Year in Review (2009)

What stats do I have on the year? These are just randomly put together from my notes... no sense in being organized about it 2 hours before new years...

NUMBERS

BOOKS/NOVELS READ (excludes poetry collections and, of course, short stories & essays unless I read the collection in its entirety): 44 (average of 221 pages per week)

MOVIES WATCHED (for first time (includes PBS documentaries)): 38

PLACES STAYED FOR MORE THAN A WEEK: 4 (NYC, NJ, Blacksburg, Charlottesville)

PAGES READ IN DICTIONARY: 618 (nearly letter F)

STORIES I WORKED ON THIS SEMESTER (includes only stories with working titles... no matter how long or short or failed): 20

GREATEST NUMBER OF DRAFTS FOR ONE STORY: 21 (and counting)


FAVORITES (only includes ones I read/saw for first time this year)

NOVEL: (1) Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov, (2) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

SHORT STORY: My First Fee by Issac Babel or For Esme -- With Love & Squalor by JD Salinger or Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff

MUSICAL ARTIST / BAND: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Stripes

SONG: Skinny Love by Bon Iver

NEWISH MOVIE: Rachel Getting Married

OLDISH MOVIE: Rebel Without a Cause, Hamlet (1996), or A Streetcar Named Desire

compare & contrast

“But what, at least in modern times, I think one most recurrently hears about the curiously-productive-though-ailing poet or painter is that he is invariably a kind of super-size but unmistakably ‘classical’ neurotic, an aberrant who only occasionally, and never deeply, wishes to surrender his aberration." -- J.D. Salinger, "Seymour: An Introduction"

“People speak of the material flames of hell. I do not explore this mystery, and I fear it, but I think that if there were material flames, truly people would be glad to have them, for, as I fancy, in material torment they might forget, at least for a moment, their far more terrible spiritual torment. And yet it is impossible to take this spiritual torment from them, for this torment is not external but is within them. And were it possible to take it from them, then, I think, their unhappiness would be even greater because of it.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

oh, oh, maria, i have a good idea! why don't you write another draft of your story? i bet it will be better than the other 21 drafts.

50 Short Stories

Here are the latest 50 short stories I have read or re-read.

* Love
** Love Love

1. The Dead - James Joyce
2. The Tattooer - Tanizaki
3. Portrait of Shunkin - Tanizaki
4. Camp Cataract - Jane Bowles
5. Lichen - Alice Munroe
6. How to Become a Writer - Loorie Moore
7. Walkers Brother Cowboy - Alice Munroe
8. Bullet in the Brain - Tobias Wolff **
9. A Christmas Memory - Truman Capote **
10. The Killers - Hemingway
11. A&P - John Updike *
12. You Were Perfectly Fine - Dorthy Parker
13. Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut *
14. The Cathedral - Raymond Carver *
15. Adams - George Saunders *
16. The Girl on the Fridge (etc) - Etgar Keret
17. My First Fee - Issac Babel **
18. I Bought a Little City - Donald Barthelme
19. A Summer's Reading - Bernard Malamud
20. Guy de Maupassant - Isaac Babel *
21. We Didn't - Stuart Dybek *
22. Netherlands in Water - Jim Shepard
23. Prelude - Katherine Mansfield
24. Daughters of the Late Colonel - Katherine Mansfield
25. The Snow Queen - H. C. Anderson
26. Never Marry a Mexican - Sandra Cisneros
27. Goodbye, My Brother - Cheever **
28. Torch Song - Cheever
29. The Sandman - ETA Hoffman *
30. The Use of Force - WC Williams
31. The Daisy Dolls - Hernandez *
32. Sonny's Blues - James Baldwin **
33. Barn Burning - William Faulkner
34. The Bishop - Chekhov
35. Lady with Lapdog - Chekhov **
36. The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street - Gallant *
37. The Amish Farmer - Vance Bourjaily **
38. 1/3 1/3 1/3 - Richard Brautigan *
39. Water Liars - Barry Hannah
40. Akhnilo - James Salter
41. The Liar - Tobias Wolff **
42. Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story - Russell Banks
43. Who, Me a Bum? - Luisa Valenzuela
44. A Perfect Day for Bananafish - JD Salinger **
45. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters - JD Salinger *
46. Proto-Scorpians of the Silurian - Jim Shepard *
47. Signs & Symbols - Nabokov **
48. Returned - Salvador Plascencia
49. The Story of a Scar - James Alan McPherson
50. The Third Prize - AE Coppard