, Brooklyn
FREE

A Cure for My-People-Are-At-Work Blues?

Willie, my guest blogger, says: "I miss my people! This cat (Angus, see behind) is only interested in playing with string! Maybe I'll login to DogCatRadio for some upbeat pop music and barking interludes!"

Halloween Cake for Cat Lovers

I was browsing and happened across this very cool recipe blog, featuring a CAT BOX CAKE! And a beautiful, cookbook-quality photo. It's amazing what can be done with tootsie rolls and a microwave.

Willie our dog would probably prefer to eat from the real cat box, but for the rest of us, this is the shit!

Why I Love Brooklyn...It's the Dirt

So I actually read my snail mail a couple weeks ago and saw the announcement for compost give-back from the NYC Sanitation Department. They have a compost facility way the heck out in Canarsie, and I drove out there with a bunch of bags in the back of the Subaru Wagon.

It was one of those cool cross-sections of NYC, like the subway. People of all shapes, sizes, colors, and languages, shoveling the free compost into bags. A guy from New York's Strongest helped me load a half a dozen bags. Here's how it looks in our garden! The lasagna bed is coming along: a layer of newspaper, then peat moss, then topsoil, then fireplace ashes (I'm improvising now) and now compost. Maybe we'll be able to grow some great heirloom veggies next year!

Wilbur chimed in with his opinion. WOOF! Translation: "I LOVE DIRT!"

WORD BY WORD on Podcast

I finally figured out how to get Jordan Rosenfeld's WORD BY WORD podcasts into my iTunes. I may be the last to figure out stuff like this so bear with me. This is a great improvement, since I have trouble connecting to KRCB streams, and now I will have a local archive, and won't miss any future content!

Today I listened to her wonderful 10/17 interview with TC Boyle. A great focus on process and the writing life, including Boyle reading an excerpt of a story. Boyle downplays his prolific writing life, makes it sound like the most fun job in the world. He also speaks frankly about talent, and about how the lucky folks are the ones who figure out what their talents are.

(I have no idea what my talents are. I only know I enjoy writing, even though it may prove to be more hobby than vocation. All I know is I'm having fun. And struggling, too, but mostly having fun.)

If you haven't heard her shows yet, Rosenfeld is an insightful interviewer, focusing not only on the work, but on the day-to-day of writing, nuts and bolts stuff that we writers crave. This writer anyway.

Here's how to get it into iTunes (and you techies, don't laugh at me):
1. go to http://krcb.podgram.net/
2. in iTunes, the Advanced menu, click Subsribe to Podcast.
3. copy or drag the url next to Jordan's beautiful picture into the iTunes dialog box.

I don't recommend using KRCB's application Personal Translator (please, no offense). I tried it, and it didn't work well with my other applications open. This is necessary if you're going to listen to internet radio at work.

Thank god for public radio, and thanks to Jordan Rosenfeld for a great program.

Calling All Catamounts: Shteyngart Interviews Lipsyte

If you are like me and fell in love with Teabag in Sam Lipsyte's HOME LAND, then check out this interview on Loggernaut. Gary Shteyngart, author of the hilarious RUSSIAN DEBUTANTE'S HANDBOOK, pulls perfect morsels out of Lipsyte's work, like:

This is Teabag speaking to his principal, Mr. Fontana: "Some nights I picture myself naked, covered in napalm, running down the street. But then it's not napalm. It's apple butter. And it's not a street. It's my mother."

It's the jarring nonsequiturs and mother-love that makes Teabag, and other Lipsyte protags, win my heart. I went all over NYC looking for VENUS DRIVE, and where do I find it? In Istanbul, Turkey. Groovy UK edition. I know I'm not alone in my Cult of Lipsyte, and if you're not onboard, please, get with the program.

And Shteyngart, he's no slouch either, a pioneer (and probably the funniest) in the new milennium's Russian-American literary movement. My favorite moment in RUSSIAN DEBUTANTE:

"Vladimir, how can I say this? Please, don't be cross with me. I know you'll be cross with me, you're such a soft young man. But if I don't tell you the truth, will I be fulfilling my motherly duties? No, I will not. The truth then..." She sighed deeply, an alarming sigh, the sigh of exhaling the last doubt, the sigh of preparing for battle. "Vladimir," she said, "you walk like a Jew."

Another mom moment. And they do discuss Jewish fiction in the interview, the "done" American version, and the newer, immigrant version. I'm not a Jew, I'm not qualified to rehash or analyze. Only to recommend.

Bombay by the Pound; or, I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing

Well, I just finished the first of my literary birthday gifts, this one from a friend visiting from Mumbai. He said, "This really captures the feeling of Bombay," then handed me the 935 page, 2lb-11oz paperback UK edition of Gregory David Roberts' SHANTARAM. Unbeknownst to me, it is an international bestseller. My friend noticed my discomfort at the size of the book: "Just read the first 100 pages, it's worth it."

I trust this friend, and I am curious about Bombay. But more than that, I'm curious about what makes this material warrant the book's absurd scale. My first novel, which at a mere 120 thousand words (about 350 print pages) has been called "big" and "sprawling" in the nicest and most helpful ways by those rejecting it, will probably never see print in its current configuration. So what does SHANTARAM have that made publishers ignore its violation of the cardinal rule of debut fiction: keep it simple?

In a word: PLATFORM. This is an autobiographical novel with one of the best author platforms I have ever seen. Roberts was a reformed heroin addict in an Australia prison, doing a hefty sentence for armed robbery. He escaped prison, went to India on a fake New Zealand passport, toured India and learned to speak Marathi, Hindi, and Urdu like a native, lived in a Bombay slum where he opened a free clinic, joined the Bombay mafia and worked in black market currency and passports, dabbled in the Bollywood movie biz, went on a gunrunning mission in Afghanistan during the war with Russia, eventually got caught in Europe, and then served out his remaining sentence for the Australia crimes. In the book's acknowledgements, he notes that 600 pages of his original manuscript, penned in prison, were lost.

(Meaning the story was supposed to be 1500 pages?)

I'll try not to bitch about the length, especially since it's what kept me reading. That nagging question: why is it so big? I concluded that it simply suffers from the problem that many autobiographical first novels suffer, the need to include every good idea, every insight, every interesting character, as if there will be no more novels after this one. And while I did find myself wishing Roberts had saved some of the material for his next opus, I must concede that it feels well-researched, and it REALLY makes me want to go to Bombay. The book's architecture is meandering, but so are the slums of Bombay, and so I'll cut him some slack.

Some critics have complained about Roberts' "larger than life" characters, which is a term I'm struggling with now. As in too colorful, too implausible? If so, I disagree. I, like Roberts, am a person who is drawn to weirdos. They do exist. There is no need to write bland characters, or to be bland in life.

But if "larger than life" means cliche, then maybe I see critics' point. One does get tired of hearing about the winning smile of Prabaker, the protag's first friend in India, or the liquid green eyes of Karla, the aloof love interest. But so what. This book is a ride. A long, long, ride, like a Bollywood movie, complete with bad guys and a dancing bear. So maybe the movie could be edited. Maybe the hero wins too many battles or has too much flowery, good sex. (I mean really, no fumbling or bumbling? No icky fluids?) So what if it falls into that story paradigm of cross-cultural searching and assimilation. My Indian friend wasn't offended. It's a little like Roberts' take on visiting India: you just gotta trust and ride.

Aside: while I was reading this book, I noticed Vikram Chandra sold a 1200-page novel about the Bombay crime and movie underworld. Is this becoming a genre? The Bombay supernovel?

Let's Go Get Some Dogs at Nathan's!

What's this German Shepherd doing on top of Nathan's Famous in Coney Island? What else? BEGGING.

We had a great visit with my folks, just now getting through the pics. The boardwalk, Turkish dinner at Sahara, Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Hey, we even went into Manhattan a little, to check out the Russia show at the Guggenheim.

HEY, YOU GONNA EAT THAT?

This Is NOT a Cat

My husband happened to catch this critter hanging out on top of our garage. He's absolutely fearless. He menaces the feral cats. One night recently I was walking home and he was coming the other way. At first I thought it was Vince. Then I realized this guy was rounder, with a bushier tail and a pointier nose. And then he walked right past me on the sidewalk as if I didn't exist. I thought, OK, you are a real New York raccoon, you even have the street etiquette down.

I am very glad all our feral kitties have their rabies shots.

Is this really Brooklyn? We've seen squirrels, possum, and raccoon in our yard...what's next? Please don't say skunk.

Digging Through the Mothballs.

Fellow Pussy Poet Janice threw it down on her blog, bravely posting her 12-year-old poem, "The New, Improved Girlfriend." I miss hearing that poem!

I take it as a dare. How else can I?

Mine's not as pride-worthy as hers, but it's still fun to dig through the mothballs of my memory. (Since this is seriously four computers ago and my brain's the only place it is stored.) Drumroll...here's my old pathetic lust-poem, practically old enough to vote. And I'm NOT reading this tonight at KGB.

indelible

i want to get under your skin
like your needle
fat with ink
that penetrates
in and again and again

and when you wipe your blood away you find
those pricks have intercoursed to lines

you and I are Celtic
carved in flesh of your bicep
arms and legs woven
under or over
or around or
inside out

arms and legs that don't fit
neatly into
prepositions
but fall square in their own design

a labyrinth of sins
where your skin ends
an mine begins

Reading and Some Auld Lang Syne

Get out your crying towels, it's a reunion! (Well, sort of.) If you're in NYC & available, come by KGB on Thursday October 20th. I'll be reading new stuff, most likely from a novella. Not sure what the other gals will read.

RETURN OF (SOME OF) THE PUSSY POETS!
with
Anne Elliott
Janice Erlbaum
Gloria
with your hostess, Kathleen Warnock
Thursday, October 20, 7pm.
FREE.
KGB Bar85 E. 4th St.NYC
www.kgbbar.com

THE PUSSY POETS were a gang of five loudmouth women out to prove feminists didn't have to be puritans. They got together in 1992, made a big splash, performed throughout the city, got their pictures in a few magazines, and then, having used up their 15 minutes of notoriety, imploded in 1993.

Three of the former members will be reading Oct 20th: Gloria, now vocalist for the band Kanipchen-Fit; Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir (forthcoming from Villard!); and Anne Elliott, now ukulelist, fiction writer, and publisher of Big Fat Press.

Introducing...the Blooker Prize!

A new prize in the UK for books based on blogs. So cute I almost think it's a hoax.