Thoughts on The Shipping News
August 3, 2010
I just rewatched the film adaptation last night, which is absolutely one of the most successful translations from page to screen out there, and was reminded of the first time I read E. Annie Proulx’s novel. I was a sophomore at Miami University taking a contemporary literature class, though The Shipping News wasn’t on the reading list. (Jesus’s Son was, and that’s still one of my all-time favorites.) No, my professor mentioned Annie Proulx’s novel to us as something amazing, and I picked it up in one of uptown’s bookstores on the way home that afternoon.
It absolutely blew me away.
Leading each chapter with an entry from the Ashley Book of Knots. The way it starts with clipped phrases. Taking everything from Quoyle. The way the prose becomes more fluid and nuanced as Quoyle learns who he is and recovers his life. The stunningly human twists, and Newfoundland becoming a character of its own. The mysticism of the sensitive Newfies.
It started a young journalism student out slowly, with those clipped phrases. I remember thinking, “I can do this. I’ve read Hemingway,” but the more I read, the more I got sucked in, I said to myself, “I want to do this.”
It was the book that made me want to be a fiction writer and a journalist.
Published in New City’s summer guide!
May 26, 2010
By Daniel Prazer
A year ago last weekend, I walked across the stage and got my master’s degree in writing from Columbia College. Cranking away at a book-length manuscript tends to burn you out, a condition I referred to as the post-post-graduate writing hangover.
Less than a month later, my father took his own life. For the next few months, I sank deeper into the couch cushions.
Momentum—or the lack of it—took over my writing life. When I finally emerged from my suicide-survivor’s exile, the only words I put down on the page were cover letters to go with a redesigned resume. Nothing creative.
Until this summer, when a former professor and friend, Sam Weller, threw down this gauntlet on his Facebook wall: “I am going to write 500 words a day, every day, until the end of August. This will give me a 53,000-word draft of a novel by the end of summer. Anyone care to join me in this challenge? It’s just two pages a day.”
Rupert Murdoch: iPad the savior of newspapers?
April 8, 2010
The Australian has a great story of NewsCorp (and Fox and the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones and, oh, The Australian) chief Rupert Murdoch’s views on the iPad:
“It may well be the saving of the newspaper industry”, by making it cheaper to distribute content to a broader audience, Mr Murdoch said. He expected the iPad to have eight or nine competitors within 12 months.
“There’s going to be tens of millions of these things sold all over the world,” he said.
Let’s hope he’s right. It’s often been said that more people than ever are reading news content, but fewer than ever are paying for it. All eyes are on the WSJ as they try their pay-for-content model. Will the iPad provide that outlet? Is it digital paper?
Hell no. But I’m a traditionalist, and I refuse to buy an e-book reader until I can take notes on the damn thing.
Gizmodo summarized a much longer (and well-worth reading) article thusly: it’s a good starting point for the tablet.
But so far, there’s nothing the iPad does that my Palm Pre can’t.
After the Workshop… then what?
April 3, 2010
If you go through the archives, you’ll find out the shit that went down with my dad taking his own life last summer. Since then, I’ve struggled to read, and finish, so much as a short story. My mind just kind of wanders, and I lose interest.
But I just finished devouring John McNally‘s latest novel, After the Workshop. Somehow, it was the right book at the right time. I’ve got some writing that I need to do—I’m reading a story I’ve yet to write at a wedding in Iowa in two months—but I’ve felt like without writing through what my dad did, I couldn’t get to it. I needed a bit of a kick in the pants.
So I finished this book—a gorgeously rendered novel about a stalled writer who takes a gig as a media escort, carting writers from the airport to book signings in his mufflerless car, his unfinished manuscript taunting him from under a pile of phone books. And it occurred to me that I’ve got to set my issues with my dad aside and start something fresh. I’m itching to sit down at the keyboard again. I know what I’m going to write for the wedding.
John’s short stories from the award-winning collections Troublemakers and Ghosts of Chicago have always gotten me unstuck when I didn’t know what happened next in my thesis/novel, which is finally DONE done and ready to send out. McNally’s one of those writers who should be hugely famous. And to me, he is. Besides being a hell of a guy, and making my mom cry with his heartfelt inscription in her copy of After the Workshop, somehow, he’s the one whose work always gets me unstuck. And with this book, he’s done it in a huge way.
Man hands
February 26, 2010
I’m working on copy editing and laying out the Story Week Reader 2010 (the past five editions are available online at the Publishing Lab’s Web site) this week, something I’ve been doing for two years now with my wife, Ann, who designs the cover. This year’s, I think, is particularly strong. It’s got the tiny keyboard and the large keyboard, the process from writing small—the magazine’s maximum word count is 750—to writing long.
Those aren’t my hands. Nor my wife’s. The faculty advisor told me my hands looked too old and wizened. “We need something younger,” he said. “Maybe tattoos. Definitely female.”
And I take that as a complement. I’ve got scars on my hands from years of cats and hot oils popping from skillets and general clumsiness. I’ve got a wedding ring. Could I use some lotion? Probably, but man’s men don’t moisturize. That my hands wouldn’t work for this design is a sign of growing up, not old. Do my knees ache after I go to the gym? Sure. Can I pull all-nighters and still be alert the next day? Certainly not as well as I could when I was an undergrad, or hell, even a grad student.
It was a gentle validation that I’m an adult. And I like that. It means I’ve got perspective. It means I’ve survived things that made me stronger (especially this past summer). It means I can make wise choices, and if my choices turn out to be not-so-wise, that I’m adaptable enough to duck and weave and come out on the other side with my own momentum.
And I like that.
Apple’s tablet — the savior of traditional publishing?
January 25, 2010
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple reps have been meeting with publishers ahead of its expected release of its tablet on Wednesday. Which could be amazing news — absolutely amazing — for the struggling publishing industry.
Apple representatives have been in New York this week talking to the largest trade publishers, according to industry executives. They said Apple had proposed an arrangement under which publishers would get to set the price of their books, with Apple taking a 30 percent commission and the publishers keeping the rest. Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, declined to comment on what he called “rumors and speculation.”
Depending on whether Apple sets an upper limit on pricing, its model could be much more appealing to publishers, who resent how Amazon has aggressively discounted their books. Typically, Amazon charges $9.99 for new releases and best sellers, a price that other e-book vendors, including Sony and Barnes & Noble, have effectively been forced to follow.
Apple revolutionized the electronic music market with the iTunes store, and with the New York Times preparing to charge for content, I can’t help but think the iTunes model can blow the lid on this awful publishing industry — both traditional book and newspapers. With the sheer size of the tablet versus the iPhone, you could buy and comfortably read newspapers online. Think a portable version of Politico‘s digital print version.
Thousands of words at a time
January 19, 2010
When I worked in the newsroom and had access to the AP Photo feed, there were certain photos labeled Graphic Content. Most of them showed bodies, or people in near-corpse states, and they were hard as hell to look at — the kind of photographs you can’t unsee.
But they told their stories better than the more family-friendly shots.
I’ve long been a fan of the Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature. Gorgeous high-res shots from around the world. This one’s titled Haiti six days later.
People run toward a U.S. helicopter as it makes a water drop near a country club used as a forward operating base for the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. Relief groups and officials are focused on moving aid flowing into Haiti to survivors of the powerful earthquake that hit the country on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
If you’re an adult, you need to see it. You need to click the photos that are labeled graphic content. You need to see what you’re not seeing elsewhere. Then you need to help. I’m a huge fan of Doctor’s Without Borders, who lost some staff in the earthquake, and the UN’s World Food Program, who are getting emergency rations to the people who need them. Please. Give.
Miami Univ. classmate’s kicking ass and taking names
December 28, 2009
So Jon Gambrell, who graduated from Miami University’s journalism program in ’04 (I think), is now the AP Bureau Chief in Lagos, Nigeria. It turned out to be great timing for him, what with the Christmas underwear bomber departing from Lagos. I’ve been reading his updates on the Wii News Channel, of all places.
His Twitter feed is nothing short of amazing. Check it out.
And Jon, keep chasing the stories, but for God’s sake, be careful.
Good news for the Pulitzers
December 8, 2009
So Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politoco, has been named to a term on the Pulitzer board, which is great news for the top prize in journalism.
There’s been some huffing and puffing about online journalism being included alongside traditional print organizations for the Pultizers, and rightly so. Bloggers who fancy themselves investigative reporters, lacking any editorial oversight or journalism training, certainly aren’t on par with the Boston Globe, which spent years and millions of dollars investigating the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. And blogs that merely aggregate real reporting and add a paragraph of commentary certainly aren’t on the same level—there’s no way I’d expect to be eligible for a Pulitzer for this post.
That said, Politico is a great step in the right direction. With papers closing their doors (or in precarious financial states) around the country—the shuttering of the print editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News come to mind—adding Politico to the Pulitzer board makes sense. It cranks out a daily print issue in D.C., but only while congress is in session. Its bread and butter is its amazing Web site and original reporting. After just a few years, it has the clout to pull in heavy-hitting politicians and, well, politicos as guest writers from all spectrums.
Now, if only we can get papers like the Boston Globe to see this business model makes sense, maybe it’ll stop bleeding $1 million a week.
How to Disappear Completely
December 1, 2009
It’s been ages since I’ve posted on here, and there really isn’t an excuse. This winter, I’ve been doing a bit of driving back and forth from Chicago to Ohio, once for Thanksgiving, and twice for my first season out trying my hand at deer hunting.
My mom will never understand this newfound fascination of mine, and my wife’s sick of hearing about it. But for me and thousands of other people, hunting isn’t about killing defenseless animals. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division pegs the whitetail population in the state at just over 650,000, far beyond the natural carrying capacity of the state’s ecosystems. Which explains why there were three huge whitetails in my mom’s suburban front yard last week.
I didn’t managed to harvest a deer my first year out—yet. But I’ve had an amazing time out at my friend’s 93-acre farm in Bellefountaine, Ohio. I’ve seen plenty of deer; after all, it’s a long-neglected apple orchard ringed by cornfields. And even though my first trip was cut short thanks to the flu, being outside and off Chicago’s pavement for a few days is indescribably refreshing.
It’s more than a few days of solitude and a chance for my mind to quiet down, though. It’s ethical. If I’m going to eat meat, I better be able to man up and harvest it myself. Besides, I’d rather have an animal on my plate that’s lived its entire life in the wild than one that spent its life on a factory farm. And it’s worth noting that no group—none—contributes more financially to conservation than hunters and fisherman (there’s an 11 percent federal excise tax on all firearms and ammunition that goes directly to the Department of the Interior). The press release that’s linked to above points out that deer season brings almost $900 million to Ohio’s economy. And I can get behind that, especially if I can clear the city air out of my lungs while I’m doing it.
Morning in the ground blind. Click to enlarge.
