Among The Jumbled Heap

The Perils of Describing Technology

The Brothers: a novel / Frederick Barthelme. I've reading Barhelme (Frederick not Donald). Never read him before, but I heard about him on the blogosphere because of the kerfuffal over his departure from the Mississippi Review. Did he quit? Was he fired? Read about it here. I'm drawn to Southern writers. I especially like Mississippians. I thought Barthelme might be a good reading fit for me. I have been underwhelmed by Brothers. Maybe it's just a one-off wonder and the rest of his st...

Vargas LLosa on Writing

Mario Vargas LLosa is the first Nobel Prize winner I've had the pleasure of reading before he won the medal.  The one regular reader of my blog may remember a post from about a year ago quoting a perfectly pitched scene of defecation.  I posted that in the midst of a Vargas LLosa obsession. I came to Vargas LLosa by a circuitous route.  I was doing a bit of research, reading the communiques of SubComandante Marcos when I happened upon a footnote, written with Marcos usual ironic contempt an...

Why Ideas Matter

Three Philosophical Works by Simon Van Booy One of the dirty truths of fiction writers is that we have ideas. Although it is in vogue to suggest otherwise, to pretend that what matters is the art and the art alone, that we aren't trying to pawn an ideology on anyone, the truth is that good fiction is supported by ideas, what we used to call philosophy, before that term came to mean eccentric white guys thinking eccentric white guy thoughts. Yet, philosophy is, at its core, the exploration o...