If This Gets Out, I Won't Have a Job

The semester starts in ten days, and I'll be back in the classroom teaching Writing Fiction and a great-books-style class called Homer to the Renaissance. As always, the project of the creative writing class is a little curious to me, and here's Katharine Anne Porter, musing on one of the central problems:

“Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned, and learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself… The good artist is first a good workman…”

Maybe. I think what can be taught is how to read like a writer. In the end, maybe that's what the workshop is for.

(quote noticed over at Maud Newton's blog)

More Kafka

So a trove (maybe) of Kafka's papers are currently being held by the 74-year-old cat-lady daughter of Max Brod in Tel Aviv. She holds onto them while everyone argues about how Jewish Kafka was and how this affects where his papers should go. I mean, of course. Nothing related to Kafka's legacy can be normal, right? Hava Hoffe, give up the papers!

For Me, It's All About Lynda Carter

But there's also a comic, and Topless Robot has a loving, exasperated list of 10 Reasons No One Cares About Wonder Woman.



Me, I care.

A Question for the Technologically Savvy

Can anyone tell me why this blog looks so weird in IE and so normal in every other browser?

Not Your Grandfather's Kafka

Apparently the time has come for Franz Kafka to be posthumously reinvented as an erotically supercharged bon vivant instead of the monastic depressive we all assumed we knew. What with this Times piece about scholarly interest in his pornography collection, and this (very fine) Telegraph-by-way-of-NYRB essay by Zadie Smith about what really happens if you pay attention when you read Kafka, a new picture is emerging. I like this new guy better than the old one; it's nice to know that you don't have to be utterly oppressed and dysfunctional to be a great writer.

Winchester Journal Cover

I just got a cover treatment in the mail, and it looks mighty cool. Soon as it's final, I'll post it here. The book is going through a last round of revisions after comments from Eric and some of the show's writers, and then it's off to the printer. It's been a lot of fun to work on...and the illustrations are going to be great, too.

Vertigopedia Panel at Comic-Con

...is recapped at Comic Book Resources, in an article by David Moran. Read it here.

Sample Comic-Con Travel Itinerary

All Times Local

7/23, 2pm: Say bye to wife and kids at Portland, Maine, airport.
7/23, 3:30pm: Learn that flight from Portland will miss connection in Philadelphia. Ask about options. Discover that the only way to get to San Diego is to drive to Boston and take flight connecting through Las Vegas. Receive assurances from US Airways personnel that Logan Airport is free of delays.
7/23, 4:30pm: Leave Portland.
7/23, 6:30pm: Arrive Logan Airport. Discover that flight from Boston to Las Vegas, scheduled for 7:45 departure, is now departing 9:15.
7/23, 9:15pm: Take off from Logan. Nap in between bouts of annoyance at possibility that connection in Las Vegas will be missed. Receive assurances from US Airways personnel that connection in Las Vegas will no way, no how be missed.
7/23, 11:40pm: On final approach to Las Vegas, experience a Murphy's Law moment as a passenger flips out on the plane. Note with interest that flight attendants really do ask at moments such as these whether there are doctors on the plane.
7/23, 11:59pm: Sit on plane as EMTs treat passenger for unspecified illness. Miss connecting flight to Las Vegas as a result of treatment.
7/24, 1:30am: Speak to US Airways personnel. Learn that there are no more flights to San Diego, and that all flights to San Diego the next day are full. Briefly indulge antisocial fantasies.
7/24, 2:00am: Rent car, hit I-15. Drive across the desert in the middle of the night.
7/24, 4:00am: Pass through Barstow. Develop strong opinion that everyone should drive through Barstow at 4am at least once.
7/24, 5:30am: See light in the sky over the San Bernardino Mountains as traffic begins to thicken through Orange County. Note that 85mph doesn't seem as fast when everyone else is doing it, too.
7/24, 6:30am: Drop car at San Diego airport. Take cab to hotel. Inform mom and wife of night's activities. Experience puzzlement when they do not understand or endorse choices made ca. 2:00am. Look around. It's morning in San Diego.

A New Web Site

Is in the works. It is

alexanderirvine.net

Currently there is a placeholder there, but great things are in the works. Update links etc. accordingly, and thanks to t. for the design.

Buyout

My next novel, Buyout, the last sentences of which I am drafting more or less now, is already listed on Amazon even though it doesn't come out until March. Preorder it now, and then when you've forgotten all about it, the book will show up and pleasantly surprise you.

The book is a near-future noir with murders, skullduggery, and some thoughts about what an information society and an overtaxed ecosystem mean for the value (monetary and otherwise) of human life. I'm still formulating the perfect one-sentence encapsulation.

Edit: here's the cover!