Comments on: Kathleen Rooney & Writers’ Loyalties

By: A D Jameson

A D Jameson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:01:07 +0000

Insider novels push the envelope

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-04-02-romans-a-clef-main_N.htm

By: paula

paula — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:38:46 +0000

I don’t mean that question as a put down at all- I admire all sorts of risks. That thought came to my mind and I put it out there.

By: A D Jameson

A D Jameson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:52:58 +0000

Everybody everywhere has at some point done something that would make it possible for them to lose their job. Even if it’s only coming in late more than once. Quick vote: who checks their personal email while at work? Or leaves early? Or steals office supplies? And so on.

It’s just like how everybody everywhere breaks laws all the time. People speed, run stop signs, jaywalk, smoke marijuana. Etc.

More relevant to Kathleen’s situation: politicians run their mouths all the time, violating nondisclosure agreements, when they think they’re in private. hell, a lot of them violate their nondisclosure agreements to journalists, as leaks, in exchange for puff pieces and acclaim. Etc.

Society for the most part tolerates these kinds of things until circumstances change, for whatever reason, and then suddenly you’re out in the cold, in trouble for what you’ve done, or have been doing.

Then, most of the people around you snicker and ogle, and pretend that they’ve never done anything like it themselves.

By: A D Jameson

A D Jameson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:46:51 +0000

People are jerks.

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:08:27 +0000

Oh God, totally.

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:23:29 +0000

I wondered that too, Paula. She’s so friggin smart, it’s hard for me to imagine the thought never crossed her mind. She has said she will probably write more about this eventually.

But she has also said that the Chicago office had a very different vibe than Washington, that they worked hard but it was a much looser, more honest, less by-the-book-type environment. Everybody knew she was a writer, came to her readings, were very supportive until suddenly they weren’t, etc.

By: Tim Jones-Yelvington

Tim Jones-Yelvington — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:20:17 +0000

She is. Essays and nonfiction came later for her. …She had to teach a creative nonfiction course somewhere and became more interested in the form while preparing.

Her relationship to poetry and language are all over the essays, both in terms of content (she references particular poets a lot and uses their words to shape the essays) and her own prose, which is not heavily stylized or anything — not anything like what that term “lyrical essay” makes me imagine (I haven’t actually read any “lyrical essays,” so I might be imagining wrong), but in a much more subtle way, it’s clear you’re reading somebody who chooses words incredibly deliberately. Her sentences are deceptively simple such that I’m not sure more shallow readers fully realize how masterful her use of language is.

By: paula

paula — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:47:10 +0000

I wonder is she was aware that she risked losing her job by writing about it and decided to do it anyway.

By: david e

david e — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:17:59 +0000

I was BUMMED reading about it in the Washington Post (“Style” section) yesterday…hadn’t heard about it until that point. They had it under “Another Page Scandal” (a tenuous reference to that page scandal a few years ago, the one with the Congressman from Florida and young pages).

I remain bummed I didn’t get to see her and Kyle read last summer.

By: darby

darby — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:52:14 +0000

i always thought she was a poet