Peter Sellers, best known for his contribution to Blake Edwards movies like The Pink Panther, appeared as a guest on the Muppet Show one time. He was discovered in the dressing room in the process of trying to disguise as Queen Victoria. The disguise was, quite hilariously, not going well. "Don't worry," said a muppet, … Continue reading Finding Your Own Voice
Tag: culture
Will Pot Change Literature?
Robert Louis Stevenson used cocaine. Charles Baudelaire used hashish. Jean Cocteau used opium. Jean-Paul Sartre used amphetamines. Philip K. Dick used speed. Aldous Huxley used mushrooms. Hunter S. Thompson used mescaline along with the usual stuff like LSD and pot. William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Stephen King, Thomas de Quincey, Hubert Selby, William Yeats, the list goes on. As if … Continue reading Will Pot Change Literature?
Read, Read, Read
If you are a published writer, no matter how crappy you are, people will automatically assume that you know Faulkner by heart. Even if you specialize in YA novels, you will be expected to have intelligent opinions on Proust and Joyce. Of course all writers are supposed to be able to quote at least a few … Continue reading Read, Read, Read
Do you have to understand every word?
When Joseph Conrad's Nostromo was first published in 1904, many of the words used in the text must have been unfamiliar to the general public. The common folk of the neighborhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth … Continue reading Do you have to understand every word?
Write Not What You Are Not
An intriguing story by Susan Barker appeared on the pages of The Los Angeles Review of Books titled "Should Ethnicity Limit What a Fiction Writer Can Write?". The article relates the authors experiences of a recent book tour she made in China after publishing her book The Incarnations set in modern China. The author is … Continue reading Write Not What You Are Not
To NaNoWriMo or Not to NaNoWriMo?
I have learned the existence of the National Novel Writing Month only recently. When I was a young man in my mid-twenties with aspirations of being a published novelist, an institution like NaNoWriMo was unthinkable. It is pretty much unthinkable today, even though it exists. Who would have imagined? NaNoWriMo is a strange institution for … Continue reading To NaNoWriMo or Not to NaNoWriMo?
Kurosawa’s Samurais
Toshiro Mifune was an aerial photographer for the Japanese Imperial Army, where he saw numerous eighteen-year-old conscripts fly off on kamikaze missions, an experience that gave him a lifelong hatred of the war. Later in his career, when he was typecast as an Imperial military officer, he was asked in an interview what he personally … Continue reading Kurosawa’s Samurais
Samurai Novelist 