Yes, I am being a lazy poster during the intra-holiday week. You can’t complain about the cost, though, can you?
- M. John Harrison, one of the authors I hold in particularly high esteem, has a lovely piece up at his site about his writing process. Here’s a little taste:
I don’t have any writing pattern. I hate being professional. I don’t write according to a schedule or an output plan; I don’t begin at the beginning and write to the end. Or rather: if I do any of those things I usually have to bin the results. Writing should be fun–absorbing, transporting, intense, whatever. It should ambush you. It should be up there with sex, drugs and irresponsible driving. It shouldn’t have anything to do with research or require a degree in finding out about lipstick colours in 1943.
- That essay is part of a Time Out magazine feature. You might also be interested in their review of Harrison’s new book (which same book shows up on their best of the year list), or in the exclusive short story Harrison wrote for them.
- Ralph Steadman, gonzo artist numero uno, talks to Los Angeles City Beat about HST and his new memoir, The Joke’s Over.
(As an aside, I should mention that we had a bottle of Cardinal Zin the other night, which I had picked up primarily due to the Steadman label. I generally really like Californian Zinfandels, appreciating their rich character, but I was not a fan of the Cardinal. Boring. Good name, and great label, though.)
- I’d definitely rate George Pelecanos in the top five currently active writers in the “mystery” genre. (And he also does work for the best show currently on television.) Apparently he’s a frugal fellow, due in no small part to some mistakes in his wild youth. I’m not sure how that little anecdote qualifies as enough content to stand alone as an article in WaPo, but it’s interesting to me anyway.
- I love “hidden gems” type lists. “Best of” lists are fine, but they tend to include a certain percentage of “agree with the hive” entries, and a certain number of “dstinguish me from the hive” entried, whereas the “hidden gems” lists are more often full of things that really hit the writer, without consideration of how the list will reflect on the writer.
The Guardian has their “Hidden Delights” piece up, with each reviewer naming a single book, and I am thrilled that I’ve only read one of the mentioned books–guess which one? I say ‘thrilled’ because I can now look into these books, and probably find that there’s at least one, if not more, that will appeal to me.
I am a little stunned to see the latest Spenser book on the list though, for two reasons. First, because Parker and Spenser are hardly “overlooked” by any useful definition. Second because the Spenser books haven’t been really good since either the late seventies, or mid-eighties, depending on where you’re standing.
- A larger scale project is the Underrated Writers list at Syntax of Things.
I’m pleased to see Elizabeth Hand, Jeff Ford, Jeff Vandermeer, and the above-mentioned Pelecanos on the list, since I agree that they are all significantly underrated. (I should note that two of those four were nominated for the list by my pal Gwenda).
I am absolutely shocked to see Iain Banks on the list, but that’s only because I just can’t seem to grasp how it’s possible that he apparently doesn’t have an audience in the U.S. (Of course, if this means I can get lovely Nightshade editions of his books, I guess I can live with it.)
Most of the rest are new avenues of investigation for me. That should lead to a hurray or two.
- And, let’s end with some YouTubery, this time Norman Spinrad getting all experimental with a political message:
