Russell Banks’ Descriptions and “Try Harder”
I’m reading the new Russell Banks’ novel, Lost Memory of Skin, and I’m pretty enthralled with it. I’ll review it here when I’ve finished it. It’s about a young man known as The Kid who
READ MOREI’m reading the new Russell Banks’ novel, Lost Memory of Skin, and I’m pretty enthralled with it. I’ll review it here when I’ve finished it. It’s about a young man known as The Kid who
READ MOREI posted earlier on the brilliant, beautiful novel The Goldfinch. I had to do so in broad swaths, given how dense in character and plot the novel is, just to give you a taste of
READ MOREI live in fear of weak specification. I consider it the eighth deadly sin: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony and weak specification. I’m guilty of it, I admit. I’m only human, or, some
READ MOREThis week in the online memoir course I’m teaching, the students are working on characterization, both their own and that of others. We’re reading a chapter in Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington called “Writing
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