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What is Meant by the Writer’s Voice?

Voice in literary fiction is one of those intangible qualities that separate the artist from the craftsman. It is something no one can teach us, either to develop in our own writing or to recognize in the writing of others, because it is such an individual thing. It is the manifestation of a person on the page, and exists only in the writing of those for whom the pen or the keyboard transmits the soul. Voice is an audible quality, as if the writer himself were present in the room engaging our attention Read more [...]

Mannerism in Literature and the Foxification of the Public Mind

I've been thinking about the Mannerist phase in European art following the High Renaissance, and it occurs to me that western literature, since Joyce, might be going through a similar period of tumult, from which the culture has yet to emerge with its common sense intact. Mannerism can be viewed as a period of great diversity, encompassing the work of Michaelangelo, El Greco, Bronzino, Pontormo, and many others. It was also a period of great exaggeration, with elongated human forms, impossible poses, Read more [...]

New Work in Progress

I have a new work in progress, the first draft of which is taking shape here. I call it The Unlucky Thirteen. Its genesis is an incident that occurs in my first novel, Banana Republican Blues, previously known as Moonbeam Highway, and totally ignored before that as Gopher Anus Chili. It concerns the murder of thirteen parasite capitalists on a factory floor in Allentown. It's a mystery to anyone who hasn't read the other book, and a farce to anyone who has. I've decided to share my creative process Read more [...]

Comment on SF Signal: The Emptiness of ‘Literary Fiction’ and the Stereotyping of Genre Literature

SF Signal: The Emptiness of 'Literary Fiction' and the Stereotyping of Genre Literature. Unfortunately, Literary Fiction has become just another genre, like romance and chick lit, but directed at a reader with higher education, and defined as what people with MFAs write. Indeed, some literary agencies consider an MFA to be a threshold qualification for anyone claiming to write literary fiction. I agree with you that it is often boring, but in my view, the "lesser genre" are even more at fault, Read more [...]

The Great Canards of Creative Writing

Write What You Know Having read reams of online slush, I have labored through numerous manuscripts that give the lie to the principle of Write What You Know. IMHO, it leads to a lot of writing about mundane daily routines, what might be called the workplace novel, or perhaps, the house spouse novel, that could not be more atrocious as literary fiction. I cannot tell you how many novels I have glanced at that begin with waking up in the morning and getting breakfast together, or arriving at work Read more [...]