Monday, October 12, 2015

Writing (not about family)

Thank you! everyone who left such kind comments on my post about my father's health. They were really comforting.

Though I was sad to lose record of the comments, I deleted the post (and edited others) because I decided [again] this isn't the place to write in detail about my family. 

In a way, I'd love to write David Sedaris–like tragicomic posts about the family. As with most families, there's plenty of tempting material!  

"My boyfriend and I don't always smoke cigarettes..."
But even more, I'd like to step away and get on with my life.

You know, like make more ridiculous Hutch-inspired shirts for toys, 
like the shirt in this photo >
Marz sent me that looks lik
a gay cigarette ad from the 1970s, if such a thing had existed.
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Speaking of boys together, 
I'm reading a lucky find from the Little Free Library box: 
 I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark (2003), by Brian Hall.

Just started and really liking it so far---it has heaps of the imaginative intelligence that is mostly lacking in my work (and it's just prior to the era I'm in), so that's a sweet relief. 

Good review from the NYT here:
"Bill and Meriwether's Excellent Adventure".


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And--more boys together (hm, they're piling up here)-- I've requested from the library the just-released YA novel from Rainbow Rowell: Carry On

It's a slash fan-fiction novel based on a made-up fandom about a couple of
Harry Potter–like characters that Rowell's character Cath was writing about in Rowell's earlier novel Fangirl:

"Simon and Baz" 
< illustration by Toerning

[There must be an easier way to say that. ]  

I loved Fangirl:
it's about the making of a writer.

Its main character, Cath, is a neurotic fanfic writer who goes to college and has a hard time getting her homework done at the same time she's trying to wrap up her popular online fan-masterpiece about a boy wizard falling in love with his enemy/boyfriend before the author of the source material publishes the final book in the series--a situation real fan writers faced before the final Harry Potter novel came out--and also falling in love with a boy herself.

 Rowell said when she finished writing Fangirl, she couldn't get the student magicians she'd made up out of her mind, so she wrote this novel.
It's as if, let's see... as if Snape were a student the same age as Harry, and the two fell in love? 

I don't really know because I only skimmed Carry On at a bookstore. 
I did read the last chapter though (I'm that sort of reader: I like to know what happens so I can relax and read the rest of the book with attention), and it had--more sweet relief-- all the complexity that the ending of Harry Potter woefully lacked. 
(I've always hated that impossibly cheery ending, though it only fits with J. K. Rowling's overall lack of psychological insight.)

Speaking of work, I should do some--I'm way behind, having taken most of last week off.
Tootle-oo!

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