The Meticulous Business Ledger F. Scott Fitzgerald Kept Between Hangovers and Happy Hour

in Books, Literature, Writing | May 6th, 2013

fitzgerald ledger
It used to be that accept­ing an advance on an unwrit­ten nov­el was as good as admit­ting fail­ure before the work is even fin­ished. Can you imag­ine blue-blood nov­el­ists Edith Whar­ton or Hen­ry James tak­ing a check before fin­ish­ing their books?

F. Scott Fitzger­ald may have been a long-suf­fer­ing wannabe when it came to high soci­ety, but he nev­er pre­tend­ed to be any­thing but a busi­ness­man when it came to writ­ing. For near­ly his entire pro­fes­sion­al life he kept a detailed ledger of his income from writ­ing, in which he not­ed the $3,939 advance he received for his in-progress nov­el, The Great Gats­by. The new Gats­by film out this sum­mer is the fifth adap­ta­tion. The first earned Fitzger­ald $16,666. (See the sur­viv­ing footage here.)

Recent­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the lined note­book, which the writer prob­a­bly packed with him on all of his trav­els, paints a pic­ture of a prag­mat­ic busi­ness­man repeat­ed­ly on and off the wag­on. Sound like Gats­by? Maybe a lit­tle.

The famous­ly hard-drink­ing Fitzger­ald must have done his admin work after the hang­over wore off and before hap­py hour. He metic­u­lous­ly not­ed every pen­ny of every com­mis­sion earned, divid­ing the book into five sec­tions: a detailed “Record of Pub­lished Fic­tion,” a year-by-year account­ing of “Mon­ey Earned by Writ­ing Since Leav­ing Army,” “Pub­lished Mis­ce­lani (includ­ing nov­els) for which I was Paid,” an unfin­ished list of “Zelda’s Earn­ings” and, most inter­est­ing of all, “An Out­line Chart of My Life.”

A true Jazz Age sto­ry­teller, Fitzger­ald sets up the droll social scene of his own ear­ly days: Not long after his birth on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1896, the infant “was bap­tized and went out for the first time—to Lambert’s cor­ner store on Lau­rel Avenue.”

It’s worth a stroll through Fitzgerald’s clipped account of his child­hood, for the humor and the poignant ref­er­ences to birth­day par­ties and child­hood mis­chief. By 1920 the writer is mar­ried and has some pro­fes­sion­al momen­tum. In the mar­gins of that year’s page, he writes “Work at the begin­ning but dan­ger­ous toward the end. A slow year, dom­i­nat­ed by Zel­da & on the whole hap­py.”

By the last entry, the state of Fitzgerald’s life is grim—“work and wor­ry, sick­ness and debt.” The book reads like a whirl­wind of drink­ing, writ­ing, trav­el and jet-set­ting. Fitzger­ald holds his gaze steady on social dynam­ics, not­ing gath­er­ings and argu­ments with friends along­side the notes about his cre­ative bursts and dry spells.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site at and fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix.

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Ira Glass on the Art and Craft of Telling Great Radio Stories

in Media, Radio, Writing | April 20th, 2013

As tele­vi­sion news con­tin­ues its pathet­ic slide into the abyss of celebri­ty wor­ship, polit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship and 24-hour pun­dit­ry, its encour­ag­ing to note that in one area of tra­di­tion­al broad­cast­ing there is actu­al­ly some­thing of a renais­sance going on. Pub­lic radio is buck­ing the trend with pro­grams like Radi­o­lab and This Amer­i­can life, shows that do noth­ing to con­firm our bias­es, but instead engage our curios­i­ty and teach us some­thing new.

In this fun­ny and thought-pro­vok­ing talk from the 2007 Gel Con­fer­ence, Ira Glass, host of This Amer­i­can Life, explains a lit­tle of what goes into a good radio sto­ry.  “Nar­ra­tive,” he says, “is basi­cal­ly a machine that’s rais­ing ques­tions and answer­ing them.” Glass’s talk is very much like his radio show. In exchange for a lit­tle patience, you will be reward­ed with a good sto­ry and per­haps an insight or two.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Burns on the Art of Sto­ry­telling: “It’s Lying Twen­ty-Four Times a Sec­ond”

The Moth Now Streams its Bril­liant & Qui­et­ly Addic­tive Sto­ries on the Web

Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time

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Flannery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction’ (c. 1960)

in Books, Literature, Writing | April 18th, 2013

Here is a rare record­ing of Flan­nery O’Con­nor read­ing an ear­ly ver­sion of her wit­ty and reveal­ing essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion.”

O’Con­nor gives an elo­quent out­line of her vision as both a South­ern and a Catholic writer. She defends her work against crit­ics who say it is high­ly unre­al­is­tic. “All nov­el­ists are fun­da­men­tal­ly seek­ers and describers of the real,” she says, “but the real­ism of each nov­el­ist will depend on his view of the ulti­mate reach­es of real­i­ty.” In the pub­lished ver­sion of the essay, she writes:

When­ev­er I’m asked why South­ern writ­ers par­tic­u­lar­ly have a pen­chant for writ­ing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to rec­og­nize one. To be able to rec­og­nize a freak, you have to have some con­cep­tion of the whole man, and in the South the gen­er­al con­cep­tion of man is still, in the main, the­o­log­i­cal. That is a large state­ment, and it is dan­ger­ous to make it, for almost any­thing you say about South­ern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal pro­pri­ety. But approach­ing the sub­ject from the stand­point of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hard­ly Christ-cen­tered, it is most cer­tain­ly Christ-haunt­ed. The South­ern­er, who isn’t con­vinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and like­ness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instruc­tive. They cast strange shad­ows, par­tic­u­lar­ly in our lit­er­a­ture. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a fig­ure for our essen­tial dis­place­ment that he attains some depth in lit­er­a­ture.

This pas­sage can be heard, in dif­fer­ent form, begin­ning at the 3:40 mark in the record­ing. Like many of O’Con­nors essays, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion” was writ­ten not for pub­li­ca­tion, but for pub­lic read­ing. She was known to rewrite and rearrange these pieces between read­ings. In this record­ing, O’Con­nor is using the piece as a prepara­to­ry state­ment for a read­ing of her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

We don’t know the date of the record­ing, but the text dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly from the posthu­mous­ly pub­lished ver­sion, so per­haps it is an ear­ly ver­sion. The ear­li­est extant record­ing of the essay that we know of was made on Octo­ber 28, 1960 for the Dorothy Lamar Blount Lec­ture Series at Wes­leyan Col­lege in Macon, Geor­gia. There is also known to be a record­ing of O’Con­nor read­ing the piece on Novem­ber 16, 1962 at East Texas State Uni­ver­si­ty.

To com­pare the record­ed ver­sion to the one even­tu­al­ly pub­lished in Mys­tery and Man­ners: Occa­sion­al Prose, you can click here to open the essay in a new win­dow.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Hear Flan­nery O’Connor’s Short Sto­ry, “Rev­e­la­tion,” Read by Leg­endary His­to­ri­an & Radio Host, Studs Terkel

Flan­nery O’Connor’s “Every­thing That Ris­es Must Con­verge” Read by Estelle Par­sons

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Dennis Hopper Reads From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Timeless Guide to Creativity, Letters to a Young Poet

in Books, Creativity, Literature, Poetry, Writing | March 26th, 2013

For almost a cen­tu­ry, writ­ers and oth­er cre­ative peo­ple have found inspi­ra­tion and a pro­found sense of val­i­da­tion in the Bohemi­an-Aus­tri­an poet Rain­er Maria Rilke’s posthu­mous­ly pub­lished Let­ters to a Young Poet. Many a sen­si­tive soul has felt as if Rilke’s let­ters, writ­ten to a young man who had asked him for advice on whether to become a poet, were addressed direct­ly to him or her. One of those peo­ple was the actor Den­nis Hop­per.

“Rilke’s Let­ters to a Young Poet is a great book,” Hop­per says in this short film from 2007. “For me the let­ters are a cre­do of cre­ativ­i­ty and a source of inspi­ra­tion. After read­ing Rilke it became clear to me that I had no choice in the mat­ter. I had to cre­ate.” The ten-minute film, Must I Write?, was direct­ed by Her­mann Vaske and pho­tographed by Rain Li. Hop­per reads the first of the book’s ten let­ters, in which Rilke tells the young man to stop seek­ing approval from oth­ers:

You are look­ing out­ward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can help and coun­sel you, nobody. There is only one sin­gle way. Go into your­self. Search for the rea­son that bids you write; find out whether it is spread­ing out its roots in the deep­est places in your heart, acknowl­edge to your­self whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all–ask your­self in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into your­self for a deep answer. And if this should be affir­ma­tive, if you may meet this earnest ques­tion with a strong and sim­ple “I must,” then build your life accord­ing to this neces­si­ty; your life even into its most indif­fer­ent and slight­est hour must be a sign of this urge and a tes­ti­mo­ny to it.

Hop­per is read­ing from the 1934 trans­la­tion by M.D. Hert­er Nor­ton. There are a few minor slips, in which Hop­per devi­ates slight­ly from the text. Most seri­ous­ly, he inverts the mean­ing of a pas­sage near the end by adding (at the 7:23 mark) the word “not” to Rilke’s phrase, “Per­haps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist.” That pas­sage, one of the most mem­o­rable in the book, reads:

A work of art is good if it has sprung from neces­si­ty. In this nature of its ori­gin lies the judge­ment of it: there is no oth­er. There­fore, my dear sir, I know no oth­er advice for you save this: to go into your­self and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the ques­tion whether you must cre­ate. Accept it, just as it sounds, with­out inquir­ing into it. Per­haps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that des­tiny upon your­self and bear it, its bur­den and its great­ness, with­out ever ask­ing what rec­om­pense might come from out­side. For the cre­ator must be a world for him­self and find every­thing in him­self and in Nature to whom he has attached him­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Den­nis Hop­per Reads Rud­yard Kipling on the John­ny Cash Show

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Oscar Wilde Offers Practical Advice on the Writing Life in a Newly-Discovered Letter from 1890

in Literature, Writing | March 20th, 2013

Oscar-Wilde_LetterAccord­ing to The Tele­graph, experts rum­mag­ing through a dusty box recent­ly uncov­ered a let­ter penned by Oscar Wilde in 1890 (or there­abouts). Addressed to a “Mr. Mor­gan,” the let­ter runs 13 pages, and it offers what amounts to prac­ti­cal advice for an aspir­ing writer. Details on the let­ter’s con­tents remain scarce, although we will prob­a­bly know more when the doc­u­ment gets auc­tioned off in two weeks time. But, so far, we know that Wilde offered Mr. Mor­gan two points to con­sid­er:

“Make some sac­ri­fice for your art, and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sac­ri­fice her­self for you and a bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment may come to you,”

“The best work in lit­er­a­ture is always done by those who do not depend on it for their dai­ly bread and the high­est form of lit­er­a­ture, Poet­ry, brings no wealth to the singer.”

It’s essen­tial­ly the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry ver­sion of what Charles Bukows­ki lat­er said in much more sim­ple terms: “if you’re doing it for mon­ey or fame, don’t do it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

So You Want to Be a Writer?: Charles Bukows­ki Explains the Dos & Don’ts

William Faulkn­er Explains Why Writ­ing is Best Left to Scoundrels … Prefer­ably Liv­ing in Broth­els (1956)

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

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Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

in Animation, Film, Literature, Writing | March 11th, 2013

Every­one from Kurt Von­negut to Ernest Hem­ing­way has shared his ideas on craft­ing sol­id nar­ra­tive writ­ing. One of the most recent sages to join the canon is Emma Coates, Pixar’s for­mer sto­ry artist. Her list of the 22 Rules of Good Sto­ry­telling gleaned on the job has been gain­ing Inter­net trac­tion since it was pub­lished last June.

Twen­ty two? That’s twen­ty more than Tol­stoy. I know some peo­ple enjoy a lot of direc­tion, but those of us who rel­ish bush­whack­ing start to chafe when the road is that heav­i­ly sign­post­ed.

By all means, sam­ple Coates’ Pixar 22 (see them all below). Apply any and all that work for you, though don’t get your hopes up if your ulti­mate goal is to sell a sto­ry to Dream­works or Dis­ney. They’ve got for­mu­las of their own.

As for myself, I am repur­pos­ing #4 — the only rule that does­n’t con­tain an implied order or some deriv­a­tive of “you” — as an extreme­ly jol­ly par­lor game.

Here it is in its orig­i­nal form:

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until final­ly ___.

While it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble to fill in those blanks with the fruits of your own imag­i­na­tion, it’s a true joy to sub­ject one’s most cher­ished lit­er­ary, cin­e­mat­ic, and dra­mat­ic works to this retroac­tive Mad Lib. (It works pret­ty well with estab­lished reli­gions too, but I’m not here to tread on the faith­ful’s toes.)

Warn­ing: there are some major spoil­ers below. Now that that’s out of the way, let the guess­ing begin!

Once upon a time there was a poor fam­i­ly in Okla­homa. Every day, they tried to make it work on their hard­scrab­ble farm. One day their last speck of top soil blew away. Because of that, they decid­ed to seek a bet­ter life in Cal­i­for­nia. Because of that, every able bod­ied young male left the fam­i­ly. Until final­ly their old­est daugh­ter ends up breast­feed­ing a starv­ing stranger.

How about this?

Once upon a time there was a poor young sol­dier. Every day, he dreamed of ris­ing above his sta­tion. One day he met a beau­ti­ful rich girl named Daisy. Because of that, he bought a man­sion where he threw enor­mous par­ties. Because of that, he hooked back up with Daisy. Until final­ly, he gets shot to death in his pool.

There’s no deny­ing that it fits this one like a glove:

Once upon a time there was a kid. Every day, he played with his cow­boy doll. One day he got a space­man doll. Because of that, his inter­est in the cow­boy took a seri­ous nose­dive. Because of that, the cow­boy and the space­man each swore vengeance upon the oth­er’s house. Until final­ly there’s a blood­bath from which no one emerges unscathed.

I could keep go on for­ev­er, but I don’t want to come off as a toy hog. Instead, I invite you to share your filled out Num­ber Fours in the com­ments section…or tell us which of the oth­er twen­ty-one seem most suit­ed to its intend­ed pur­pose.

Pixar’s 22 Rules for Sto­ry­telling

#1: You admire a char­ac­ter for try­ing more than for their suc­cess­es.

#2: You got­ta keep in mind what’s inter­est­ing to you as an audi­ence, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. dif­fer­ent.

#3: Try­ing for theme is impor­tant, but you won’t see what the sto­ry is actu­al­ly about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until final­ly ___.

#5: Sim­pli­fy. Focus. Com­bine char­ac­ters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re los­ing valu­able stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your char­ac­ter good at, com­fort­able with? Throw the polar oppo­site at them. Chal­lenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your end­ing before you fig­ure out your mid­dle. Seri­ous­ly. End­ings are hard, get yours work­ing up front.

#8: Fin­ish your sto­ry, let go even if it’s not per­fect. In an ide­al world you have both, but move on. Do bet­ter next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T hap­pen next. Lots of times the mate­r­i­al to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the sto­ries you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to rec­og­nize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fix­ing it. If it stays in your head, a per­fect idea, you’ll nev­er share it with any­one.

#12: Dis­count the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvi­ous out of the way. Sur­prise your­self.

#13: Give your char­ac­ters opin­ions. Passive/malleable might seem lik­able to you as you write, but it’s poi­son to the audi­ence.

#14: Why must you tell THIS sto­ry? What’s the belief burn­ing with­in you that your sto­ry feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your char­ac­ter, in this sit­u­a­tion, how would you feel? Hon­esty lends cred­i­bil­i­ty to unbe­liev­able sit­u­a­tions.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us rea­son to root for the char­ac­ter. What hap­pens if they don’t suc­ceed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wast­ed. If it’s not work­ing, let go and move on — it’ll come back around to be use­ful lat­er.

#18: You have to know your­self: the dif­fer­ence between doing your best & fuss­ing. Sto­ry is test­ing, not refin­ing.

#19: Coin­ci­dences to get char­ac­ters into trou­ble are great; coin­ci­dences to get them out of it are cheat­ing.

#20: Exer­cise: take the build­ing blocks of a movie you dis­like. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You got­ta iden­ti­fy with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your sto­ry? Most eco­nom­i­cal telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

via Boing­Bo­ing

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day was not raised to ques­tion author­i­ty.

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David Foster Wallace Breaks Down Five Common Word Usage Mistakes in English

in Education, English Language, Writing | March 7th, 2013

Wallace_English_183A_large

What advan­tage, I recent­ly asked a trilin­gual writer, could you pos­si­bly find in using such an impro­vised, con­fus­ing, irreg­u­lar patch­work of a lan­guage as Eng­lish? She replied that this very impro­vi­sa­tion, irreg­u­lar­i­ty, and even con­fu­sion comes from the vast free­dom of expres­sion (and of inven­tion of new expres­sions) that Eng­lish offers over oth­er Euro­pean tongues. This goes even more so for Amer­i­can Eng­lish, the vari­ant with whose com­bi­na­tion of care­ful­ly shad­ed nuances and smash­ing col­lo­qui­alisms David Fos­ter Wal­lace so daz­zled his read­ers. Like many writ­ers, Wal­lace also taught writ­ing, but those of us not lucky enough to receive his direct instruc­tion can still behold his teach­ing mate­ri­als, archived online at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

See, for instance, Wal­lace’s hand­out on five com­mon usage mis­takes, from his Fall 2002 sec­tion of Eng­lish 183A at Pomona Col­lege (an advanced fic­tion writ­ing class, taught last Spring by Jonathan Lethem). “The prepo­si­tion towards is British usage; the US spelling is toward.” Fair enough. “And is a con­junc­tion; so is so,” he con­tin­ues. “Except in dia­logue between par­tic­u­lar kinds of char­ac­ters, you nev­er need both con­junc­tions.” Handy to know! Then, things get more tech­ni­cal: “For a com­pound sen­tence to require a com­ma plus a con­junc­tion, both its con­stituent claus­es must be inde­pen­dent.” As Wal­lace goes deep­er, I feel even more sym­pa­thy for those who learn Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, as I did when I read “Tense Present,” his Harper’s review of Bryan A. Gar­ner’s A Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Amer­i­can Usage. If the hard­core gram­mar talk tires you, feel free to peruse the Ran­som Cen­ter’s oth­er arti­facts of Wal­lace’s time in the class­room—which we cov­ered in a post last week—such as his syl­labus for Eng­lish 102: Lit­er­ary Analy­sis, his guide­lines for papers, and the mar­gin­a­lia in his copy of Car­rie.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s 1994 Syl­labus

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear Jamaica Kincaid’s Classic Story “Girl” Read by Fellow New Yorker Writer Edwidge Danticat

in Literature, Podcasts, Writing | March 7th, 2013

Jamaica Kin­caid is out with her first nov­el in ten years, See Now Then, but she hasn’t been idle, steadi­ly pub­lish­ing non-fic­tion and essays in the span between 2002’s Mr. Pot­ter and now. Kin­caid is a many-faceted woman: Antiguan native, con­tent­ed Ver­mont gar­den­er, improb­a­ble lit­er­ary suc­cess sto­ry, fierce crit­ic of Euro­pean colo­nial­ism. She is also, most like­ly, one of the most anthol­o­gized writ­ers of the past few decades. Any­one who’s tak­en a writ­ing or intro lit class recent­ly has no doubt read her short sto­ry (or prose-poem) “Girl.”

With Kin­caid in the news for her new book, the New York­er’s Page-Turn­er blog caught up with one of her admir­ers, Hait­ian-Amer­i­can author and fel­low New York­er colum­nist Edwidge Dan­ti­cat and asked her to read two of Kincaid’s clas­sic sto­ries, “Girl” and “Wing­less,” pub­lished in the New York­er in 1978 and ’79, for their fic­tion pod­cast. Dan­ti­cat glad­ly oblig­ed (hear the audio above), but not before briefly dis­cussing her rela­tion­ship to Kin­caid and her work.

And for more on the new book, lis­ten to the NPR Kin­caid inter­view with All Things Con­sid­ered’s Celeste Headlee. Kin­caid dis­cuss­es writ­ing, the themes of the new nov­el, and the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal con­tent in her work. You can read an excerpt from See Here Now here.

The read­ing above has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

David Sedaris Reads You a Sto­ry By Miran­da July

 

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