Advice for New Writers
The Short Story According to Joyce Carol Oates and Edgar Allan Poe
I’m teaching a course in “Contemporary American Short Stories” this spring, and, in effort to understand what makes a good short story from the ground up, I’ve been reading quite a lot written by writers who are acknowledged masters of … Read more
Donald Antrim and the Case of the Vanishing Epiphany
Faithful readers of 317am know I’ve been on an epiphany kick lately. What got me started was reading a story in the New Yorker a month or so back (“Ever Since” by Donald Antrim), a story in which that essential … Read more
“The Dead”: James Joyce on a Roll
When a meme morphs across intellectual boundaries, the results can be unpredictable and extraordinarily powerful. In my previous post, “How James Joyce Reinvented the Epiphany and Saved the Short Story,” I told how the great Irish modernist borrowed a concept … Read more
How James Joyce Reinvented the Epiphany and Saved the Short Story
I’ve been working up a new course this spring in the contemporary short story. To get a sense of what makes for a good short story, I’ve gone back to ground zero – that is, I’ve been reading various acknowledged … Read more
How To Blog About Books You Haven’t Read
Regulars at 317am may have noticed that I’ve been pushing the envelope lately – blogging about movies I haven’t seen one day and about romance novels I haven’t read another. Ordinarily, I’d would feel uneasy about this sort of chutzpah, … Read more
A Perfect Sentence or Two
In a beautifully written essay in last Sunday’s New York Times, the novelist and short story Jhumpa Lahiri cites an unforgettable sentence from a story by James Joyce titled “Araby.” Here it is:
TED THE CAT
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kaze
Kaze is Washington DC area writing guru Steve Altman. The nickname is Japanese for “the wind.” Read more »
RasoirJ
Ras at Texas BBQ in DC, site of lunchtime chats with Kaze on the art and agony of writing. Ras is also known in some publishing circles as George Clack. Read more »