[narcissism, vanity, exhibitionism, ambition, vanity, vanity, vanity]

19.8.09

The Sixties Reconsidered

The NYT reviews Fred Kaplan's new book, 1959: The Year Everything Changed, in which he argues that the transformations of the late 1960s built on groundwork laid a decade before by innovators like Gregory Pincus and Barney Rosset.

I would add Thomas Kuhn to the mix though I am not sure Kaplan does. Though Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions was required reading for the 60s counterculture, it appeared much earlier, in 1962. Interestingly, Kaplan's take on the Sixties situates him as a long-view historian, someone for whom the idea of a cultural revolution, or Kuhn's idea of it anyway, would be a hard sell.

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posted by Diane @ 8:22 AM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

16.8.09

Spirit of '69 ca. 1972

The NYT runs a first-person account of being just slightly too late for the late (iconic) Sixties. A fresh spin. Nuances.

I've got Pynchon's latest on my desk, plus the new Colum McCann. Pynchon's is set in this era; McCann's is set slightly later, but the book is about coming out of the penumbra of 1969.

It's like the zeitgeist has gone all meta, saying: time to reconsider that other zeitgeist, when zeitgeist was everything.

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posted by Diane @ 8:27 AM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

11.8.09

Be My Baby

With audience shots and go-go boots! Thank you, Internets! My cup runneth over.

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posted by Diane @ 5:13 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

22.7.09

The End

Writing my novel, I left the hardest scene for last, and there's nothing left for it now except to write it, or give up.

I doubt it could have turned out any other way.

Time narrows to a point, specifically my mother's right pupil on lithium-stelazine-mellaril and I can say with complete confidence that the gimlet gleam in her eye has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

Still I need a paragraph, another hundred words...

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posted by Diane @ 10:12 AM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

12.6.09

Incredible Shrinking Novel

Cutting continues. The novel is some 15,000 words lighter than it was a year ago. That's sixty manuscript pages, or ten ounces, if we're talking actual poundage.

6/30/08 137,000 words
6/12/09 121,779
6/15/09 121,679
6/17/09 121,457 slow, slow, slow
6/25/09 120,541
6/26/09 118,988 ring the bell, first goal reached!

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posted by Diane @ 8:57 AM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

1.4.09

Hair Forever

In the NYT, a review of Hair, "the American tribal love-rock musical" of 1967, recently revived on Broadway.



I am childishly fond of this musical -- the soundtrack was in heavy rotation on my mother's record player when I was small.

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posted by Diane @ 8:10 AM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

19.3.09

The Great Diminution, Part 3

After a long interval of work on other books, I return to my project of trimming my novel to 115,000 words.

Recap:

6/30/08 137,000 words
7/31/08 129,947
9/24/08 125,847
3/19/09 124,562
3/24/09 124,282
3/26/09 123,989
4/2/09 123,410

The goal may be too ambitious. I'll be pleased if I can get within striking distance of 120,000.

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posted by Diane @ 2:14 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

18.8.08

The Great Diminution Continues

Must trim 137,000-word novel to 115,000 words.

7/31 129,947 words

[interval of insomnia, hives, other work, in which a mere 10 words were shaved off the ms., oh, the shame]

8/17 129,937 words
8/18 128,986
8/19 128,538
8/20 127,198
8/25 126,634
9/1 125,743
9/23 126,092 (going a bit backwards here)
9/24 125,847 (that's better)

Goal: 115,00 words

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posted by Diane @ 2:51 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

25.7.08

The Great Diminution

Must trim 137,000-word novel to 115,000 words.

Progress:

7/14: 137,263 words
7/15: 136,901
7/16: 136,291
7/17: 135,666
7/18: 134,473

[break: in which I fretted over the existing 134,473 words; finished a chapter in a different book; and pondered an interpersonal paradox]

7/24: 133,871 words
7/26: 133,444
7/27: 132,890
7/30: 130,872 (after four hours in the studio!)
7/31: 129,947

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posted by Diane @ 7:20 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

6.5.08

Boomer Lit!

Marysue Rucci, executive editor and vice president of Simon & Schuster, says that "the next step beyond chick lit and mommy lit may very well be boomer lit." More here.

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posted by Diane @ 5:29 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

25.1.07

Still Not Over

Wikipedia has disabled editing by newbies on the entry Vietnam War.

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posted by Diane @ 9:41 AM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

20.11.06

Repetition Compulsion

In the midst of Iraqmire, GWB goes to Vietnam, congratulates the country on its booming economy, and defends his "stay the course" strategy. Maybe it's just me, but I think our Prime Primate has just claimed victory in Vietnam. Because, you know, Vietnam was pretty disastrous, too, and look how wonderfully it all turned out thirty years down the line!

Mission Accomplished!

[links to follow]

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posted by Diane @ 2:20 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post

24.10.06

Consolations

Working on two books, I'm a novelist by day and a historian by night. The projects have almost nothing to do with one another, except that first, I could not have returned to history except through the particular novel I have written, which began as a historical meditation on why it is currently impossible to do truly interesting and novel work in today's academe; and, second, the return to history as a mode of inquiry consoles the novelist in me because when I'm with the old books whose spines were last cracked a century ago, it reminds me that some things really are written not (or not only) for a contemporary audience, but for the ages.

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posted by Diane @ 6:56 PM  0 reports from other planets links to this post