Garrison Keillor on Novel Writing
Posted on January 16, 2009 - Filed Under Media | Leave a Comment
I came home slightly toasted tonight and happened upon this corker of an article by the aforementioned in Thursday’s Irish Times.
A deep-down aversion to A-R-T is one big reason half of America stays away from fiction. They’re afraid they’ll come across a sentence like: “She looked out the window and saw the reflection of her own pale face against the drifted snow.” Something girlish and moody like that.
These are guys who like to play video games in which you shoot people and spatter their blood on the wall. And what they might go for is manly fiction: perhaps “Read my book, buttface,” said the novelist standing in the dim doorway of Brad’s garage. “Pick it up and read it.” “I ain’t gonna read your book, it’s got a lot of weird words like ‘languid’ and ‘luminous’ in it,” said Brad. He wondered if that was a real gun in the novelist’s hand. It was. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Blood spattered all over the garage and his workbench. Blood glittered on the gunstock that Brad had been sanding for his shotgun. He wouldn’t be sanding it no more. No sir.
Something like that.
Read the rest of it; it’s smashing stuff.
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