You can listen to Robert Kloss read from The Alligators of Abraham, which was released last Thursday from Mud Luscious Press. The author also composed a playlist to accompany his book. The gorgeous text has been receiving much-deserved advance praise, and it’s even borne a “series of texts – videos, art, stories, and more – written, filmed, cobbled together, and razed by different artists from around the literary world.”
The Alligators of Abraham
A Separatist Syllabus
How do readers recover from an abominable weekend but with a reading list, in this case one suggested on Twitter by Jay Varner, a writer and instructor based in Charlottesville. Varner links out to 12 articles about "why so many continue to believe an unequivocally false historical narrative surrounding the Confederacy," including pieces by New Orleans' mayor Mitch Landrieu, Slate's Jamelle Bouie, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose Between the World and Me made our roundup from last year of the best political fiction (yes, we do realize it's decidedly not fiction).
The Gifts of Workshop
A translation guide to writing workshops that we're definitely printing out and bringing along to our next one. "Sometimes when people say 'show, don’t tell,' what they mean is that they find the characters sympathetic, the story is moving forward, and they even like the conflict, but they just don’t like the way you wrote it. What they’d really like to do is steal the idea and write it themselves, because honestly, they would do a much better job."
This Glorious Respite
"It is now, at this precise moment when I become woefully aware of the cruel transience of this seasonal offering, rarely lingering beyond the Marigold blooms of latter March, and at once I am lost amidst a magnificent vision, one in which our hallowed Saint Patrick himself is riding shotgun alongside me in this very Camry." In which James Joyce orders a shamrock milkshake.
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V. I. G.
A V.I.G. (very important garment) will be making its way to the U.S. this August. Pride and Prejudice fans can now see the shirt Colin Firth wore as Mr. Darcy in the exhibition “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity.” We rewrote the title of Pride and Prejudice and other books as clickbait. You should definitely read it.
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Capote Quiz
The OUP's blog has created a Truman Capote quiz. The idea is to match the author's quotation with its literary victim.
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Hear, hear. Full disclosure, Robert Kloss is a friend of mine. But The Alligators Of Abraham really is a terrific novel and unlike anything else I’ve read.
Robert Kloss is not a friend of mine, but this book is amazing. I reviewed it here.
http://fictionadvocate.com/2012/12/27/alligators-in-america/