Author’s Note: This Ras-curated post was written by his good friend Howard Cincotta, a fiction writer and freelancer for all seasons. Cincotta read 1Q84 while recovering from outpatient surgery. Cincotta’s most recent articles – on green roofs and Toastmasters International – have been or will be published by SPAN, the U.S. Embassy’s bimonthly magazine in India. He is writing a novel about an archaeological dig on an alien planet called The Ruins of Trapezium.
Spoiler Warning: If you read to the end of this review, you’ll learn a couple of its major plot points, but that may be OK because you’re unlikely to finish the novel if you read to the end of this review.
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At one of the first writer’s workshops I ever attended, the instructor – half-kidding, half-serious – said that he was going to give us the innermost secret of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop (of which he was a graduate). Which was this: “Remember, for the reader, every word carries equal weight.”
In other words, if you describe something at length, or return again and again to a single theme or image, it better be Read more »
In my last post, about marvelous movie palaces, I closed with a reverie of my first date in the old Etna (PA ) Theater. The movies and romance have always had a symbiotic relationship, but that little romance did not turn out well, so let’s move on to the Circle Theater in Washington, DC. It’s the late 1970s, I’m a full-scale adult, married with child, job at the National Endowment for the Arts as a magazine editor. Read more »
I spent last evening reading Theodore Roethke. So here’s a gift. “I Knew a Woman” is perhaps the most famous of his poems, but the best poems are like your dearest friends—if they show up unexpectedly, it’s always worthwhile to stop what you’re doing and spend time with them. Read more »
The Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Mount Olympus, the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Sounion – the ancient Greeks believed that certain spots on earth were sacred places. I’ve often felt the same about certain movie theaters. I’m not sure what it is exactly about some theaters that separates them from the Mallplex experience, but for me it has something to do with the very personal discovery and rediscovery of the enormous seductive pleasures of the movies. In today’s post I’ll revisit a few of the movie theaters where those giant images up on the screen in the dark took over my imagination for a couple of hours. Read more »
Ras posted here the other day with the question “Does Reading Novels Make You a Better Person?” My own question, considering how I’ve been spending my days lately, is “How About Writing a Novel? Does That Make You a Better Person?” Read more »
I’ve always sort of thought so – but in a vague, commonsensical, unprovable way. I don’t mean that one reads novels for the lessons they teach us. Um, let’s see. Gatsby should not have been so ambitious; Hester Prynne would have been better off sticking to her marital vows; Captain Ahab should have seen a therapist as soon as he lost that leg. OK, not exactly. But it just stands to reason that a person who spends a good chunk of her life immersed in complex virtual worlds where moral decisions constantly arise – and inside the minds of characters not herself – would over time develop an enhanced sense of tolerance and be able to make more sophisticated decisions in her own life. Read more »
Ted the Cat (1994-present) is a domestic shorthair blogger and vers libre poet. He also enjoys sleeping, eating, and lurking. Ted the Cat co-habits with Kaze,
also a blogger at 317am.net.
