Forum / The Fictionaut Blog

• 
  Jürgen Fauth

  Sep 07, 09:34am

  Hi all--

  we're currently discussing ideas for new regular columns on the Fictionaut blog, and I thought I'd explicitly invite members to participate. If you have an idea for a series on the blog and would like to contribute, send me a message and we'll talk. Much thanks!

• 
  strannikov

  Sep 07, 03:39pm

  Jurgen: thanks for the invitation (thanks also for your contribution to BOOK, which I plan to purchase in print form as soon as I spot an available copy for sale).

  With my sensitivity to temporal velocity, my assertion that we do not all share the same sense of the rate at which time and/or history proceed, and my self-conception as a living anachronism possessed of an atavistic or archaic soul, I propose a monthly series along the lines of "PAST MASTERS"--writers who have already begun their return to dust in earnest who nevertheless left behind informative, startling, or challenging comment on writing and the state of writing.

  Two candidates spring to mind instantly: Cousin Flannery's essays "The Nature and Aim of Fiction" and "The Teaching of Literature" collected in the volume MYSTERY AND MANNERS; Penguin has published a brief collection of essays by G. Orwell including "Why I Write" and the notoriously under-read "Politics and the English Language" (the collection fails to include Orwell's "Confessions of a Book Reviewer", sadly).

  Literary fiction, our ostensive focus, is fiction that bears RE-reading. I remain skeptical of what I continue to see as our generation's uncritical enthusiasm for all things contemporary and lack of anything seeming to approach commensurate regard for literary history. Any consideration of relevant surviving works by writers who in their day were as alive as we are (for the time being) would offer valuable perspective.

• 
  Joani Reese

  Sep 07, 10:21pm

  I want a cartoon.

• 
  James Claffey

  Sep 08, 02:35am

  i am a cartoon

• 
  Dolemite

  Sep 08, 02:48am

  James:

  You could play "James The Expensive Avocado," and do PSAs explaining why the grocery stores have bins of them/you that sit there all week until they rot, at which point they are thrown away (not sold at a reduced price or donated to charity, but that's another rant...) and replaced with more that sit there, unsold, until they turn to squish, and so on and so on...

  What say ye, you ol' avocado farmer you...

• 
  Dolemite

  Sep 11, 05:55pm

  (obviously not about the blog, but it would be nice to be able to post work in different fonts, in centered layout, justified layout, right-alignment...

  *used* to be able to do these things, and I don't understand why that ability has been taken away...)

• 
  James Claffey

  Sep 11, 09:12pm

  i say let them eat cake. and bring back fully justified. avocados for all!

• 
  Dolemite

  Sep 12, 04:40am

  Ah, I love avocados but they're too expensive so they sit there and rot...

  And I love different layouts, but they're no longer available, though there are icons for them at the top of the page...

  What's a poor boy to do?!

  ;-)

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