John Crowley's LJ (RSS Feed)
03-16-2008, 02:32 AM
I said in a previous post that "Gorey's very early work, The Unstrung Harp; or, Mr Earbrass Writes a Novel, is, as far as I'm concerned, the very best and most exact description of the process of writing and publishing a work of fiction ever written -- though I have not read them all, and competing suggestions are welcome."
I just thought of another, in another universe entirely. I believe it was a novel by the African American writer John A. Williams, and I'd have said it was his best-known, The Man who Cried I Am. There is a wonderful passage in the book (this one or whichever one it was) where a youn black writer determines to write a book, and gets a cheap Harlem apartment, and a bag of beans and a bag of coffee and a bag of rice, and settles in to write; he chroncles how with one ham hock he flavors the beans he cooks, then carefully removes and saves the hamhock to flavor the next batch. THe rules of poverty eating and older black wisdom applied to getting writing done on no endowment and no grant. If I could find the piece again I'd give it to my students to read. Which I guess would be like telling them how I walked to school barefoot carrying my shoes, to save the leather. Uphill. Both ways.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/82154.html)
I just thought of another, in another universe entirely. I believe it was a novel by the African American writer John A. Williams, and I'd have said it was his best-known, The Man who Cried I Am. There is a wonderful passage in the book (this one or whichever one it was) where a youn black writer determines to write a book, and gets a cheap Harlem apartment, and a bag of beans and a bag of coffee and a bag of rice, and settles in to write; he chroncles how with one ham hock he flavors the beans he cooks, then carefully removes and saves the hamhock to flavor the next batch. THe rules of poverty eating and older black wisdom applied to getting writing done on no endowment and no grant. If I could find the piece again I'd give it to my students to read. Which I guess would be like telling them how I walked to school barefoot carrying my shoes, to save the leather. Uphill. Both ways.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/82154.html)