Forum / Interesting article re Fiction in The Atlantic

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    Matt Dennison
    Aug 18, 02:58pm

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/08/telling-tails/7533/

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    Jane Hammons
    Aug 18, 03:32pm

    Thanks for posting this, Matt. It's wonderful. I just sent the link to my sons: tellers of tales; wearers of all sorts of costumes when they were little; huge fans of The Things They Carried.

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Aug 18, 03:53pm

    Thanks, Matt. When Tim O'Brien talks, Jimmy Davis listens. Great article.

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    Linda Simoni-Wastila
    Aug 18, 08:59pm

    Great article, Matt -- thanks for posting. Interesting discussion on versimilitude/imagination, sort of like angsting on the trees and forgetting the forest.

    Loved The Things They Carried. Amazing book. Peace...

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    James Robison
    Aug 18, 10:02pm

    Wow I disagree with the thesis. It's not the duty of the fiction writer to render extraordinary events, that's for journalsts. It's the duty of the ficion writer to render the events of her life as lived, or his, in extaordinary ways. So little "happens" in Chekhov, but his work not only teems with real drama but presents a better, more accurate and dramatic picture of life in his time and place than Tolsoy's,for example, who strained to be important.

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    Kevin Myrick
    Aug 20, 08:49am

    Reading this makes me wonder if I should completely rethink the way I write. James, as a journo myself, I can say only 10 percent of our job is rendering extraordinary events. The other 90 percent is trying to fill the paper with unremarkable tales.

    I think the point T.O. Is trying to make here is that as writers we need to do our best not to stray into writing in a formulaic way, but instead use our tools to change the formula.

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