Thursday, February 3, 2011

More fun things

My interview at The Book Cave podcast is available here. I have little memory of recording this, as I was going on several nights of too little sleep in the midst of many days of grades and comments.

The online image for the current issue of If, the Russian science fiction magazine, is here. I have no idea what they mean in their reference to the Old Man's "Russian namesake" (or, as my student from Ukraine termed it, his "counterpart"). What did I stumble into in this story? I suppose I could send a note to the editor and get back to y'all.

Finished Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone. Marvelous story, marvelously told; I'd certainly read more by him. I have no idea what was going on with the "Fist of Gods"—apparently some kind of old Ozark-y religion . . . ? I recall from Chris Offutt's short stories a rampant supernaturalism among his "backwoods" folks, but this seemed of a different order and bound up with a mysterious history of displacement and warfare. Aside from those odd elements . . . well, the story still was odd, with families all making meth and mischief. A few times, I thought the protagonist's voice slipped (I could never hear her saying "man" in the way Woodrell wanted me to hear it, for example), but the character was vivid.

4 comments:

Elizabeth Preston said...

Gosh, what a stunning photograph of Lake Michigan.

William Preston said...

I had one of my stringers take it.

Julien said...

Before listening to this new BookCave interview, just want to make sure: no spoiler in it ? Listened to the first one, was really nice!

William Preston said...

Julien,
I do read from the first page, and I talk about working to find a structure for the story, but aside from that, I don't think I said anything about the story's content. I'm pretty sure--as I realized afterward--no one even commented on the plot. One interviewer brought up a passing comment one character made, but it's not actually important.