Death and Other Holidays

On July 11, 2018July 12, 2018 By Cara Benson2 Comments

This book arrived unbidden at my doorstep on a day I heard news I did not want to hear about my beloved partner Jon Lathrop. As I am a writer and sometime book reviewer, author interviewer, essayist, books sometimes show up as enticements for my attention. I’m not a hugely high profile book writer, but still, some do come.

But why this book? Why that day? I was expecting Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra (trans. Achy Obejas), a book I’d expressed specific interest in, and it did come a few weeks later. My plans had been to interview her for Full Stop. As that book isn’t due out until later in the year, thankfully, I have some time. I’m on holiday, you see. One that death has caused.

I can tell you that I read Marci Vogel’s book. I can tell you that it did for me what the nonfiction works on suicide and surviving the loss of a loved one couldn’t. I will read Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Tale. I have read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. I want to tell you what Vogel’s novella managed that the non-literary works didn’t, but I’m on holiday. Maybe I’ll get there before its pub date. I don’t know. I’ve got my own novel to return to, and I’ve no idea how or when to do that. Death doesn’t end, but holidays do.

That’s all I got for now.

death and other holidays

Revise, revise, revise

On December 12, 2017December 12, 2017 By Cara BensonLeave a comment

Novelist William Gass passed away last week at the age of 93. He was beloved, or so it seems his novels were if the paeans to him on Twitter are to be believed. I confess I’d not only not read him, but not heard of him (that I recall) until his death. He’d probably hate me for that, but then he’d get some writing out of it so I’m not too worried.

What I have now read – or skimmed, to be honest – are some of the posts of aggregated quotes from Gass on writing. I will add at least one of his novels to my ever-expanding to be read list, and maybe you might, too. Meantime, these two passages (as compiled at LitHub) are keepers:

“Something gets on paper, and then it gets revised, and then it gets revised, and then it gets revised. And then I’m finally at the end.”

—from a 2005 interview with The Believer.

“I write slowly because I write badly. I have to rewrite everything many, many times just to achieve mediocrity. Time can give you a good critical perspective, and I often have to go slow so that I can look back on what sort of botch of things I made three months ago. Much of the stuff which I will finally publish, with all its flaws, as if it had been dashed off with a felt pen, will have begun eight or more years earlier, and worried and slowly chewed on and left for dead many times in the interim.”

—from a 1976 interview with The Paris Review.

There are no shortcuts in writing, much as I’d love cash and prizes for my first drafts. So I am posting these two as fuel. Reminders. Notes to self as I continue the work of revision on my current manuscript. The story of that story is a long one, and I cannot wait to tell you all about it. And I will. Soon as it’s finished. Thanks, Bill. He wouldn’t mind me calling him that, do you think?

It’s hot.

On June 19, 2017June 19, 2017 By Cara BensonLeave a comment

The rain is dripping from the gutters from the fourth rumblestorm today because it’s thick as soup out there and clashing fronts are surging and bursting in the sky. A small fan is pointed at my face. I’ve got my foot up on the computer tower. Next to me is THE CITY ALWAYS WINS by Omar Robert Hamilton and my reading specs balanced on top, waiting for me to finish. I’ll be interviewing him shortly for Full Stop but meantime spending my days under the influence of the urgency of his cadence. What could be more important a topic for literature than revolution? How do we spark a movement? Direct the chaos? How do we stay cool under fire? I don’t know, but pull up a chair and let’s find out.

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