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Every year there are thousands of writers retreats available, ranging from a couple of hundred bucks to thousands of dollars for more elaborate surroundings. On a drive up to Bemidji, Minnesota, this weekend, I saw these fishhouses on Lake Mille Lacs, and I thought, now there's a writer's retreat. Nothing but a box on the ice with a hole for catching your dinner. Put yerself out there, and don't let yerself back in 'till the novel's done.

This may be how Stephen King pumps out so much material...or not. Anyhow, perhaps there is something for the writer to learn from the frosty contemplation of ice fisherman, and the icy villages they create on northern lakes each winter.

I took a drive in the sunshine today, a little alone time before the family dinner.  Stopped at Coon Lake County Park, in northern Anoka County, Minnesota, and found a few lonely ice huts already out on the ice, a symptom of our cold winter (in the last few years, December has generally not been cold enough for ice fishing by Christmas). It was cold and quiet, very little wind, bright sunshine. After I stood by the lake's edge for a while, taking pictures, a fellow drove up in his old pickup. He rolled down the window and said, "beautiful, isn't it?" I answered yes, and he smiled, and then rolled up his window and slowly drove away.  Days like this bring out the nature lovers, even for a small lake like this one.





My semester in Fiction is over, thankfully, so I'm going to start posting more regularly again. I have to say, the class was a disappointment. I feel like I'm getting into a situation where the MFA program may be interfering with the writing I actually want to be doing right now.  Anybody out there have a similar experience? Feel free to leave a comment.

As writers of nonfiction here in the States worry that they might inadvertently insult their mothers, a fiction writer in Southeast Asia takes a far greater risk for the art.  You have to respect someone who still actually lives in Myanmar/Burma writing a book of cutting-edge fiction, and getting international notice for it. Nu Nu Yi Inwa is nominated for a new Asian literature prize.

On the Mississippi near Ft. Snelling State Park, last Saturday.  Some people have all the fun.



On an un-literary note, I just found out that scientists are using the ground two blocks from my old apartment to predict when the next apocalyptic earthquake will happen in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their conclusion? Yeah, real soon.  Now that I'm safely in Minnesota I can stop nailing my books to the walls.

Ok, let's get semi-literary for a moment. So now JK Rowling acknowledges using Christian themes in the Harry Potter books--something she kept close the chest until the last one was published because--well--we all kinda know how the Christ story goes, and that might ruin the surprise.  My disappointment in this revelation isn't that she's using religious imagery. As a British writer she's steeped in a predominently Christian culture, and the symbols and stories of Christianity can often be found in great literature. What disappoints me is that when I read the last Potter book, the parallels to another giant of children's lit--Lewis' The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe--were awfully close. Now with this additional insight that she, like Lewis, was explicitly modeling the Christ crucifixion/resurrection in an epic fantasy--well, in the context of children's fantasy literature, that's already been done in a very big way.  When you really go back and look at that last book the whole plot structure of Harry Potter starts getting extremely close to Narnia.  Is this formulaic, or just a great narrative tradition?

Ok, so none of us saw this one coming. Doris Lessing grabbed the Nobel prize, and anybody who bet money on Philip Roth is now running from their bookie.  I read Lessing's "Memoirs of a Survivior" in college and remember it as a rich but difficult book; I've read none of her recent work.  Harold Bloom threw a little hissyfit, and some are worried now that Roth and others will forever be overlooked. But as this Forbes article points out, there may be some genre-rivalry involved in the shock of some critics at her selection.  Realistic fiction vs speculative fiction: SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!!

Ok, I'll stop. Here's a pretty picture. Lake Maria, in central Minnesota, last weekend.

Amazon is gearing up an eBook initiative, including a $500 eBook reader and a proprietary content format. As we prepare to be underwhelmed, PC World has the first take.  The idea of an eBook has always intrigued me, but years and years have gone by, and it's generally gone nowhere.   Sony already has one of these literary gadgets, and a quick look at it here tells me it's not designed by someone who really loves books. It's a cold, grey, fragile-looking tablet.  My dream for an ebook reader: waterproof, durable, opens and lays out like a book, color screen, 30 hours of battery life, backlit for evening reading without a light, notes capability, wi-fi access & internet browsing, ability to add notes to word docs for editing, and availability of every book in print via some sort of online store.  An eBook Apple might have come up with.

Update: more on the Amazon launch here.  Looks like Penguin is one of their big content providers; Penguin of course has Penguin Classics, which would include lots of material out of copyright. Given the digital rights management issues around music, likely to be similar or worse with books, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon continued previous ebook efforts to emphasize a lot of non-copyright content.

This New York Times review reminds us that if you haven't thought of something new to write about, you just aren't thinking hard enough:

The narrator of "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England" is an accidental firebug "with blood and soot on his hands." He committed the unspeakable crime of burning down Emily Dickinson's house. Thus he threw Amherst, Mass., into turmoil, not only because he violated the legacy of the college town's cherished literary Belle but also because he killed "two of its loafered citizens" in the process.

One of the greatest children's authors of the 20th century, Madeline L'Engle, passed away today at the age of 88. Her books, including "A Wrinkle in Time", were imaginative, disturbing, inspiring, and at times bewildering, in a good way.  She lived the life most writers aspire to, writing wonderful things and seeing them widely read.
  

The Guardian is wondering why nobody has bothered to make academic writing more exciting.  I suppose they're right. How about a new take on the typical biology research paper:

The 1918 flu killed millions worldwide. In the course of this paper, we will examine the spread of the pandemic, as well as the intimate details of the life of Ms. Glendeen Rockhopper, the former secretary of a famed flu scientist who had a series of torrid affairs and climbed Mt. Everest with her poodle, Mr. Fancy.

That old question of "how do you choose a college" used to be answered by what was nearby, or where had dad gone, or who had the niftiest football team.  Now, students pour through US News and World Report and stress about going to a university ranked a few notches below their comfort level. Over at Altercation Siva V. is tearing down the whole idea of the US News rankings rather effectively.

Whether you attend Northwestern University (ranked No. 14 by the 2007 U.S. News survey) or the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (ranked No. 38), you will use a biology textbook by Neil A. Campbell and Jane B. Reece. Your professors will all have degrees from one of the 100 or so outstanding graduate schools in the world. Most will have degrees from one of the 10 best graduate programs in their fields. They will all have learned the same research techniques as those at MIT and Stanford.

My college is near the bottom of the nationally ranked liberal arts colleges.  Numerous graduates of my college currently hold teaching positions at ivy league universities. 'Nuff said.