Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category
Absurd Theatre
For some reason I don't remember, someone* pointed out this column, "Which Theatre Is the Absurd One?", written by Edward Albee and published in the New York Times on 25 February 1962. The column is apparently a defense of the creativity and vitality of the modern "avant-garde theatre", but it wanders and never quite makes […]
Indescribable Gay Sex
Pam at Pam's House Blend ("Out Mag: "Is Alabama really the worst place to be a gay person in Bush's America?") quoted Out Magazine quoting former-judge Roy Moore, the Ten-Commandment-Lover of Alabama: Alabama’s highest judicial officer declared homosexuality “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature.” Gay sex, he wrote, is “an act so heinous that […]
The Gilded Age II
The Gilded Age has returned with a vengeance. Washington again is a spectacle of corruption. The promise of America has been subverted to crony capitalism, sleazy lobbyists, and an arrogance of power matched only by an arrogance of the present that acts as if there is no tomorrow. But there is a tomorrow. I see […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Writing
Peter Medawar on IQ
I've been rediscovering the erudite and rather fabulous Sir Peter Medawar. The two bits below are from a piece that he calls "further footnotes" to a book review of his called "Unnatural Science"* 1. The question of the single-number valuation of IQ. Several correspondents have spelled it out to me that both athletic prowess and […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Writing
Gleick's Newton
Yesterday I finished reading Isaac Newton, by James Gleick (Pantheon Books, New York, 2003), and I was quite impressed by it. Gleick managed to write in what I think of as a "high" tone, a slightly lofty rhetorical style, on the poetic side, and sustain it throughout the book. It's a difficult voice to maintain, […]
In: All, Books, Writing
Blurbing Over
I have not written any stories in over a year now. This is a bad thing. I managed to write one that I was reasonably pleased with last year for Ron Suresha's anthology of bi-men stories to be published next year, but that's been my total production ever since I fell out of my routines […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, Writing
Truisms for Older Men
A few years ago, in a period of reading the excellent Saratoga mysteries by Stephen Dobyns, I read Saratoga Backtalk (finishing it on 17 April 2000, according to my database of books read for the year 2000). Since then, I've had occasion to retell as sage wisdom some advice for men past middle age that […]
In: All, Crime Fiction, Writing
Atoms are not Watermelons
A few days back I finished reading How to Write: Advice and Relfections, by Richard Rhodes. Although I'm frequently drawn to read them, books about writing are rarely satisfying, interesting, or useful. Rhodes' book managed all three, and I can recommend it. Here are three passages I made note of as I read that I […]
Do Bisexuals Truly Exist?
Here's my punch line to this shaggy-dog tale: it's a silly question to ask in the first place. Besides, what difference does the answer make and who cares? Incredibly, bisexuality (the big, invisible sexual orientation) was in the news this week. An article in the New York Times by Benedict Carey* reports on a new […]
In: All, The Art of Conversation, Writing
My 4.8% Lammy
This actually happened earlier in the month — 3 June 2005, to be precise — but I didn't think of mentioning it until now. I have become an award-winning author: one of my short stories has won 1/22 of a Lambda Literary Award, or Lammy. Let me explain, for those to whom this might be […]
My Five-Inch Style Manual
Last year, as part of a project for which I was paid in actual money, I wrote a "Submission Guidelines Manual" for a website*. One section of the manual discussed style issues. Officially, we followed The Economist Style Manual, much of which is online. I distilled the style manual into a very short list of […]
Wow! What Commas!
Every time I quote something from The Huffington Post, I usually make a remark about all the writing errors (grammatical, punctuation, syntax, spelling, you name it) in the piece I'm quoting. Why, I keep wondering rhetorically, doesn't Arianna pay me a reasonable if somewhat over generous retainer to copy edit the pieces from her "celebrity" […]