10 Reasons Why Cormac McCarthy Is A Badass Cormac McCarthy is one of our greatest living American novelists. Author of Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road (which won the Pulitzer Prize), McCarthy is a poetic storyteller whose challenging novels explore themes of violence, good and evil, and human survival. Although he’s definitely not everyone’s taste (several of my friends positively loathe him), I personally think the guy is a literary badass. Here are 10 reasons why I do. 1. 2. The dead lay awash in the shallows like the victims of some disaster at sea and they were strewn along the salt foreshore in a havoc of blood and entrails. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. You know what the date on this coin is? But McCarthy’s supreme achievement in this regard is Judge Holden from Blood Meridian, whose monologue on war might be one of the most terrifying—and terrifyingly logical—meditations about the will-to-power I’ve ever read: Men are born for games. 8. 9. 10.
Famous Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers By Maria Popova By popular demand, I’ve put together a periodically updated reading list of all the famous advice on writing presented here over the years, featuring words of wisdom from such masters of the craft as Kurt Vonnegut, Susan Sontag, Henry Miller, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Susan Orlean, Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, and more. Please enjoy. Jennifer Egan on Writing, the Trap of Approval, and the Most Important Discipline for Aspiring Writers “You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”
Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling Why Pulitizer Prize-Winner Donna Tartt Is My Role Model Tartt's author photo=the coolest. I wanted to throw a parade when I found out that Donna Tartt won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Goldfinch. I know parades are usually only for, like, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, but if we were going to organize a national holiday around a living author, I’d vote for Tartt. I’ve been the biggest fan of Tartt’s ever since I ferociously ate her first novel, The Secret History. 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) James O'Barr James O'Barr (born January 1, 1960) is an American graphic artist, best known as the creator of the comic book series The Crow.[1] Personal life[edit] O'Barr, an orphan, was raised in the foster care system.[2] He studied Renaissance sculpture, live models and photographic still lifes. In the 1990s O'Barr was affiliated with the experimental metal band Trust Obey, which was signed briefly to Trent Reznor's Nothing label before the band was dropped. Trust Obey released the album Fear and Bullets: Music to Accompany The Crow in 1993. The album was packaged with a special edition of The Crow graphic novel. As of the mid-2000s, O'Barr resides in Dallas with his daughter.[3] The Crow[edit] O'Barr's own hope that his project would result in a personal catharsis went unfulfilled, he told an interviewer in 1994, saying, "[A]s I drew each page, it made me more self-destructive, if anything....There is pure anger on each page".[6] The Crow has sold more than 750,000 copies worldwide.[7] Acclaim[edit]
Alan Moore Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell.[1] Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history,[2][3] he has been called "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years".[4] He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, Translucia Baboon and The Original Writer. Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician,[6] and anarchist,[7] and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD. Early life[edit] "LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I'm recommending it for anybody else; but for me it kind of – it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing. Alan Moore (2003)[2](pp19–20) Career[edit] Early career: 1978–1980[edit]
M. John Harrison Early years[edit] Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire in 1945 to an engineering family.[1] His father died when he was a teenager and he found himself "bored, alienated, resentful and entrapped", playing truant from Dunsmore School (now Ashlawn School).[1] An English teacher introduced him to George Bernard Shaw and he was immediately "hooked on polemic".[1] He left school in 1963 at age 18; he worked at various times as a groom (Atherstone Hunt), a student teacher (1963–65), and a clerk for the Royal Masonic Charity Institute, London (1966). His hobbies included dwarfs, electric guitars and writing pastiches of H. The New Wave science fiction movement[edit] A number of Harrison's short stories of this early period remain uncollected, gathered neither in his first collection The Machine in Shaft Ten, nor in his later collections. The 1970s[edit] The Committed Men (1971) (dedicated to Michael Moorcock and his wife Hilary Bailey) is set in England after the apocalypse. The 1980s[edit]
Alasdair Gray Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision",[5] and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today"[6] and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".[7] Life[edit] Book cover designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray. Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. Gray illustrates his books himself, and has produced many murals as well as paintings. He has been married twice: firstly to Inge Sorenson (1961–1970), and since 1991 to Morag McAlpine. He produced the ceiling mural for The Auditorium of the Oran Mor on Byres Road in Glasgow, one of the largest works of art in Scotland. [1] Quotes[edit] "That's suicide!"
Developing a Solid Third Person Point of View | Ellen Brock Point of view is one of the biggest issues I see in my client’s manuscripts. Writers working in first person tend to do pretty well, but those writing in third person tend to have a problem – they blend third person limited with omniscient. Now last week I went over the differences between head hopping and omniscient POV, but today I want to look at how writers can blend third limited and omniscient without even realizing it. Let’s start by looking at an example: Jane couldn’t take it anymore. So this excerpt blends omniscient and third person limited pretty badly. Here’s the same passage again with the third person limited in blue, omniscient in orange, and neutral lines in black: There is a lot of jumping in this passage between third limited and omniscient. So how can you fix it? If you want to write in omniscient: If you want to write in third limited: Developing a solid third person point of view can separate you from amateurs and propel your novel higher up in the submission stack.
Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke (German: [ˈʁaɪnɐ maˈʁiːa ˈʁɪlkə]) — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets",[1] writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical".[2][3] His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers. Biography[edit] Early life (1875–1896)[edit] Rilke, three years old, circa 1878–1879 Munich and Saint Petersburg[edit] In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy. Paris (1902–1910)[edit]
Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (French: [aʁto]; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French playwright, poet, actor, essayist, and theatre director.[1] §Early life[edit] Antoine Artaud was born 4 September 1896 in Marseille, France, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud.[2] Both his parents were natives of Smyrna (modern-day İzmir), and he was greatly affected by his Greek ancestry.[2] His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis, which gave him a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his adolescence. Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium stays for their temperamental son, which were both prolonged and expensive. §Paris[edit] In March 1920, Artaud moved to Paris to pursue a career as a writer, and instead discovered he had a talent for avant-garde theatre. §Final years[edit] §Apprenticeship with Charles Dullin[edit]
Les Fleurs du mal The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal with author's notes. Overview[edit] The initial publication of the book was arranged in six thematically segregated sections: The foreword to the volume, identifying Satan with the pseudonymous alchemist Hermes Trismegistus and calling boredom the worst of miseries, neatly sets the general tone of what is to follow: Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,N'ont pas encore brodé de leurs plaisants dessinsLe canevas banal de nos piteux destins,C'est que notre âme, hélas! If rape and poison, dagger and burning, Have still not embroidered their pleasant designs On the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies, It's because our souls, alas, are not bold enough! The preface concludes with the following malediction: C'est l'Ennui! It's Ennui! He dreams of the gallows in the haze of his hookah. You know him, reader, this delicate monster, Hypocritical reader, my likeness, my brother! Tableaux Parisiens (Parisian Scenes)[edit] Legacy[edit] References[edit]