This is a pretty fine book, after all. Was given to me by a friend a long while ago. First attempt at reading, I thought it was pretty bad. Now, I'm blown away. Go figure. Maybe I can mature.
Actually, it reminds me a lot of when I used to live at Echo B*se. With Gr*g and T*d "T-b*ne" H*ffm*n, on Harm*n Aven*e.
It's been a week of discovery.
I just got back from NYC. It was brief but grand. Billy and Cerrie took me to the American premier of Matt Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. It was... any number of generous and vague modifiers. But Billy and I agreed that our perception was completely altered by our intense hunger for food. I sat two rows behind Mr. Barney and Bjork.
We also got to see the Whitney, Central Park, the Barclay-Vesey building (above), the World Trade Center, some other galleries, two theatres who accepted copies of my script and one that did not. We watched a lot of mixed martial arts fight videos, and at one point ate squid and fried grapes. I tied a wish to Yoko Ono's wishing tree. The coffee was good.
Billy and I perused The Strand and I found this in the 'Half Price' bin. Go figure.
This is the best book on writing, story and process I've read since John Gardner, but completely different and not necessarily harmonious with --or even necessarily related to-- Gardner's work. I only mention him because, up to now, I thought he'd written the best book on writing, hand's down. Now I'm not so sure. At only eighty-one pages, this book is dense with insight. Mamet weaves consciousness, psychoanalysis, artistic creation, human nature, and the fallacies of government and nationalism into a cogent single analysis, to say nothing of his commentary on art and the conflict of the Information Age. If you write, in any form, or you really like theatre or film, or even if you're just brilliant and you like to read brilliant books, get it. For sure. The whole time I read it, I realized I had stumbled upon something revelatory and truly inspiring.
P.S. Money-Saving Tip #312: Instead of 'wasting' $20 to buy a hat you might regret when no longer high (on life), simply put it on your head and have your picture taken. Then you don't need the hat, because you have the picture. It's practically like stealing clothes.
This is what I'm reading right now. I'm halfway through and it's mostly pretty mediocre. I'm serious. However, there have been two fantastic stories so far: Until Gwen, by Dennis Lehane and The Shooting of John Roy Worth, by Stuart M. Kaminsky. Which isn't as good as the Lehane story, but it gave me good feelings nonetheless.
But I'm left wondering two things:
1: What, exactly, defines the 'mystery' genre? I mean, I realize these are short stories and all, but there's no surprise, no mystery per se, and generally very little suspense. Are there parameters, or is it like more of an eyeball measurement? Like, if there's guns, girls, and crime, and it's not quite good enough and stylistically specific to be 'literary', do you just call it Mystery?
And 2: What the fuck is up with the ubiquity of Joyce Carol Oates? Seriously. She's in EVERYTHING. Did she make a deal with the devil? And what's his number?
The winner of PEN's 2004-2005 Prison Writing Contest, in the category of fiction is Terrance D. Robinson's Mascara. It's the story of a prisoner who falls in love with his cellmate. Who's an hermaphrodite.
