[In which I elaborate on an earlier post, "Slow Writing?"] In thinking about my earlier contention that writing ought to be slow, I decided to examine my own process. Specifically, I wondered if I, a man with two books coming out this year, was living up to my own lofty standards. I thus constructed a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Mary Caponegro’
How I Wrote Certain of My Books
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Achilles and the tortoise, All Fall Down, Critique of Pure Reason, Everything Ravaged Everything Burned, fun with numbers, How They Were Found, Mary Caponegro, Matt Bell, Noemi Press, Sarah Rose Etter, Slow Writing, statistics, Tongue Party, Wells Tower, Zeno on February 17, 2012 | 5 Comments »
Soda Series: Recap of Mary Caponegro, Tim Horvath, and Gary Lutz and Preview of John Domini, Claire Donato, and Christine Schutt on September 25th
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christine Schutt, claire donato, Gary Lutz, Gary Lutz Interview, John Domini, Mary Caponegro, Soda Series, Tim Horvath interview on September 15, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Special Bastille Day Soda Series this Thursday July 14th
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bastille Day 2011, Gary Lutz, Mary Caponegro, The Believer, Tim Horvath on July 11, 2011 | 7 Comments »
Join us for our special Bastille Day edition with Mary Caponegro, Tim Horvath, and Gary Lutz. Soda Series Facebook RSVP Mary Caponegro is the author of the short story collections Tales from the Next Village, The Star Cafe, Five Doubts, The Complexities of Intimacy, and All Fall Down. She is the Richard B. Fisher Family [...]
Reading Caponegro’s The Complexities of Intimacy: “The Son’s Burden”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Mary Caponegro, The Complexities of Intimacy, The Son's Burden on February 28, 2011 | 5 Comments »
This 113-page novella is the centerpiece of Caponegro’s book of stories. As in the first stories (articles here, here and here), it again presents a family, but a family fragmented by misconceptions and hatred. After a prelude, most of the work takes place on New Year’s Eve and gives off the air of Long Day’s [...]
Reading Caponegro’s The Complexities of Intimacy: “The Father’s Blessing”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged “The Father’s Blessing”, Big Other, John Madera, Mary Caponegro, The Complexities of Intimacy on February 18, 2011 | 10 Comments »
“The Father’s Blessing” is the longest story in The Complexities of Intimacy so far, and it’s a major comedic turn, albeit a dark one. Whereas the first two stories are told from the point of view of a daughter and a mother, respectively, the third (told from the perspective of a priest, an unreliable narrator [...]
Reading Caponegro: “The Mother’s Mirror”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Mary Caponegro, The Complexities of Intimacy on February 12, 2011 | 15 Comments »
The more I delve into Caponegro’s art, the more I see an anthropologist at work–a Joycean scientist who curls bright, unexpected words (like “obnubilating”) around common and uncommon questions of heritage, soul and civilization. Anthropologist but also philosopher–a Plato with the vocabulary of Keats. Consider this sentence of “The Mother’s Mirror,” a story of a [...]
Reading Caponegro: “The Daughter’s Lamentation”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Giotto, Lamenatation, Mary Caponegro, The Complexities of Intimacy on February 10, 2011 | 19 Comments »
The first story in Mary Caponegro’s book we are reading for February is “The Daughter’s Lamentation.” Caponegro follows the word to its root, as this “story” is more lamentation; that is a song, poem or piece of music that laments–expresses grief or regret. The daughter, unnamed, is a women who has returned to her family [...]
February’s Big Other Book Club – Mary Caponegro
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Mary Caponegro, The Complexities of Intimacy on February 2, 2011 | 9 Comments »
This month we will be reading The Complexities of Intimacy by Mary Caponegro. It’s a book of 4 short stories and a novella. I will be posting on each story. Let’s try to do the first three short stories in the next ten days. The 120-page novella we can examine in the second half of [...]
Reminders: Soda Series and Big Other reading in Brooklyn
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ana Božičević, and Edward Mullany, David Peak, Dawn Raffel, Mary Caponegro, Robert Lopez on May 17, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Tonight the first Soda Series: Writers in Conversation will take place at Soda Bar with Dawn Raffel, David Peak, Ana Božičević and Edward Mullany reading and conversing with you, the audience. On Monday June 14th at Pacific Standard Bar in Brooklyn, a Big Other extravaganza will be taking place with games, prizes, raffles, music and [...]
Ringing in the New
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Son's Burden, Mary Caponegro, Ring in the new on December 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I can’t keep gushing about Mary Caponegro. A few days ago, I found this timely passage from her novella A Son’s Burden which is narrated by Thomas Smalldridge, an “ever-aspiring” inventor. The story is basically a conversation between him and his nutty family, and it once again displays Caponegro’s psychological acuity as well as her [...]
Mary Caponegro
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged All Fall Down, Mary Caponegro, Star Café on December 26, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Mary Caponegro’s All Fall Down, her latest collection of stories and novellas, was, for me, one of 2009′s most powerful works. It is often baroque, expansively philosophical, and darkly comic. Caponegro is a virtuoso. Not having read any of her earlier books, I recently picked up her first book, Star Café. It’s such a strong [...]
&Now Conference: A Conference of Innovate Writing & the Literary Arts
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged &Now Conference 2009, A D Jameson, Bill Walsh, Blake Butler, Brian Evenson, Cara Benson, Christina Milletti, Dave Kress, Davis Schneiderman, Dimitri Anastasopoulos, Donald Breckenridge, Donald Breckinridge, J. A. Tyler, James Yeh, Joanna Howard, John Dermot Woods, Josh Maday, Kendra Grant Malone, Kim Chinquee, Lance Olsen, Lily Hoang, Mary Caponegro, Matt Bell, Matt Kirkpatrick, Pedro Ponce, Rikki Ducornet, Ryan Call, Shelly Jackson, Steve Katz, Steve Tomasula, Tina May Hall on October 21, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I went to the &Now Conference held in Buffalo, New York, October 14-17, and enjoyed it on a number of levels. First of all, it was great to cross that cold digital divide and finally meet so many people that I’ve been corresponding and/or working with, and/or reading their work for a while, people like [...]
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Announcing the Book Club Schedule!
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, Big Other, C, Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, Djuna Barnes, Gilgamesh, Gordon Lish, Helen Vendler, John Barth, John Gardner, John Hawkes, John Maier, Lyn Hejinian, Manuel Puig, Mary Caponegro, Mo Yan, My Life, Nightwood, Peru, Searches and Seizures: 3 Novellas, Stanley Elkin, The Complexities of Intimacy, The Sotweed Factor, Tom McCarthy, Travesty on December 26, 2010 | 9 Comments »
The votes are in, and the winner of the poll for the first book to be discussed in the Big Other Book Club is Tom McCarthy’s C. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, hailed by many and knocked by maybe even more, McCarthy describes the book as dealing with technology and mourning. I’m excited to have, as [...]
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