Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2010

Shop Talk |

Big Think: Lionel Shriver on the "Unwholesome" Side of MFA Programs

by Celeste Ng

Should you get an MFA? On Big Think, novelist Lionel Shriver discusses the downsides of attending an MFA program: [It] does have a kind of indulgent, middle-class gestalt. The grim truth is that most people who get MFAs will not go on to be professional writers and therefore when I’ve been on the other side of it and occasionally taught creative writing, I felt a little bit guilty because so many of the people that you should be encouraging, because there’s no point to it if you’re not encouraging, are not going to make it. And I think that’s true […]


Shop Talk |

"…just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top."

by Celeste Ng

That’s what Gore Vidal had to say about John Updike in 2008. Think that’s bad? Examiner.com’s Michelle Kerns has compiled the 50 best author vs. author put-downs, and Vidal’s comment is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Nathaniel Hawthorne called Edward Bulwer-Lytton “the very pimple of the age’s humbug.” James Gould Cozzens declared, “I can’t read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.” Faulkner called Twain “a hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe.” Read the rest at Examiner.com, and don’t miss Part 2, where Evelyn Waugh wonders if Proust was “mentally defective” and […]


Shop Talk |

Glass Wave: Lit-Inspired Music

by Celeste Ng

Ever wonder what happens when literary professors make music? Glass Wave is what happens. Composed of four literary scholars—Thomas Harrison of UCLA and Robert Pogue Harrison, Dan Edelstein, and Christy Wampole of Stanford—plus drummer Colin Camarillo, Glass Wave has just released its first, self-titled album, with songs based on canonical Western literature. Inside Higher Ed profiles the band and the album: The 11-track album adapts themes and narratives from Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vladimir Nabokov, and sets them to musical compositions, generally in the vein of 1960s and ’70s progressive rock typified by […]


Shop Talk |

So, What's Really Killing Fiction?

by Celeste Ng

You may have already seen this essay by Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, blaming too many MFA programs and their “navel-gazing” writers for the sorry state of fiction these days: But the less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism. Now, […]


Reviews |

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, by Laura van den Berg

by Liana Imam

“I imagine the seasonally unspecified stories in Laura van den Berg’s What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us must be set in spring because spring is a time that makes me feel young, young as girls and in as much danger. And then there’s always this odd moment of realization that I am young and a girl and in some dangers. I’m still in too-close contact with boys I once loved, still prone to crying in public, still not aware of the dynamic personal lives of adults. Spring in the Midwest is about babies and hope and vitality, but it’s also about knowing that eventually a late frost is going to swing in out of no place and kill everything you haven’t collected in the shed. And I wanted the people in these stories locked up safe.”


Shop Talk |

Literary Action Figures

by Celeste Ng

I am secretly envious of Star Wars and Star Trek geeks, because they get to decorate their desks (and cubicles and shelves and windowsills) with action figures in heroic poses. It’s like saying to the world: I’m letting my geek flag fly. I also suspect that when no one is around, they play with the action figures. As a literary geek, though, I must make do with pithy quotes by E. L. Doctorow and the like. It’s just not the same. Apparently I am not alone. The Huffington Post alerted me to this video, which surfaced on YouTube recently and […]


Interviews |

Writing with Intuition: An Interview with Hannah Tinti

by Charlotte Boulay

Hannah Tinti was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, a place she credits with having influenced the darker side of her fiction. Charlotte Boulay talks with the much-admired author and editor about the influence of art in her work, how writers find their subject matter, her editorial approach at One Story, and trusting your gut during the drafting process, among other subjects.


Shop Talk |

The Envelopes Please…

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Congratulations to this year’s winners of The Collection Giveaway Project! Earlier today we held four separate drawings to determine the recipients of our free story collections, and here are the results: Shannon for Laura van den Berg’s collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us Pete for Joshua Furst’s collection Short People Barrett Shipp for Skip Horack’s collection The Southern Cross Melanie Yarbrough for Robin Black’s collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This Thanks also to Erika Dreifus of The Practicing Writer (who first suggested the giveaway), the editors of The Replacement […]


Shop Talk |

Last Call: Win One of Eight Free Short Story Collections!

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

As the month winds to a close over Memorial Day weekend and summer officially begins, we’ll also be wrapping up our celebration of May as Short Story Month. Inspired by The Emerging Writers Network and their unparalleled coverage off all things story-related each May, as well as The Poetry Book Giveaway For National Poetry Month, we decided to launch The Collection Giveaway Project (warm thanks to Erika Dreifus of The Practicing Writer for suggesting our site as a home for this promotion). The goal is a simple one: to get readers talking about their favorite stories and story collections. So […]


Shop Talk |

Much Better Than Setting Fires: Chuck Palahniuk at "The Muse and the Marketplace"

by Celeste Ng

Grub Street is an independent not-for-profit writing center in Boston that runs writing classes as well as an annual literary conference, The Muse and the Marketplace. At the most recent Muse, Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker, and even if you missed the conference, you can watch his speech below. Palahniuk tells the story of a very bad night in Paris on book tour and offers some possible metaphors for writing, as well as advice on eating cheese in France (!): Chuck Palahniuk from Grub Street on Vimeo. You can also listen to last year’s keynote address (in MP3 format) […]




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