I've vacillated between admiring her as a professional, competent writer of well-modulated fiction to dismissing her as a professional, competent bore. Reading The New Yorker Stories in January didn't help; all those damn things blurred. I still love things like "A Vintage Thunderbird" and "Secrets and Surprises" though.
I'd also recommend Chilly Scenes of Winter, adapted into a pretty good movie starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard.
― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 March 2011 15:41 (fourteen years ago)
yeah i was reading the what was mine collection earlier this year but stopped cuz they all were blending together. i still have a few other collections on my shelf i think that i all found at a book sale.
id like to read chilly scenes tho; ive seen the movie and remember feeling at the time like i needed more depth & detail
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:10 (fourteen years ago)
I was reading What Was Mine yesterday! The one that stood out was one about a man's tortured relationship with the stepfather he'd grown up calling his uncle.
― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:14 (fourteen years ago)
hmm i may've stopped prior to getting to that one, doesnt ring a bell
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:19 (fourteen years ago)
She actually has a pretty unprofessional writing process. She writes all in one sitting with almost no premeditation, and then she doesn't revise.
― bamcquern, Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:21 (fourteen years ago)
she finished CSOW in two weeks!
― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:22 (fourteen years ago)
Exactly, and she finishes her stories in two or three hours.
― bamcquern, Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:28 (fourteen years ago)
I read her recent novella Walks with Men, set in NYC in the 1980s. Kept me engaged, sentence by sentence, while reading, but I've forgotten it now except for the memory of the pleasure of its best parts.
― James Woods, Hysterical Realism (Eazy), Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:46 (fourteen years ago)
omigod I DID read that a couple of months ago; it evaporated completely.
― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 March 2011 16:51 (fourteen years ago)
ditto
― the most cuddlesome bug that ever was borned (James Morrison), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 02:42 (fourteen years ago)
I read the Beattie interview in the current Paris Review tonight--not bad.
― James Woods, Hysterical Realism (Eazy), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 05:28 (fourteen years ago)
I'm reading that today. Also reading: her brittle Bret Easton Ellis-esque eighties novel Love Always.
― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 30 March 2011 10:58 (fourteen years ago)
feel like a lot of people writing short stories for, like, the last 20+ years in the u.s. owe ann some money.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 30 March 2011 14:37 (fourteen years ago)
or the last 30 years even. her and anne tyler. all the ann(e)s.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 30 March 2011 14:39 (fourteen years ago)
New Yorker tome is fucking with me in some ways
― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Monday, 12 January 2015 03:16 (eleven years ago)
The next year or two is just gonna be me buying her books used and reading everything she's done
― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 8 November 2015 01:01 (ten years ago)
Another You is a fantastic downer
― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 8 November 2015 01:02 (ten years ago)