tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75242317176608081172012-01-28T00:44:58.207-04:00F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1521100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-65145023181761720032010-10-12T09:49:00.000-04:002010-10-12T09:49:31.031-04:00

Hay un cuento mío en la antología El corazón habitado. Últimos cuentos de amor en Colombia (Algaida, 2010; 407 pp.). Eso hace que sea difícil escribir un comentario neutral: muchas críticas, y sería algo indecoroso; muchos elogios, y parecerá autopromoción. De todos modos, tengo que decir que es un volumen esperanzador; parece que va a brotar buena ficción de Colombia durante un tiempo largo. He

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-72881827067591742502010-10-04T17:11:00.000-04:002010-10-04T17:11:00.749-04:00

In the short stories collected in The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage, 2008; 178 pp.), Andrew Porter takes the past tense we are used to reading in fiction and transforms it into a weapon. His narrators are characters who look back at certain moments in their lives. A lesser writer would’ve established a narrative present, and worked the backstory in through flashbacks. Not Porter. Most of

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-61998044451068171242010-09-30T00:49:00.000-04:002010-09-30T00:49:16.240-04:00

Continúo con lo que empecé en la entrada anterior. No quiero decir que la literatura electrónica vaya a salvar a todas las editoriales, o que el número de escritores profesionales con ingresos dignos se vaya a multiplicar. Es más, hay preocupaciones legítimas sobre la forma en que se han asentado los ebooks. Sin embargo, la literatura digital sí puede acercar a cantidades de lectores a muchos

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-29029855275109687842010-09-29T00:20:00.000-04:002010-09-29T00:20:21.116-04:00

“En la mayoría de los casos, un escritor chileno sabe tan poco de la literatura ecuatoriana como de la vietnamita”. Esta cita de Andrés Neuman (Pequeñas resistencias 3 [2004], p. 38) es una de tantas permutaciones de un lamento que se oye con frecuencia sobre el archipiélago literario que es América Latina. De verdad que es difícil saber desde Colombia, por ejemplo, lo que se publica en Venezuela

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-80585658901173259342010-09-22T22:51:00.001-04:002010-09-22T23:09:11.490-04:00

Terminó la agonía del cuento. Me refiero a la serie de notas, que empezó con una presentación general y seis pasos después llegó a una reseña de Se habla español. Por cortesía de HermanoCerdo, la serie se transmutó en un ebook. Confieso que me gustó mucho esa idea, porque justo cuando ha ido en aumento mi entusiasmo por los ebooks me encontré incursionando en ese mundo. La idea nació con René

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-50019699352266250832010-09-21T20:20:00.002-04:002010-09-21T20:20:43.423-04:00

(Se publicó primero en la revista HermanoCerdo, aquí) Concluyo este recorrido con la más vieja de las antologías que he reseñado: Se habla español. Voces latinas en USA. La publicó Alfaguara en el año 2000, y la editaron dos escritores cuyos cuentos también formaron parte de la colección: Edmundo Paz Soldán y Alberto Fuguet. Todos los 36 textos, uno por autor, están relacionados con Estados

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-48402308840077761432010-09-21T09:03:00.000-04:002010-09-21T09:03:46.301-04:00

(Se publicó primero en la revista HermanoCerdo, aquí) Luego de terminar con Pequeñas resistencias, volvemos a América Central, esta vez a una antología de autores centroamericanos publicada en Guatemala y editada por un centroamericano. El libro se llama Los centroamericanos (antología de cuentos) y lo editó José Mejía, quien escogió los veinte cuentos, uno por autor. Alfaguara lo publicó en 2002

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-67132941037743349902010-09-15T10:09:00.001-04:002010-09-20T12:53:40.086-04:00

(Se publicó primero en la revista HermanoCerdo, aquí) Con el cuarto volumen de Pequeñas resistencias, el enfoque pasa a Norteamérica y al Caribe. Así, en menos de cuatro años se completó el recorrido por el mundo iberoamericano. Haberlo hecho en tan poco tiempo es una hazaña. El cuarto volumen continuó con el criterio editorial que fue más común en la serie: los autores debían haber nacido a

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-76293729324456404672010-09-12T19:56:00.000-04:002010-09-12T19:56:49.220-04:00

(Se publicó primero en la revista HermanoCerdo, aquí) Llegué al tercer volumen de Pequeñas resistencias con expectativas muy altas. Para empezar, las cifras eran dicientes: los volúmenes anteriores habían seleccionado entre 45 millones de personas (España) y entre 42 millones de personas (los seis países centroamericanos recogidos en el segundo volumen). En los nueve países suramericanos del

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-5910947302612681302010-09-09T17:11:00.000-04:002010-09-09T17:11:00.846-04:00

(Se publicó primero en la revista HermanoCerdo, aquí) Una particularidad del segundo volumen de Pequeñas resistencias, comparado con el primero, salta a la vista: nos encontramos ante el doble de autores. Son sesenta escritores en este segundo volumen, tomados en igual número de seis países: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Panamá. Vemos también otras diferencias con el

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-79962586167160776332010-09-09T17:10:00.001-04:002010-09-20T12:54:38.289-04:00

(Se publicó primero en la revista HermanoCerdo, aquí) No se equivoca uno de los editores de Pequeñas resistencias cuando dice, en el prólogo al tercer volumen, que la serie se convirtió en un “atlas del cuento contemporáneo en lengua española” (13). Al cierre del cuarto volumen, la serie había recopilado 214 cuentos de 170 escritores, a lo largo de 1,679 páginas. Es un proyecto ambicioso.

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-64674360867347639032010-08-30T21:34:00.006-04:002010-09-22T22:55:38.776-04:00

El cuento está muerto. El cuento ha pedido la extremaunción. El cuento agoniza. Un espectro persigue a la industria editorial: el espectro del cuento. El cuento no vende. Con los libros de cuentos, se pierden el tiempo del autor y los recursos de la editorial. Publicar cuentos es una mala idea. Etcétera. Argumentos como estos resuenan todos los días. Una de las colecciones más ambiciosas de

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-76544356868238045152010-08-25T11:02:00.000-04:002010-08-25T11:02:28.817-04:00

In this allegedly secular age of ours, where the fantasy genre begets bestselling novels on vampires, zombies, wizards, and their ilk, how likely would it be to produce a massive bestseller on a strictly Christian subject? Say you’re a literary agent and someone sends a query letter about a book on the end of days: Christians around the world vanish, and nonbelievers are left to rummage through

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-36676436384838455332010-08-20T09:27:00.000-04:002010-08-20T09:27:08.918-04:00

Your First Novel (Cincinnati, 2006; 298 pp.) is actually two books in one. The first is written by Laura Whitcomb, a novelist, and it covers the whole range from inspiration to craft and revisions. It does go through everything that’s important, even if briefly. But, in contrast to other books on craft (most notably, Gardner’s), the first half of Your First Novel is written with even the most

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-36316326878290132192010-08-12T13:27:00.000-04:002010-08-12T13:27:54.334-04:00

Say you’re reading John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction and you find that he says that our taste in literature is conditioned by “the nature of our mortality” (55). Weird. You check the cover, and there it is indeed: the art of fiction. The comment seems out of place. Now say you’re reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (New York, 1995; 238 pp.), also a book on writing, and you come across this

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-55244231956640446192010-08-06T15:50:00.005-04:002010-08-12T13:34:04.285-04:00

If you recognize the cover of this book, don’t read on. I’ve posted comments on other books on craft, so you might turn to those instead (here). Why? Because I don’t mean to preach to the choir. If you’re familiar with the book, these short comments will be unnecessary, even ingénue. I’m posting them for another kind of person, one who has been inebriated with writing for a while, but has not

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-58354416344364053652010-07-30T19:53:00.001-04:002010-07-31T08:40:25.709-04:00

If you need to remind yourself of how vast the industry of writing how-to books is, just take a look at this list of “some of the newest books on the craft” of writing. The list is put together by the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, which hosts a plethora of online writing courses. The Gotham crew also has a book of its own: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York’s Acclaimed Creative

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-26708549255407256592010-07-23T09:37:00.000-04:002010-07-23T09:37:30.996-04:00

People often have warped images of writers: they drink or smoke too much, they obsess (think of Joshua Ferris’s cunning portrait in his recent short story “The Pilot”), they are quirky and maniacal (think of Jack Nicholson’s two roles as a writer). Thus, many people, afflicted by those images, shake their head mournfully when they hear you’re interested in pursuing writing as a profession. Some

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-85908273734511634972010-07-21T08:52:00.002-04:002010-07-21T08:52:46.022-04:00

We’ve seen editing tackled by professional editors (Self-Editing for Fiction Writers) and by a literary agent (The First Five Pages). Both perspectives are useful. But David Michael Kaplan’s Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction (Cincinnati, 1997; 226 pp.) is a book on editing written by a creative writer. The result is an excellent volume, which adds an important

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-86477945385665012902010-07-19T10:49:00.001-04:002010-07-29T00:28:20.531-04:00

Would you rather have an avuncular, didactic writer who walked you through the editing process, or would you prefer the guidance of an impatient, help-us-editors-not-waste-our-time author? Noah Lukeman, an agent, comes much closer to the second voice in The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile (New York, 2007; 207 pp.). It’s a book about editing a manuscript,

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-35968030039913206482010-07-16T09:35:00.002-04:002010-07-16T09:35:41.516-04:00

The author of a craft book I reviewed recently had this to say about writing: “Writing is way overrated. The truly creative writer gets the most mileage out of editing and revising” (98). Great. The question is exactly how to go about it? Sure, reading, letting it sit, rereading. Maybe finding some good readers to comment on it. Of course, making the plot strong and the characters complex and

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-18995760216051113042010-07-14T09:33:00.002-04:002010-07-15T09:32:54.253-04:00

We already saw (here) that Gardner’s The Art of Fiction gave good advice on writing techniques. But writing is more than techniques. Being misunderstood and frequently undervalued by people outside of writing seem to be common denominators for writers, who are thus often prone to recurrent anxieties. In his second book on writing, On Becoming a Novelist (New York, 1983, 1999; 150 pp.), Gardner

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-6783409047672908232010-07-12T09:09:00.000-04:002010-07-12T09:09:57.010-04:00

John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers (Vintage, 1983, 1991; 224 pp.) is a classic. It’s printed like a classic: thick paper, hazy letters. It speaks like a classic: note the subtitle, for young writers, which we would most likely write today as beginning writers. Gardner’s voice in the book has the gusto and loftiness of an early twentieth century don, with an

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-54875945258716103822010-07-09T08:42:00.003-04:002010-07-09T17:34:40.345-04:00

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten on writing is also one of the simplest: let your fiction sit in a drawer (or hard drive) before reading it again. Here is Gardner’s version: “when the manuscript is ‘cold’ […] the faults stand plain” (On Becoming a Novelist, p. 65). The most savory variant went like this: writing is like cooking a stew; if you want to remove the fat, you have to allow

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-12240808177805678632010-07-04T22:39:00.003-04:002010-07-07T09:36:09.974-04:00

Se acaba de publicar el libro de cuentos El corazón habitado, editado por el español José Manuel García Gil. El subtítulo resume el contenido de la antología: Últimos cuentos de amor en Colombia. No tengo todavía el libro en las manos, pero me refiero a la publicación porque se incluyó un cuento mío, titulado “Un accidente”. El prólogo del libro está aquí, y en este blog Carlos Castillo (uno de

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-50513919545855430612010-07-02T08:41:00.000-04:002010-07-02T08:41:18.936-04:00

Over the past week, I’ve discussed a story from The New Yorker every day. This is a good chance to list those stories from The New Yorker on which I’ve posted comments on the blog (some of them are very brief, some not that brief). Here’s the full list. I’ve starred those stories I liked best. Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (June 26, 1948)Daniel Alarcón, “The Idiot President” (October 6, 2008)

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-84667487476236045682010-07-01T09:01:00.000-04:002010-07-01T09:01:32.944-04:00

Here’s a blast from the past that is well worth a note. It’s one of the best stories that the TNY has published in the last year or so. I mean George Saunders’ “Victory Lap” (TNY, Oct. 5, 2009) (which tied as the TNY 2009 story of the year in Perpetual Folly’s ranking). Saunders pulls off a tremendous feat by combining three very different voices (two teenagers and an older man) in a story in

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-90635221452593214502010-06-30T08:51:00.002-04:002010-06-30T08:51:56.337-04:00

Jeffrey Eugenides’s “Extreme Solitude” (TNY, June 7, 2010) deserves a chance, and it’ll reward it luxuriantly. I say this because the first sentence is terrible: “It was debatable whether or not Madeleine had fallen in love with Leonard the first moment she’d seen him.” That first adjective seems to have been picked by Eugenides’s secret enemy. And the “whether or not” construction is bland and

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-44312319155843310212010-06-29T09:34:00.000-04:002010-06-29T09:34:22.673-04:00

Jonathan Franzen’s “Agreeable” (TNY, May 31, 2010) has several things going for it. There are some good lines (“Paradise for Joyce [a Democrat] was an open space where poor children could go and do Arts at state expense”). There is plenty of humor in both descriptions and dialogue. For instance, when Patty feels ogled by her father’s junior partner, he is accused of “ocular pawing.” We also find

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-68557075528904797482010-06-28T11:46:00.002-04:002010-06-28T11:46:48.365-04:00

Roddy Doyle’s “Ash” (TNY, May 24, 2010) is one of those stories that make you wonder how they got to The New Yorker. It’s tiny, mostly dialogue. Kevin has two daughters with Ciara, and Ciara is leaving him. She leaves him once, comes back and “rides” Kevin, and then leaves again. Kevin is worried, and is constantly counseled by his brother Micky. Ciara returns once more, and there is no riding

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-63723985226998014932010-06-27T11:11:00.001-04:002010-06-27T11:12:18.038-04:00

When I came across Nathan Englander’s “Free Fruit for Young Widows” (TNY, May 17, 2010), I said, great, a war story. Now something momentous will happen. And it did. But most of what happened was the author getting in the way of the best part of the story. Around that powerful central storyline, the author tacked on side stories apparently to add consequence to the overall tale. The result was an

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-60702248571342787542010-06-26T09:02:00.002-04:002010-06-26T09:02:56.715-04:00

Dagoberto Gilb’s “Uncle Rock” (TNY, May 10, 2010) goes nowhere. Yes, you can fish out tiny specks that, stringed together, show that the main character is changing. But the story’s three short pages require much more patience than they should. It’s a story about the morose 11-year-old son of a young, beautiful Mexican immigrant who keeps losing her jobs while she’s wooed by countless men. She is

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-62437207424811343322010-06-25T16:29:00.001-04:002010-06-25T19:02:28.463-04:00

Back to The New Yorker after eloping with One Story for a while. Once I’ve posted a note on Jeffrey Eugenides’s story (from June 7, 2010), I’ll resort to the minimalism I announced a couple posts ago: I’ll write comments only on especially strong stories. Afterward, there’ll be a small series of posts on books about craft. Allegra Goodman’s “La Vita Nuova” (TNY, May 3, 2010) fits snugly into a

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-15379813235238120092010-06-22T09:30:00.001-04:002010-07-01T09:05:47.502-04:00

Here's a list of the One Story pieces I’ve discussed on this blog. I’ve starred those stories I liked best. C. N. Adichie, “Transition to Glory” (One Story 27)Andrew Porter, “Azul” (One Story 72) *Lydia Peelle, “Reasons For and Advantages of Breathing” (One Story 87) *Nam Le, “Meeting Elise” (One Story 93)Joe Meno, “Children are the Only Ones who Blush” (One Story 122)Jennifer Haigh, “Desiderata”

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-35102804415256251682010-06-21T19:48:00.003-04:002010-06-21T23:40:12.838-04:00

A drunk driver runs over and kills a girl, and, although no one finds out he did it, he is tormented by guilt. That’s the gist of Smith Henderson’s “Number Stations” (One Story 136, May 30, 2010). But it’s a gist you have to shake free from an avalanche of minor and major characters, subplots, near-miss affairs, ostriches, and cryptic radio transmissions. Here’s a sampler. The drunk driver’s name

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-3214464448474769232010-06-20T09:20:00.001-04:002010-06-20T09:23:54.201-04:00

Grant Munroe’s “Corporate Park” (One Story 135, May 10, 2010) is built on a clever premise: a cougar has walked into an office building, and it’s mauling the employees. As the grumpy and anal corporate lawyer who narrates the story tells us, the mountain lion produces a “massive reduction in personnel” (12). Blood is spattered everywhere, limbs and moustaches are strewn across the office. This

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-22388334128440210512010-06-19T10:19:00.002-04:002010-06-20T09:13:51.231-04:00

It’s good when stories make you question, wonder, and prod. But the main question I was left with after reading Susanna Daniel’s “Stiltsville” (One Story 134, April 10, 2010) was why. And, even though the story has merits, I mean a bad kind of why. I didn’t expect to end with such an impression when I started reading. The first few pages were strong. The descriptions of the destruction wreaked by

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-61943842443914755412010-06-18T09:06:00.000-04:002010-06-18T09:06:01.994-04:00

Cheston Knapp’s “A Minor Momentousness in the History of Love” (One Story 133, March 30, 2010) and I never bonded. It’s strange. The right sorts of elements were there. Characterization done by accretion and by showing, not by full disclosure and by telling (good example: how the narrator’s anger management issues creep up on us). There are scenes in which the narrator’s inner world vined around

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-38281132198094252542010-06-17T08:59:00.000-04:002010-06-17T08:59:02.913-04:00

Molly Antopol’s “The Quietest Man” (One Story 132, March 10, 2010) is a good story, with piquant insights and interesting situations. It’s a story about Tomás Novak, a man from the Czech Republic who came to the States as a political émigré. He was offered a teaching job in a small college in a small town as a way to escape persecution in Prague. By persecution, I mean that he and his wife (Katka

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-75582522924605696112010-06-16T01:24:00.000-04:002010-06-16T01:24:17.051-04:00

Naomi J. Williams’s “Snow Men” (One Story 131, January 30, 2010) is a good character sketch and an interesting immersion in a different time and a different culture. That doesn’t mean it’s a great story, though. Narrated by a young Native American woman in 1786, “Snow Men” describes how a group of Native Americans encountered European explorers. I can’t complain about the language. Unlike other

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-70468950426282935992010-06-15T08:58:00.002-04:002010-06-15T18:36:45.083-04:00

Terese Svoboda’s “Bomb Jockey” (One Story 130, Dec. 31, 2009) was off to a sensational start, even more appealing than “The Tornado Bandit,” which I singled out for its great opening. During World War II, in what seems to be the Dakotas (14), two people meet. One, an irreverent young woman entering college age. She is smart and beautiful, the daughter of a wealthy politician. Her name appears to

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-46093614600849652362010-06-14T09:00:00.001-04:002010-06-14T09:01:15.420-04:00

Some of the stories I’ve discussed recently sin at the beginning: they start slowly and pick up the pace, so that compressing or curtailing the opening pages would make the story stronger. The opposite happens with Anne Corbitt’s “The Tornado Bandit” (One Story 129, Dec. 10, 2009). It starts out forcefully, only to turn its march into a meander that circles around for a nap at the end. It’s a

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-1728045324807681052010-06-13T08:25:00.001-04:002010-06-13T09:12:48.537-04:00

Tamas Dobozy’s  “The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kálmán Once Lived” (One Story 128, November 30, 2009) seemed like the kind of a tale someone will write after, say, reading a gripping history book on how WWII was fought in Budapest (reading the author’s One Story interview, this was in fact the case). It was lifeless. There is a captivating array of details, yes, but the main character,

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-88676730042997784732010-06-12T12:29:00.004-04:002010-06-12T22:05:46.975-04:00

Sheila Schwartz’s “Finding Peace” (One Story 127, October 10, 2009) worked after page 21 (of 29). Before that, it ran into all sorts of trouble. Details were clumsily slipped in (something I’ve already mentioned with two previous stories in this One Story streak). It was obvious that we were being served the backstory in conspicuously planted morsels. Also, the opening was awful: “Why I am doing

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-66138761222346225592010-06-11T09:09:00.000-04:002010-06-11T09:09:50.819-04:00

Robert McCarthy’s “Stag” (One Story 126, Sept. 10, 2009) has a brisk and vivid scene, but overall it wades through a thick brew of symbolism and description. It’s a story of a father, Sean, who leaves his alcoholic wife, Gina, when their daughter Sienna is born. He was a heavy drinker himself, but he becomes more responsible now that a child is involved. Gina feels no such need to change. Sean

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-39459376010886758712010-06-10T08:11:00.000-04:002010-06-10T08:11:28.209-04:00

Jennifer Haigh’s “Desiderata” (One Story 125, August 30, 2009) deserves a very brief note. The story is about Joyce, a widow who gets by in the absence of Ed, her husband. Albert Chura, who worked as a janitor in the school where Ed was a principal, helps Joyce with random chores around the house. Albert asks Joyce for Ed’s old bicycle, and she grudgingly gives it away. While unpacking Ed’s

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-24419921616840506712010-06-09T09:07:00.000-04:002010-06-09T09:07:49.824-04:00

Nam Le’s “Meeting Elise” (One Story 93, June 30, 2007) is another oldie worth mentioning. I’ve discussed Nam Le’s fiction before, with a story I liked and a story I disliked. “Meeting Elise” stands in between. Henry Luff, the narrator, is a famous painter who fell for a nude model called Olivia. His wife ran away with their one-year-old daughter, Elise, to Russia. Luff lived with Olivia for years

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-38222005271176133022010-06-08T08:05:00.005-04:002010-06-10T17:22:38.867-04:00

Andrew Porter’s “Azul” (One Story 72, March 30, 2006) is a very good story. It was later published in Porter’s acclaimed short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, and it’s no surprise it was chosen as one of the 100 most distinguished stories of 2007 in the BASS 2007 volume. The story is narrated by Paul, a man who’s married to an English professor called Karen (she’s on her second

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-42229535493292687782010-06-07T13:58:00.002-04:002010-06-10T08:13:55.624-04:00

Let’s begin a trip through One Story stories with an oldie, published in 2003. I’ll leap up to the present shortly, after a couple other detours to the past. By the way, last year I published my first note on a One Story piece, here. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Transition to Glory” (One Story 27, September 30, 2003) is a story of an affair (“In her better moods, she liked that word, affair, liked

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-21899178527644059582010-06-07T12:38:00.000-04:002010-06-07T12:38:40.564-04:00

Hace unas semanas hubo en Puerto Rico un evento literario que se llamó el Festival de la Palabra. Participaron docenas de escritores de América Latina y España. Un portal del Grupo Editorial Norma recogió entrevistas a cuatro autores latinoamericanos: Santiago Gamboa, Pedro Mairal, Pilar Quintana e Iván Thays. El resultado es una tabla que permite comparar sus respuestas a preguntas como “¿Qué

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-53196021923413483092010-06-01T10:22:00.004-04:002010-06-01T13:17:09.480-04:00

De Animales domésticos (Norma, 2010; 190 pp.), el primer libro de cuentos de Antonio García Ángel, me gusta el desenfado con el que el autor navega por vidas obsesivamente nutridas de detalles, desde las técnicas para limpiar cubiertos de plata hasta un catálogo de juegos de PlayStation. El manejo de la cultura, tanto la popular como la “culta”, es un acierto. Ya habíamos encontrado algo de eso

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-45609373613426138532010-05-26T17:40:00.009-04:002010-05-26T22:54:25.061-04:00

Do you think writing is a matter of inspiration and intuition, that talent is what singlehandedly produces classics, that it is up to creative geniuses to forge fiction’s universes, and that a great work’s words are addressed to those readers smart and patient enough to grasp the true meaning that hasn’t been polluted by commercial concerns? If your answer is yes, then be aware that the author of

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-52160521673226957542010-05-20T12:49:00.003-04:002010-05-28T09:20:46.870-04:00

In keeping with this year’s interest in bestsellers, here is a brief comment on a novel from bestselling author John le Carré: The Little Drummer Girl (New York: Scribner [1983, 2004], 473 pp). Let’s start with the plot: Israeli intelligence officers enlist Charlie, a young, emotionally fragile British actress with radical political views, for a mission to bring down a known Palestinian terrorist

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-11844472512143140712010-05-18T12:42:00.003-04:002010-06-19T22:35:08.651-04:00

A hundred posts. This is post number 100, in fact. Is 100 a lot? (At the very least, that’s quite a few hours spent blogging.) Is 100 too little? (A post every five and a half days, more or less, over the past 18 months.) Too many or too few, it’s still a good chance to stop and think back about Vheissu. Hence the title of this post: the autobiography of a blog. It’ll be brief. Bear with me. I

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-34715683278749217262010-05-06T11:09:00.003-04:002010-05-10T13:40:55.965-04:00

I know it’s aged in the last few weeks (three generations or more in magazine shelf life), but the article by Ken Auletta called “Publish or Perish” (TNY, April 26, 2010) is certainly worth reading. The future of books appears even gloomier than I had thought, with many people just giving up on the printed tomes we’ve grown so accustomed to over the last hundreds of years. Add to that an economic

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-74124483027654293262010-04-30T11:13:00.002-04:002010-04-30T20:30:50.058-04:00

If you’ve gotten rejection letters, then the title of Jessica Page Morrell’s book may sound familiar: Thanks, but This Isn’t for Us. (Subtitle: A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected.) The book is meant for people who know that sting that comes with bland, generic rejection letters, and nevertheless want to keep going until they’ve reached publication (and beyond,

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-16039163201543882552010-04-28T11:10:00.001-04:002010-04-28T12:43:18.705-04:00

This is the fifth comment I’ve rapid-fired about New Yorker stories over the last few days. This time it’s about Junot Díaz’s “The Pura Principle” (TNY, Mar. 22, 2010). I had thought about publishing a single post, in which I’d refer briefly to each of the stories I’ve discussed. That was fitting, as not one of these stories seemed especially strong. Some, in fact, appeared particularly weak. I

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-25867369103497769042010-04-27T10:21:00.002-04:002010-04-27T10:25:17.694-04:00

Jennifer Egan’s “Ask Me I Care” (TNY, Mar. 8, 2010) is told by a high school girl who joins a hard rock music scene in 1979. Her name is Rhea, her best friend is Jocelyn, they have a rich acquaintance called Alice, and they all gravitate around a couple of men who backbone a rock band called the Flaming Dildos: the “magnetic” Scotty, who loves bearing his chest, and the “electric” Bennie Salazar,

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-46515513972183143252010-04-26T09:30:00.000-04:002010-04-26T09:30:37.665-04:00

Claire Keegan’s “Foster” (TNY, Feb. 15 & 22, 2010) tells the story of a young girl who is sent away over the summer to a relative’s home. Because her parents keep having children and they have run into economic problems, the girl’s father drops her off at the house of man called John Kinsella. It turns out that Kinsella and his wife recently lost a child, who drowned in a well; the girl finds out

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-12913038652759178112010-04-25T10:01:00.000-04:002010-04-25T10:01:51.128-04:00

Kevin Barry’s “Fjord of Killary” (TNY, Feb. 1, 2010) is a fast-paced tale about a poet who buys an old hotel in a remote corner of western Ireland. Locals gather to drink at the hotel bar, which is tended by the narrator in the evenings, but the customers constantly dismiss him and his urbane ways. The hotel is staffed by promiscuous and scowling Belarusians. The narrator is evidently in a

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-59177245857474421942010-04-24T12:03:00.001-04:002010-04-27T10:22:40.456-04:00

E. O. Wilson’s “Trailhead” (TNY, Jan. 25, 2010) is a very peculiar kind of story. It’s about ants. No overarching parallels with human beings, no allegories: just ants. We can presume it was drawn from Wilson’s forthcoming novel on the same subject. I’ll say this for “Trailhead”: it’s daring. It treats the exciting world of insects as fiction, and runs with it. The story is also instructive: you

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-79022773389767422512010-04-23T09:58:00.001-04:002010-04-23T09:59:35.034-04:00

There’s quite a few good stories in Hobart 10, which was a nice surprise, as this was my first Hobart. The contents of the volume are varied: it includes comics (all of them flimsy), short short stories (none worth commenting on, honestly), and short stories. Looked at from another angle, kudos to the staff for the publication itself, which was nice and robust, but there is some carelessness in

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-50325633953423253022010-04-22T18:43:00.002-04:002010-04-28T17:33:45.055-04:00

I used a short break from the hustle of everyday routines to pore over a heavy pile of unread New Yorkers. Flipping through almost ten of them back to back got me thinking about the magazine itself. Besides, the time to renew my subscription is coming up, so one of the main issues here was this: Should I renew it? I subscribed to The New Yorker almost a year ago. I celebrated it on the blog as

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-19016249399658946192010-04-07T20:53:00.002-04:002010-04-14T10:29:05.351-04:00

Is it just me? Why do I get the impression that almost every short story I read nowadays boils down to something like this? So I was walking around town the other day, doing what I generally do, when this quirky little thing happened. I know, I know, not a big deal, but it’s complex and symbolic deep down, when you come to think of it, especially when you come to think of something like that

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-81607621572141321072010-03-09T23:48:00.000-04:002010-03-09T23:48:07.452-04:00

Here’s a bit of good news: the literary magazine called Stone’s Throw just published its fourth issue. In it, a short (short) story of mine (called “A Good One”) was published; so was a poem of mine (called “Aleksandr,” and inspired by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). You can read them both by following this short bio of mine on the Contributors page. Enjoy!

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-75134086205647914062010-02-22T17:35:00.001-04:002010-04-25T10:13:05.876-04:00

I thought this piece in The Guardian was worth a post. It presents several decalogues (or partial decalogues) for writers, kicked off by Elmore Leonard's. Some are funny, some are trenchant, some are practical, others are whimsical. It's worth reading. You'll get nitpicky stuff (like avoid attaching adverbs to the verb said when writing dialogues, or avoid using then as a conjunction) to really

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-15765285949558786342010-02-21T10:40:00.001-04:002010-04-10T21:05:27.575-04:00

La artesanía del cuento. Manual de narrativa corta, de Francisco García-Moreno Barco (San Juan: Editorial Preámbulo, 358 pp.), es uno de los libros más largos que he visto sobre el tema de producir escritura creativa. Ni siquiera el temáticamente ambicioso manual del Gotham Writers’ Workshop alcanza las 300 páginas. Como puede esperarse por su extensión, el libro de García-Moreno es completo:

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-19008551987615165372010-02-18T08:44:00.001-04:002010-02-18T08:48:36.533-04:00

After reading John Sutherland’s Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press [2007], 127 pp.), I really did feel like I had a better sense of bestsellers: key names, characteristics, where they came from and where they are probably going. Everybody is familiar with bestsellers, of course, and has probably read a few. This book takes a closer look at this (rather recent)

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-58213106084941841422010-02-17T15:19:00.000-04:002010-02-17T15:19:34.114-04:00

Después de una mudanza, tres exámenes estandarizados y un fuerte caudal de trabajo, aprovecho un breve respiro para cambiar de tema un poco. Voy a ventilar el asombro (he escogido una palabra demasiado neutral) ante la despreocupación con la que uno encuentra una profusión de errores en el lenguaje diario, incluso en rincones que uno creería que los someten a un escrutinio más serio. ¿Acaso el

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-27937416084466366272010-01-25T03:07:00.000-04:002010-01-25T03:07:23.296-04:00

David Mack’s The 4400: Promises Broken (New York: Pocket Star [2009], 327 pp.) is much, much better than the previous volume in the series. In fact, the last hundred pages or so bolt you to your seat, forcing you to turn pages to catch up with the fast-paced action that somehow keeps several plotlines in order and that succeeds in presenting the information through various points of view. This

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-5627354243589186482010-01-24T09:53:00.002-04:002010-01-25T09:51:10.800-04:00

Fun, snappy, not very well written but readable. I got to Greg Cox’s The 4400: Welcome to Promise City (New York: Pocket Star Books [2009], 288 pp.) because of the TV series (of course), and what carried me through to the end was the eagerness to know what happened after the final episode ended. There are plenty of defects here, but the overriding concern is not purity of style, gracefulness of

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-65672948379726501322010-01-22T12:02:00.003-04:002010-01-22T18:03:21.488-04:00

Hay cosas buenas para decir sobre El infinito en la palma de la mano (Seix Barral, 2008, 237 pp.), de Gioconda Belli, pero principalmente hay que criticarlo. Lo digo porque tomó una idea muy fuerte (un recuento fresco y moderno de la historia de Adán y Eva) e hizo un esfuerzo decidido por desperdiciarla. Varias cosas al respecto. La prosa está llena de errores (cosas tan sencillas y evidentes

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-26950070973729983482010-01-13T22:24:00.001-04:002010-04-27T23:22:59.037-04:00

“Build your vocabulary to make yourself a better reader; choose simple words whenever possible to make yourself a better writer” (Bryan A. Garner). I couldn’t resist the temptation of sharing that sentence. It’s so brilliant, even more so in light of its simplicity. We (it can’t be just me) often turn that sickening desire to learn words into an obnoxious tendency to deploy them (especially if

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-27735259882832273252010-01-11T13:38:00.000-04:002010-01-11T13:38:03.857-04:00

Julian Barnes’s narrator in “Complicity” (The New Yorker, Oct. 19, 2009) is a man who recently got divorced and who tells the story in a chatty, freewheeling tone. Through a doctor friend of his, he meets a female doctor and a relationship may be hatching between them. The narrator wonders obsessively about her, focusing his curiosity on tactile impressions such as the kind of gloves she may

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-29596327405829685722010-01-09T10:25:00.001-04:002010-01-09T10:26:37.696-04:00

“‘I do fundamentally believe that publishing is not an expanding business,’ [Leslie Morgestein, a publishing executive at Alloy Entertainment] says. ‘It is contracting—even our corner of it [books for teens and tweens], which has been vibrant in the past few years. I don’t think long term there’s going to be sustainable growth there.’ As a result, the Alloy executives spend as much time thinking

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-66302057702752281292010-01-08T13:24:00.000-04:002010-01-08T13:24:45.994-04:00

In Jonathan Lethem’s “Procedure in Plain Air” (The New Yorker, Oct. 26, 2009), a man called Stevick watches outside a coffee shop as two workers in jumpsuits dig a hole in the street, cover it tightly with planks, and then lower a dark-skinned man inside. Some sense of duty awakens in Stevick, who asks the workers about the prisoner; they give him an umbrella to shield the man in the hole from

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-60957149005972174622010-01-07T12:05:00.002-04:002010-01-07T21:48:29.388-04:00

Marisa Silver's “Temporary” (The New Yorker, Sept. 28, 2009) seems to be a story about Vivian and Shelly: both are young and both live in downtown L.A.—that’s all they have in common. It’s really a story about the nervous and concerned Vivian, who was adopted by somewhat older, decent parents (they tell her she’s adopted when Vivian is a teenager and her mother appears to be in her deathbed).

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-75618276488500926612010-01-06T18:36:00.000-04:002010-01-06T18:36:32.977-04:00

Here’s what I plan to do with this blog during 2010. Plans don’t always match up with realities, but here it goes anyway. For one, I will still tackle short stories: Zoetrope, The New Yorker, One Story, McSweeney’s, short story collections, and so forth. I plan to write shorter comments, and probably more often than before (although the one-a-day rhythm I had last August is out of the question)

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-14989627445748830962009-12-15T22:19:00.004-04:002009-12-18T09:18:19.180-04:00

Empiezo por pedir perdón. Esta puede ser la última entrada del año, y todas las anteriores han procurado ser balanceadas. Incluso cuando un texto no me ha gustado en general, he buscado señalar aspectos puntuales que se destaquen. No tengo ese propósito con esta entrada. El problema es que con “El metro llano” no pude encontrar suficientes elementos para construir un comentario balanceado. De

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-51382001639592265342009-10-31T12:26:00.002-04:002010-06-13T08:35:26.483-04:00

Paul Theroux’s “The Lower River” (published by The New Yorker last month) is a great story. Its full text is available here. Okay, so it’s a bit uneven. It seemed to miss a step when it started, but then it catches on and it keeps you hooked until the very end—when it offers no easy solutions, psychological or otherwise. More on this in a minute. “The Lower River” is a story about an elderly

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-73850218646116707772009-10-30T23:02:00.001-04:002010-02-17T18:18:17.317-04:00

[Esta entrada ha sido temporalmente retirada del blog.]

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-21371883553707415292009-10-29T15:38:00.000-04:002010-06-13T08:34:44.933-04:00

This year’s volume of The Best American Short Stories is off to a dour start. The series editor’s Foreword tells us that, “[a]t this time, all sorts of publishing seem destined to disappear, or at least exit from this challenging time enormously scathed. I have talked with editors who claim that literature is dead” (p. ix). Then we get this edition’s editor, Alice Sebold, elaborating further in

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-3783917123227441982009-10-23T12:48:00.000-04:002009-10-23T12:48:39.461-04:00

Hace un tiempo alguien me dijo que evitaba los eventos de escritores, porque prefería leer a los escritores y no tener que conocerlos. Quien me lo dijo es un escritor. Ayer precisamente tuve la oportunidad de comprobarlo. Desde hace varios meses no asistía a eventos de escritores: tal vez el último fue la terrorífica conferencia en la que todos los miembros del público resultaron ser poetas

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-17337540414733118912009-10-21T23:56:00.004-04:002010-06-10T08:26:03.080-04:00

Lydia Peelle first published the story “Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing” in One Story back in 2007. The story was picked up by Pushcart Prize XXXII. It then became the title story in Peelle’s debut short story collection, published this year by HarperCollins; it’s gotten good reviews. Peelle was recently named one of the five writers under 35 by the National Book Award (a distinction

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-36669310290759008042009-10-16T09:17:00.002-04:002009-10-16T09:22:00.352-04:00

It was going to be another of those arugula and balsamic dinners with a troop of overworked Fiji-drinking lawyers and CPAs who are into finance and travel to Caribbean islands and talk way too much about both those things. There would be evil eyes cast about to doom new couples put together from the remains of old couples: and so, say, Tricia would munch on her feta cheese while giving foul looks

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-22924099924628803342009-10-14T17:02:00.002-04:002010-06-10T08:23:07.959-04:00

The New Yorker and Zoetrope are up there among the most prestigious venues for short stories, and actor and writer Sam Shepard published something on both, a few weeks apart. So why not comment on both stories at once? I read “Land of the Living” first. The New Yorker has it on its website, here. It’s a simple enough story about a family (mother, father, two kids) from Minnesota that goes on

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-41167682932465941452009-10-09T08:47:00.002-04:002010-06-13T08:37:35.307-04:00

I’m not exactly a fan of vampire literature. But, heck, so many people are these days that it’s up there as a major cultural phenomenon. The bookstore I visit most frequently has a whole flank that houses vampire books (of course, Stephanie Meyer has her own glimmering niche); people write down their name and number on pads, waiting to be called when the books they’re craving get in. Writers have

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-1834727171043216582009-10-08T19:25:00.004-04:002009-10-09T15:33:55.832-04:00

I just discovered Joyland, a short fiction magazine with an interesting partition: they’ve splintered the magazine into cities, and each city has its own editor and manages its own submissions (submissions must come from people who’ve lived in the city, but the stories don’t need to be set in the city). It’s an interesting concept. Well, on my first promenade through Joyland, I chanced upon

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-14075712179909961172009-10-08T00:32:00.003-04:002010-06-10T08:19:45.941-04:00

Hace poco me referí a un experimento con un puñado de cuentos de Cortázar y de García Márquez. Hoy vuelvo a Cortázar. La razón es que, con ocasión de un cuento reciente, alguien me recomendó muy enfáticamente “El perseguidor”. Es difícil desatender las sugerencias hechas con tanto ímpetu, así que hoy aproveché para cazar y leer el cuento de Cortázar. Lo leí en esta antología; descubrí en Internet

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-29581135426215850362009-10-06T13:15:00.004-04:002009-10-06T22:38:47.444-04:00

Plot is one of those things readers of fiction are very familiar with. It’s probably what got us to read fiction in the first place. Besides, everyone with a sense of sequence will have a sense of plot, so it’s not just something habitual readers of fiction will feel close to home. Here’s a fairly simple definition: according to the Norton Introduction to Fiction, the plot is “the arrangement

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-8105558434492725732009-10-01T23:40:00.003-04:002010-06-10T08:17:25.383-04:00

Un escritor me contó hace poco que fue jurado en un concurso de libros de cuentos. Eran cinco jurados, y participaron más de 150 libros. Cada jurado recibió unos 30 libros, y en una semana tenía que escoger cinco. Y esta fue su confesión honesta: dado que eran 30 libros de más o menos 200 páginas cada uno, era imposible leerlos todos en una semana; por lo tanto, si había alguna frase desastrosa

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-85237285640132515052009-09-30T20:46:00.003-04:002010-06-13T08:35:09.459-04:00

When it was first published (by The New Yorker back in 1948), Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” received a lot of attention. The full text is available online, here, where it tops off the site’s list of “Twenty Great American Short Stories.” I read it in an anthology (Norton Anthology of Short Fiction). All of this speaks highly of the story’s enduring acclaim. However, I don’t think it’s aged well

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-71096202053212399252009-09-29T13:35:00.005-04:002009-09-29T22:36:32.682-04:00

El celular de Elsa no paraba de vibrar. El bolso entero se sacudía contra el espaldar del asiento. Ella descolgó el bolso del espaldar y lo tiró al piso, pero cayó contra una de las patas de la mesa. Así que en intervalos de cuatro segundos los vasos de agua sobre la mesa se arrugaban en anillos concéntricos. El gerente no se dio cuenta, aunque unos cinco subgerentes miraron a Elsa sin paciencia.

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-13061714759648658332009-09-28T23:36:00.004-04:002009-09-28T23:42:18.620-04:00

“Most dictionaries’ usage notes for if are long and involved; it might be English’s hardest conjunction. From experience born of repeated personal humiliation, I can tell you that there are two main ways to mess up with if and make your writing look weak. The first is to use if for whether. They are not synonyms—if is used to express a conditional, whether to introduce alternative possibilities.

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-15483624239296346352009-09-25T00:15:00.004-04:002009-09-25T00:22:18.504-04:00

“Las novelas —aunque no todas— venden más; los cuentos —aunque con excepciones— venden menos. ¿Son acaso por eso mejores las novelas? ¿Es justo seguir presentando como argumento literario lo que es una simple jerarquía comercial? Muchos de los abajo firmantes no sólo no nos oponemos a las novelas, sino que además las hemos escrito y publicado. Y a pesar de eso, o quizá por eso mismo, quisiéramos

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-68328687813522249862009-09-23T22:59:00.003-04:002009-09-23T23:07:53.658-04:00

“el elemento que más ha coadyuvado a establecer ese espíritu de cuerpo entre los neopoliciacos iberoamericanos ha sido una común postura estética que de algún modo los define y los caracteriza a todos: la de saberse contadores de historias, creadores de fábulas sobre la sociedad contemporánea y la de trabajar con la intención de romper los elitistas códigos de la literatura escrita para otros

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-52461316677883259402009-09-23T08:57:00.004-04:002010-06-10T08:19:58.660-04:00

Una amiga, muy buena lectora, me dijo que le había pasado algo curioso con Cortázar: todo lo de Cortázar que leyó en su adolescencia le encantó; todo lo que ha releído ahora, unos años después, la ha desencantado. Había pasado un tiempo desde que leí a Cortázar, así que me propuse probar esto conmigo mismo. Me senté con un puñado de sus cuentos. Indudablemente, los textos son de un gran

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-72040551147688642112009-09-22T15:27:00.004-04:002009-09-22T15:34:06.540-04:00

Dinner went well. She half-expected it wouldn’t. And that was so her: half-expecting, quarter-knowing, sixth-sure. That statistical training of hers was a dangerous match to her pessimism.Admittedly, though, there were good reasons to expect a total failure that night. These men, these upper management types who used MBA programs as nude camping sites, they always had a way of hitting on her that

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-87783297150346735692009-09-21T12:50:00.003-04:002010-06-10T08:15:17.485-04:00

Por una serie de recomendaciones indirectas llegué hace poco a Ajuar funerario, del peruano Fernando Iwasaki (Madrid: Páginas de Espuma [2004], 126 pp.). (El texto completo, en un formato distinto al publicado, está aquí). Ajuar funerario es un libro de micronarrativa: en 109 páginas de texto se acomodan 89 microrrelatos, ninguno de ellos de una extensión superior a las dos páginas, algunos de

F. Escobarnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7524231717660808117.post-1503762192431558252009-09-17T10:04:00.003-04:002010-06-10T08:20:54.276-04:00

Just a quick note to complete unfinished business: when I posted some comments on McSweeney’s 31, I mentioned it came with a “summertime sampler.” I said I’d probably talk about this sampler later. So here’s later. The sampler is 16 tabloid-sized pages long, and it includes samples from three novels published by McSweeney’s: Bill Cotter’s Fever Chart, Jessica Anthony’s The Convalescent, and

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