Writing Life: October 2007 Archives

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.