Most of us litbloggers just blather on about books and publishing industry gossip, but Dan Wickett is a man on a mission. Part of his mission is to get people to read the literary magazines that are so important to literary fiction culture yet are so little read. In an attempt to rectify this situation, Wickett has approached a number of these magazines to put together a discounted subscription offer for anyone who subscribes to at least three. For all the details, visit his blog.
Amazing Literary Magazine Offer
Exclusive: The First Lines of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King
When David Foster Wallace killed himself in 2008, he left behind an unfinished manuscript and a number of fragments that, with the efforts of his long-time editor Michael Pietsch, has become The Pale King, to be released next month amid the high expectations of the late writer's many fans. The book's lyrical opening sentence, printed below, may be familiar to Wallace completists. It opens a brief piece called "Peoria (4)" that appeared in the fall 2002 issue of Triquarterly. That piece, which can be found in PDF form here, in its entirety makes up the opening sentences of The Pale King. (Recently, according to handful of blogs, the opening of The Pale King was read on a BBC radio program and some incomplete transcriptions of this appeared online.)
The opening sentence of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace:
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.
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Books That Help Us Write
A few posts back I touched upon the idea of the "style guide." As a newly minted journalism student, I have been taught that these guides are essential for creating the "clean copy" that my editors will want to see. They are fascinating books in a way. In my AP Stylebook some entries are brief, just one word: tiptop says one, instructing me not hyphenate. Other entries go on for a few pages like the one for possessives, which explains how to deal with "nouns the same in singular and plural," "special expressions," and "quasi possessives." I know, exciting. One of the undercurrents of journalism school seems to be that writing is a lot more than just putting words on paper. There are rules to be followed and facts to be vetted. The rules are covered by the Stylebook, but vetting the facts can often be done with The World Almanac and Book of Facts, where one might discover a daily astronomy calendar, a list of popes, and the name of every town in Alabama with more than 5,000 people. Armed with these two books, I ought to have much of the guidance I need, but I have also been known to refer to a couple of my favorite writing reference books when necessary. The Elements of Style is a thin, little book that is so elegant and efficient in teaching proper usage it supersedes many of the fatter, drier grammar books you may have encountered in your studies. I also love my The Synonym Finder, which I bought when I worked at the book store after a customer became misty when describing her devotion to it. I'm glad I bought it. Every time I go looking for a synonym, I find one so good that it feels like I'm cheating somehow. My reference library is by no means complete, however. I'm still looking for that perfect dictionary (any recommendations?). And though I'm always dropping hints that I'd love to get a nice hefty atlas for a gift, I still haven't received one.
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Poetry Redux
Those of you out there who have your own websites have probably noticed how the sorts of things that send people your way from the search engines is very unpredictable. In July I wrote about a fantastic poem called "The Clerks Tale" by Spencer Reece which appeared in the New Yorker new fiction issue this past summer. So many people have come here looking for it that I thought it worth mentioning again, and also because it really is a terrific poem. Here is my original post. Here is the poem, and as an extra treat, here is a link to Reece reading the poem.
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Appearing Elsewhere
My mildly contrarian take on the print version of Watchmen appears today at More Intelligent Life. Name-checked within the piece: Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, Malcolm Lowry, Jean Rhys, Charles Dickens, Georges Eliot and Saunders, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Herman Hesse, Jack Kerouac, Batman, Art Spiegelman, James Wood, Kenneth Turan,and a couple of guys who worked at a little comic-book shop in North Carolina in the early 1990s.Notwithstanding this cavalcade of stars, I found Watchmen somewhat frustrating, for reasons I attribute to the term "graphic novel." This may or may not be original and/or provocative. Still, I'm bracing for comments from Watchmen enthusiasts and Comic Book Guys of all stripes...
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HarperCollins BlogHer Follow Up
Following up on my recent post about HarperCollins teaming with the BlogHer women's blog network, I received from clarifications from HarperCollins on the nature of the arrangement. As I noted, HarperCollins is sponsoring "virtual book tours," making review copies of several books available for bloggers in the network to read and review "and participate in book title discussions on their own blogs and on BlogHer.org."I had also noted that BlogHer runs an ad network, and said that "it doesn't appear as though HarperCollins will be buying ads through the network, but if that does happen, then this initiative will have crossed a line." It turns out that I missed the point. The whole thing is an above board ad campaign from HarperCollins with no real editorial involvement in what BlogHer members write or don't write about the books.HarperCollins wrote me today to say that the arrangement is purely a branded sponsorship. HarperCollins is getting to promote and advertise its books, but it's up to the bloggers decide if they want to discuss the books. BlogHer's editors, meanwhile, have no involvement in the tour in any way, nor do they endorse the selected titles. It was also pointed out to me that the virtual book tour will never appear on the BlogHer home page, which is reserved for editorial content, but it will be promoted in an ad. HarperCollins also stressed to me that BlogHer is very sensitive about its editorial integrity, and both sides see this feature as a branded sponsorship, rather than a stamp of editorial approval from BlogHer on HarperCollins books.And, now that this has all been cleared up, I think it's a pretty creative way for a publisher to build a presence in the world of blogs. I'm curious to see how successful it turns out to be.
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