April in Paris Goes Fourth

As long as I'm still in the 2010 catch-up mood, I noticed this in the queue: Number four in a series of thoughts and meditations on the words of some of my favorite writers from their interviews in The Paris Review.

Bow your heads as we read from St. Raymond's epistle...

The fiction I'm most interested in has lines of reference to the real world. None of my stories really happened, of course. But there's always something, some element, something said to me or that I witnessed, that may be the starting place. Here's an example: “That's the last Christmas you'll ever ruin for us!” I was drunk when I heard that, but I remembered it. And later, much later, when I was sober, using only that one line and other things I imagined, imagined so accurately that they could have happened, I made a story—“A Serious Talk.” But the fiction I'm most interested in, whether it's Tolstoy's fiction, Chekhov, Barry Hannah, Richard Ford, Hemingway, Isaac Babel, Ann Beattie, or Anne Tyler, strikes me as autobiographical to some extent.

The Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 76, Raymond Carver

Philcon, Part the Third

Yes, yes, Philcon was a month ago and by this point there isn't too much to do except give a panel report.  Call it part of my year-end catchup.

I attended a lot of the same panels as Carrie and her general views about the con in her write-up would read more or less the same as mine.  But I do have pictures.

I remember it juuuust like it was yesterday...

Philcon, Part the Second

Forgive me Father, for it has been nigh on three weeks since I should've posted this.

So, in this part of my trip down Philcon memory lane, I'm going to focus on the things I gleaned from Peter S. Beagle's GOH speech based on my week-old memory of the event, which is fuzzy from the constant squee of that day.

He basically went the "advice to aspiring writers" route.  I had no complaints.  And through his speech, I confirmed that he was yet another example of a writer whose work I admire who has similar views about writing as I.

The main points of his speech were, as I remember them...