Emerging Writers Network

Source of Lit - USA Today and Dan Chaon

I'm (stunning news alert!!) quite a bit behind on book reviews.  If I were caught up, you'd have seen a 4.5 star review of Dan Chaon's latest novel, Await Your Reply, a good month or so ago.  I'd have drooled over some of his language, his ability to keep me turning pages one after the other, etc.

Fortunately, in today's USA Today, Bob Minzesheimer has reviewed the book and ends his thoughts with:

"Some novels you read to find out what happens next.  Others are appealing more for the trip itself, not how it ends.  Await Your Reply captures readers both ways."

I think the ball he's just nailed is on its way out of the park. 

A Sad Admission

Prior to last week, I don't believe I'd ever read a word by Amy Hempel.  Now that I've read about 60% of her The Collected Stories, I question just what the hell I was thinking.  Actually I know what I was thinking, and realize why you cannot always trust others when they discuss writers, you must dip into the words yourself.

If I recall correctly, back in the last few years of the 80's and early 90's, when I really began reading on a pretty scary basis in terms of percentage of my free time, the name Amy Hempel was bandied about with some others in articles and reviews, including at least one, whose work I've disliked nearly everything of which I've read.  I believe my assumption that Hempel's writing must be similar to this other writer's based on the frequent comparisons is what kept me away.  Of course, looking back, that was illogical even at that time, as one or two of the other names bandied about in those articles were authors I was enjoying quite a bit at the time. 

I guess at least back then I could say I was young and stupid, and not just stupid.

This obviously isn't going to be a review of Hempel's collection of collections, but simply put - wow!  Seriously, that's 20 years wasted that I could have enjoyed some of these numerous times (a few of which I already have done in just this past week), been as excited as everybody else when Tumble Home and The Dog of the Marriage came out, etc.

Anybody else out there do this?  Hold off for years on a writer for one reason or another and then decide to give them a chance and kick yourself repeatedly for having wasted the years?

Source of Lit - The Collagist Blog

Remember to check on in over at The Collagist every day to see what's new on the blog.  In the past few days there have been interviews with Laird Hunt, Jason Bredle, and Elizabeth Crane and a podcast of Angi Becker Stevens reading her recently published story.

All About Lulu - I Told You So

Nearly a year ago I wrote a review of Jonathan Evison's All About Lulu.  It was a pretty positive review. 

Just a couple of days back, Evison's debut was named the best novel in the Washington State Book of the Year Awards.  Congrats to a well-deserving author and proponent of literary fiction!

Source of Lit - Blake Freaking Butler

Has anybody killed it more than Blake Butler this year in the literary world?  Not only did he publish Ever with Calamari Press, and Scorch Atlas with Featherproof Books (note the cool factor with his choice of publishing houses?), but he's just announced that he's signed a two book deal with Harper Perennial for a novel and I assume his book 2500, the 50 lists of 50 Blake's been publishing individually the past few years, as book two is listed as a non-fiction title.  And that's nothing to say about individual pieces published all over the place, journals edited, reviews written, websites managed, etc.

It's very cool seeing somebody that puts everything he has into the literary world seeing results.  And I agree with a sentiment Blake has on his post, that a major publisher is interested in his work (I don't believe I've read the novel he's sold them, but Blake doesn't write too many sentences that don't stray into Lynchian worlds) is a positive sign.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - David Ohle

David Ohle - Ruthie

 

So, this is an excerpt from one of the novellas that I just ordered from Calamari Press, which makes me even more excited that I've ordered them.  I also read Motorman by David earlier this year and he amazes me in how he creates these worlds that are seemingly very similar to our own, yet have their own vocabularies, their own quirks, but in a manner that still allows me as a reader to believe I'm right there with his characters.

 

This particular piece is broken into lists, cantos, some straightforward (or close to it) narrative, etc.  What drew you to this particular piece and in a case like this, an excerpt from a novella, is it similar to the Sam Michel excerpt, had you read the entire piece?  Are you an active participant with the author in finding the right excerpt for Unsaid, or are you publishing what David submitted to you?

 

David McLendon:

First, let me applaud all that Derek White is doing at Calamari. His tireless enthusiasm is a great example for anyone to follow. I picked up a copy of Motorman fifteen or so years ago. For years I kept looking for new work by Ohle. He is such a great and fearless writer. I found his contact information and began corresponding with him. He was still writing strong work, and eventually those pages became two books that completed the trilogy he began with Motorman. The forthcoming work that Ohle is publishing with Calamari is perhaps his strongest. The excerpt in Unsaid affirms this. To answer your question, yes, I read an early draft of the book. He had published excerpts elsewhere, and offered me what was available. Ohle is very generous and easy to work with. He is affable and modest and a true artist who has remained untainted by the marketplace.  The excerpt I chose for Unsaid is Ohle at his best. He creates a strange world that is very convincing. His details are some of the best imagined in the language, and each detail is a multiplicity unto itself. He carries that great rare ability to balance content against structure. He is an experimentalist, but a great storyteller as well. His forthcoming titles from Calamari constitute nothing less than a great event in American literature.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Tom Laverty

Tom Laverty - Six Poems

Subtle.  That's the first thing that comes to mind as there is a subtle masculinity to Laverty's work - nothing over the top, but it's there.  There's also a nice subtle use of repetition.  It's not as overt as some of the other material I've read here so far, but it's there.

There also seems to be a nice variance of style from poem to poem within these six.  Is that something that you hope to find when publishing more than one or two poems from a single poet in a single issue? 

David McLendon

I agree with you that Laverty's work carries with it a kind of subtle masculinity, but what I hear stylistically from his pages varies little from one poem to the next. Laverty is stylistically consistent, implementing a sort of plainspoken meter with each of his poems. This suits the content of his work, as Laverty is less concerned with formal diversity than presenting the reader with deeply felt personal histories. He is a keen observer of his surroundings. He allows no distance between what he sees and what he says. There is no peripheral safety in Laverty's poems, and he is one of the stronger emerging poets I have read. He insists we see his world for what it is, and he shows us that world with a clarity built from language. There is magic in Laverty's work, but no tricks. As he writes in one of his poems:

"Putting this in a sonnet would have been wrong,
you are closer to me than that."

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Bjorn Verenson

Bjorn Verenson - The Basis of My Gospel

Short and to the point and maybe with a little more straightforward humor than the writer whose alias this is (not that I don't find said author funny, but many worry about me when they find out that I do).

This is one of at least two cases of your inclusion of authors publishing work under an alias.  What are your overall thoughts of this process?  The writing of work under a different pen name?  In the other case, it may seem to be more clear as to why, as the writing is really quite different than that being published under the original pen name.  I've not read enough Verenson to know yet just where he falls in comparison with his counterpart.

David McLendon

It's the writing that matters to me, not the source of the writing or the masking of the source. The way I see it, Verenson is as "real" as his "counterpart". Beyond the writing of fiction, we create fictions daily as a way to manage the insult of nature and the inevitability of death. We follow cultural trends or worship a deity or shoot up heroin as a way to sidestep the unavoidable fact of our own mortality. At least with the writing of fiction the writer is attempting a kind of immortality through art. He or she is busy with the task of making an artifact that will hopefully outlast each generation that perpetuates its readership in the world.

Regardless, it's nobler to create a fiction for yourself than accept those fictions the world hands you at birth. Art cannot save you. Nothing can save you. But through art you may be able to face with dignity what so many others are hellbent on avoiding. More often than not, Verenson and his doppelgänger force their pages beyond the act of facing mortality. They force their pages to embrace it.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Patrick Ehlen

And we are back!  After a busy period for myself, David was involved in taking Unsaid 4 on the road to New York, but we're back in business with going through the current issue author by author.  Those of you keeping track may notice that we've skipped past one author - this is due to an email snafu, but do not worry, the comments on his work are coming soon.

Patrick Ehlen - November

Man, that opening sentence is a humdinger.  Ehlen moves nicely back and forth between long and winding sentences and those that are quick and to the point, and does so with a nice use of language that I'm obviously coming to expect within these pages.  He also creates some phonetic words:  wantida, whadja, thrower, and more.  What are your thoughts on this type of technique? 

David McLendon

I am the strongest advocate you will find of taking liberties on the page. It's tricky, though, because all too often these liberties are odd for the sake of being odd, and as a reader nothing collapses my attention more. Ehlen is a strong writer. His choices on the page are thoughtful and thoughtfully felt. His sentences are quite different from those of Alexis Almeida, but they share with hers a kind of durable eloquence that is essential for sentences of such lengthy transport. Can you imagine a novel that follows through with this stance? It's my guess that Ehlen locked himself away from the distractions of the world while composing these pages. Both he and Almeida know how to stick to their respective objects. They let their objects move the pages forward. I look forward to hearing more from Ehlen, as he is a writer who listens before he speaks.