Right now, in faculty rooms across the country, admissions officials are trying to winnow out the next batch of Masters of Fine Arts diploma candidates, America’s presumptive writing elite….
Blog
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CAN YOU REALLY RANK WRITING PROGRAMMES?
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WHITNEY BIENNIAL: THE LIST
The Whitney Biennial is something of a coming-out party for mostly young and mostly unknown contemporary artists working in America. To announce the much-anticipated list of artists selected for this year’s show, which opens in New York on February 25th, the two curators, Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari, have supplemented the traditional press release with a short, weird film. Art wags are now scratching their heads, wondering what this could possibly mean….
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My Muse
And of course, on the left, my (real life, very red) muse:
Thanks to Models.com and V Magazine for the images -
Feral City Geopolitics and Chronology
Port Lightning would have been an important pitstop along the Silk Road or an alternate sea route. During the immediate pre-history of Feral City, the Island would have been played a prominent role during the Iran-Iraq war and Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan. As the story progresses (1989-1999), the island would have been at least a refueling depot during the first gulf war. One possible partial model for Chiragh Pattan is Diego Garcia, an airbase and naval port owned by the United Kingdom, approximately 1000 miles south of Ceylon.
From looking at major island city states (Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Monaco etc), almost all are just off the coast of a conjunction between two or more big cities. In this vein, Port Lightning might be a few miles off the coast of Karachi – a major Pakistani city with approximately 12mm people.
Arvind Adiga’s Between the Assassinations has its shortcomings, I think there’s something disingenuous about the way he portrays the subaltern – where’s the horror? – and he isn’t much of a prose poet, plus he’s mindlessly anti-BJP, but he does have a nicely articulated chronology of a made-up Indian resort town between 1987 and 1991 (i.e. between the assassinations of the Gandhis). Takeaways: foreign remittances, city corporations, and the proliferation of satellite television.
Here’s mine (very much a work in progress):
CHRONOLOGY
1989: Khomeini dies. Julian arrives in Port Lightning.
1990: Gulf War begins. (USS Vincennes might drop by – later when the city starts to erupt in violence I’d like to have a gunboat drop by like). Chapter 5 begins here. Julian is recalled from a school trip when the bombs begin falling.
1991: Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in India.
1992: End of British rule, beginning of self determination. Treaty ends, colony reverts to local rule.
1993: WTC bombing.
1994:
1995:
1996: Kabul captured by Taliban. US Special Forces probably begin interdiction.
1997:
1998: Iran masses 250,000 troops on Afghan border.
1999: -
Integrating TRIZ
In an effort to streamline the R&D, and eventually production, we are implementing the 40 methodologies of TRIZ – designed the Altshuller Institute. More information will follow.
And for my Russian, Ukrainian and Latvian friends:
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Takeaways from Slushpile Sifting
- Alzheimer’s and parents’ deaths lose their force as plot devices/ emotion tweakers after the 100th read or so;
- Plagiarizing premises’ from famous short stories dilutes their power;
- Using graduate school as a setting or graduate students as characters seems lazy and boring;
- Plot remains paramount – well-written plotless stories dominate slushpiles;
- The ability to convey emotion through words is rare;
- You get one premise free, the others you have to earn;
- After completing a draft, figure out what the story is (the story making machinery) and then write it again;
- Having a PhD in English/CompLit etc. doesn’t mean you can write things people want to read;
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First Semester MFA Takeaways
- Remove dust jackets from hardcover books before use;
- Drafts should be completed and started over from the remembered remnants;
- “Real writing” takes place over winter break;
- Anxiety is normal and should be encouraged (i.e. the productive kind);
- Workshop leaders will continue to confuse first-person narrators with their progenitors — even in graduate school;
- Writing about one’s homeland is one’s birthright and opens the deepest, most intimate veins of narrative; (Where is my homeland?)
- Proper literary criticism assumes an author anticipated and intended all undergraduate-level interpretations;
- Plot problem? Have sex/a gunman enter a room/leave a room;
- Write with AUTHORITY;
- Telling is quicker than showing;
- Columbia MFA work goes in the priority pile (what is the priority pile?);
- One can assume that strangenesses that don’t quite cohere to a narrative are taken directly from an author’s life.
More as I think of it….
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Strange Breeds
America’s east coast is peppered with architectural behemoths better suited to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” than the leafy habitat of the tufted Maine Coon cat. Parts of northern New Jersey look like industrial-age Manchester, and the towering girded glass cubes of I.M. Pei’s Jacob K. Javits convention centre in New York City could house a fighter jet. It’s hardly the place one would expect to glimpse the spotted belly of a sprawling Egyptian Mau […]
