fiction files redux discussion

Ok...I have been brought back into the fold from my Facebook sanctuary. Why can't the posts have borders on their margins. Lines make me feel safe...they keep ideas contained. Has anyone considered the possible implications of having all these ideas run around naked and unchecked. It feels all Borgesian to me.

Yeah! Evan you are back. You will be able to deal just fine once you get used to the format. After all it's still the same "us" and some smart new folks too! We just need to get MM back over here too.

whoot! glad the peer pressure worked! :)

Yea...well it is kind of hard to turn down a group of really cool people when they want you around.

yay! welcome back, evan!

Hurrah Evan, hurrah!!

hi evan... welcome. and draw lines on your monitor. you can do that you know.

and a late welcome to jodi... i've not only been neglecting my reading but the goodreads group. someone should tie me up and whip me (hint, hint...)

hello there. I'm Lavinia. West Coastian. nice to meet you all.

. . .hi lavinia! welcome jodi, and great to see you back, evan!

Salutations all! My name is Les (virtually LTHMPLS) due to my initials and residence of Minneapolis; I am very creative. I was introduced to Fiction Files by some fascinating conversations I saw posted by Dan the deadpan man and Swanny. I am a stay-at-home-dad in between teaching lives. I hope to return to a middle school gig in the next year or so. I used to be a classics snob and now subsist on mostly contemporary fiction. I am a music freak and could survive on nuts and homemade smoothies alone.

. . . welcome, les! . .. i'm a stay-at-home-dad, too!

Thanks Jonathan. My experience as a SAHD has been wonderful. I am very blessed to be such a large part of my kids' lives. By the way, you look a great deal like The Boss.

Evan wrote: "Ok...I have been brought back into the fold from my Facebook sanctuary. Why can't the posts have borders on their margins. Lines make me feel safe...they keep ideas contained. Has anyone conside..."

Borges and nakedness? Does not work, he took showers dressed.

I'm Jim, managing editor of a music website (AwaitingtheFlood.com), freelance music critic and award-winning fiction writer (not the Pushcart, though I was nominated).

I'm a native of the wilds of Florida's Gulf Coast and now reside on the scruffy outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia. My musical taste spans all genres: Bluegrass, Americana, Classic Country, Alt-Country, Western Swing, Blues, Classical, Rock 'n' Roll, Punk, Reggae, Klezmer, and British Isles Folk (to name but a few). I once sang "Happy Birthday" (with about 5,000 other people) to Joni Mitchell, and have seen such legends as Miles Davis, The Incredible Jimmy Smith, Rockpile, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, R.E.M., Blue Rodeo, King Sunny Ade, Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan live in concert.

Music often inspires and informs my writing, as you may have already guessed.

I've been at work on my first and second novels for longer than I originally planned. If the stars align properly (for this I will defer to Greg Olear) one or both novels should be in bookstores some time before my death.

welcome Jim! in case you missed the group bulletin check out the Dorka 11 thread.

Mike wrote: "I'm Mike. Maureen told me to come here. I'm married to Jodi (message 157 above). I know Ben too; we shared a wild summer at band camp once. Boy, I tell you....

I like books."

Hi Mike!

Welcome Mike!

Hi all, I'm Claudia. This past weekend my boyfriend and his buddy took me to a baseball game - I offered to go stand on line for food so I could sneak in a few pages of my novel. This is pretty typical of me.

Hi Claudia, welcome! I ALWAYS have a book with me too, just for those exact moments!

Hi Claudia! You are a good woman -- I might be inclined to say "go out with the boys! have fun" then crawl back into bed with my book. :P

what kind of books do you like?

Hi Mike! Glad you dragged your butt over here. Looking forward to debating and agreeing with you. :)

Hi Jim! Welcome! there's a thread micha just started about books and music -- you might want to check it out as i'm sure she'd greatly appreciate any comments you might have in that vein. :)

Hi Oro: i know i know you already but i would dearly love to know if you ever showered with borges, and if that's how you came by the knowlege of his clothes-shower fetish.

Hi Les! I am envious you are going to the dork!

Hi Lavinia -- I love your name -- it's so Roman!

and now i'm all cut up with hellos. i'm happy to see so many new names putting themselves forward -- it's always such a pleasure to get new blood in to talk about books -- not that i don't love the old blood because you know that i do. :)

Kerry wrote: "Hi Claudia, welcome! I ALWAYS have a book with me too, just for those exact moments!"

Hi Claudia! Also welcome to Mike and Jim.

Claudia, wonderful idea. Kerry, we should put together a little anthology of purse poetry from fiction files favorites. Maybe it could be something we could print and fold up. :)

Elizabeth wrote: "Kerry wrote: "Hi Claudia, welcome! I ALWAYS have a book with me too, just for those exact moments!"

Hi Claudia! Also welcome to Mike and Jim.

Claudia, wonderful idea. Kerry, we should put tog..."

i hope this folded collection is an origami bird. a giant origami bird, and its beak sticks out the top of your satchel.

hi elizabeth. do you know how to make giant origami quote birds? :)

This might fit everyone's favorite poems, but these guys lay under the wings when it's finished like creepy little hatchlings. Maybe that's irresistible. :)

G.O.B.

Elizabeth wrote: "This might fit everyone's favorite poems, but these guys lay under the wings when it's finished like creepy little hatchlings. Maybe that's irresistible. :)

G.O.B."

ha! that's absolutely wonderful! i think this is a perfect activity for you all to partake in after drunk bingo. complete with photo ops. i would like you to put many red devils by stephen crane on it for me, please :)

Elizabeth wrote: Hi Claudia! Also welcome to Mike and Jim.

Claudia, wonderful idea. Kerry, we should put together a little anthology of purse poetry from fiction files favorites. Maybe it could be something we could print and fold up. :)"

YES!

Hello, all. I'm Gloria. Was tipped off to your awesome group by Les and was too intrigued by so many of your threads that I had to jump in-- complete with a rather impromptu "yes" rsvp to dorka. (Hey, it's in my next door neighbor state-- may be the only opportunity I'll have to attend). Looking forward to getting to know you all.

hey gloria! welcome to the group! i've just written you a long message that i think more properly should go in the dork thread so feel free to go there to hear me tell you an origin story in babble format. :)

welcome aboard, Gloria!

Hi I'm Sean. I've gotten to know Johnny E. a bit around the way here in Seattle and somehow landed amongst you. I am perfectly willing to talk about books in perpetuity, like those rats in Stanford lab experiments that drink cocaine water at the exclusion of all else, and then starve to death. I am almost done with Christopher Hitchens' Hitch-22: A Memoir, and am surprised by how lyrical and affirming it is. Some authors I really like are: Stephen Wright, James Salter, H.L. Mencken, Deborah Eisenberg, Celine, Saul Bellow, Alice Munro, C.K. Chesterton, P.K. Dick, David Mitchell, Lorrie Moore, Dostoyevsky, Jim Thompson, Dashiell Hammett, and Evelyn Waugh. A totally random sampling, but there it is. I am jumping on a plane tomorrow and will be cracking open my first Machado de Assis. Hey, thanks for having me.

. . . ahoy sean and gloria!

. . .p.s. sean, it makes perfect sense to me that you'd love waugh . . .one of the funniest writers EVER! . . . strangely, the work he's best remembered for (brideshead)is among my least favorite . . . love love love a handful of dust, and black mischief (in spite of its decidedly non-PC skew)!

Sean wrote: "Hi I'm Sean. I've gotten to know Johnny E. a bit around the way here in Seattle and somehow landed amongst you. I am perfectly willing to talk about books in perpetuity, like those rats in Stanford..."

woooohoooo! thanks for joining us. we never have enough people to talk to about books, it seems. some of your favourites are still on my list to read but others are deeply loved. i was just thinking about chesterton the other day, and how i let one not so great book chase me away, and that i should probably do some re-reading. hammett sends me into paroxysms of joy, actually. i was obsessing about the flitcraft story in maltese falcon again last week and came upon this great quote from his daughter's memoir about it:

What I remember is his delight in the story -- as if it were a gift he had received that was just right. As a boy he had wanted to find the Ultimate Truth -- how the world operated. And here it was. There was no system except blind chance. Beams falling."

what a moment for a writer! that sweet epiphany. :)

anyway, hurray and welcome!

Jonathan wrote: ". . .p.s. sean, it makes perfect sense to me that you'd love waugh . . .one of the funniest writers EVER! . . . strangely, the work he's best remembered for (brideshead)is among my least favorite ...."

I totally agree...Brideshead was a bit ruined for me by being forced to watch the (then paralyzingly tedious) PBS miniseries at age 11...Scoop, Vile Bodies, and The Loved Ones are great as well...if you'd like to lay blissfully immersed in the prose without knowing the ugly details of his life and views, best not to read the many memoirs...

Maureen wrote: "Sean wrote: "Hi I'm Sean. I've gotten to know Johnny E. a bit around the way here in Seattle and somehow landed amongst you. I am perfectly willing to talk about books in perpetuity, like those rat..."

Thanks, Maureen... Which Chesterton drove you away? I hope not The Man Who Was Thursday...great quote from Maltese! If you've never read the Continental Op shorts, they're really wonderful..

Gloria wrote: "Hello, all. I'm Gloria. Was tipped off to your awesome group by Les and was too intrigued by so many of your threads that I had to jump in-- complete with a rather impromptu "yes" rsvp to dorka. ..."

GLORIA, WE LOVE IMPROMPTU YESSES TO DORKAPALOOZA!!!!

Welcome to Sean too!

yes, gloria, looki forward to meeting you at the dork!

Sean wrote: "Which Chesterton drove you away? I hope not The Man Who Was Thursday...great quote from Maltese! If you've never read the Continental Op shorts, they're really wonderful.. "

well, it was a little something called "manalive" -- i checked the reviews here and people love it, so maybe i am just sour, but i remember really really not enjoying it. i wrote about it on my old msn space which i guess has disappeared from the web... though i notice people are saying it's funny, and i remember not finding it funny at all. but i have a specialized sense of humour, i think :P i did like the man who was thursday, but not as much as the ball and the cross, or the father brown mysteries which i loved most of all. :)

also, love the op! that was my first hammett, and i never looked back. my favourite is red harvest, but i've also read the lost stories and his letters. :)

and don't even get me started on pkd. we have a thread for him, if not several. :)

actually, just reading your exchange with the skipper there, and i didn't find waugh particularly funny either, so maybe you would love manalive! of the waugh i've read, i liked handful of dust best: i love that last story in it very much: the man who liked dickens? you might already know it was published prior as a separate story before it became the end of the book.

anyway! i will stop blabbing now. we can always start a waugh or chesterton thread around here: i don't think we have either. :)

There is really nothing better than coming home from a long day and discovering all kinds of new posts on the fiction files. You all have made my day!

And welcome, Sean!

Patty wrote: "There is really nothing better than coming home from a long day and discovering all kinds of new posts on the fiction files. You all have made my day!

And welcome, Sean!"

I know, this made my day too!

Thanks for all the warm greetings! So looking forward to the road trip in a few weeks and meeting everyone there!

Hi All,
I found this group, courtesy of Jonathan Evison's Facebook page. Glad to be here.

I write short stories, book reviews and the occasional novel. I'm happily married to a woman who, despite my entreaties, does not like to wear sweaters. I have two cats. I'm pretty good at crossword puzzles. And I'm currently in a 12-step program for Cheez-it addiction.

What else? Oh yeah, I blog about the literary life at The Quivering Pen (www.davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com), which is where you'll find everything you need to know about what I like to read.

Hi, David! Welcome!

. . .ok, david, you've got to explain the sweater aversion!

I wish I *could* explain it. Not to get too out-and-out personal about it, but my wife would make a lovely "sweater girl." But for some reason she won't wear them. Maybe they're too itchy, maybe they're too bulky, maybe she's just seen too many grade-school teachers wearing 'em with large cartoon reindeer with battery-powered noses. Whatever. I have to content myself with Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.

Hi David! Glad you found us!

Umm...do you need two reindeer battery powered noses for those teachers for these two areas? Let me know what I can do to support you on that.

Maureen wrote: "Sean wrote: "Which Chesterton drove you away? I hope not The Man Who Was Thursday...great quote from Maltese! If you've never read the Continental Op shorts, they're really wonderful.. "

well, it ..."

Yes, I may not be very smart, but I'm smart enough to never bring PKD up in an uncontrolled environment...but I did go through a virulent phase of PK-love as a teen....I would suggest giving Waugh another try, but I imagine you've invested enough time already. If you weren't CRAZY about Handful of Dust, then I doubt anything else is going to light that fire...just finished Ian McEwan's SOLAR....curious what other people thought....

Sean wrote"just finished Ian McEwan's SOLAR....curious what other people thought.... ":

hey sean: i haven't read one mcewan book yet, so i'd be happy to put it on my list. i always get him confused with ian rankin who i have also never read. meanwhile, i'm reading mr. peanut for a second time, because i'm convinced i have it figured out now. and i keep thinking about how joseph o' connor has schooled me with his style. :)

Maureen wrote: "Sean wrote"just finished Ian McEwan's SOLAR....curious what other people thought.... ":

hey sean: i haven't read one mcewan book yet, so i'd be happy to put it on my list. i always get him confus..."

I don't think I'd start with Solar. Maybe Atonement. Or go back to the early shorts first. Or even Comfort of Strangers. He's a very talented and lyrical writer....I'm halfway through Peanut and haven't been able to finish....just read Ten Thousand Saints this weekend...started the new Geoff Dyer as well...really funny.