I'm taking a quick break from my "Brief History" thread for several reasons. The main reason is that I finished The Day of the Jackal today, and, to be honest, I allowed reading that to cut into part of my writing time.
I haven't read a spy novel since the spring of 2001 when I was finishing my undergrad. I took a course PolySci 197, I think, in which we read five spy novels -- it was very much like a lit course, but also like a history course. The professor was awesome and could range back and forth between narrative theory and Cold War politics in ways that seemed easy and natural. When I tried to do it, I usually ended up sounding like Billy Madison talking about The Little Dog Who Lost His Way (I need a fact checker for that title).
I loved the course, but I never got terribly into reading the spy novels -- I saw them as genre novels, formulaic novels: beneath literary writing in all ways (except they could potentially earn an author an income and sometimes got made into movies). I have been trained to think of junk fiction as somehow lesser than "real" literary fiction, but I've grown to see them more simply as two separate things, and I no longer privilege one over the other.
I should note that all with Gorky Park and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, we also read Going after Cacciato and Our Man in Havana, such that the often arbitrary nature of the distinctions between forms showed its unkempt head from time to time.
Sooooooooooooooooooo what?
Yeah, well, right, I'm writing a spy novel these days. Actually, I'm collaborating on a spy novel with a poet friend. I've never tried my hand at a spy novel before, but it's going quite well, I think. It stems from conversations I've had with my poet friend that always ended at closer to two or three in the morning with us saying to each other, "We should write a spy novel." And slapping high fives, but then sleeping it off and not writing a spy novel. The point is:
I'm writing again. It feels good. One thing I had to do to start writing again, since losing the novel deal, was to move on and try something else. I've tried, over the past four months, to get back into "I'll Tell the Mill" to give it another draft, but I haven't been strong enough yet. Soon, I think, with some more practice, I'll be ready to enter back into that world. For now, though. I'm writing a spy novel.
Wish me luck.
I haven't read a spy novel since the spring of 2001 when I was finishing my undergrad. I took a course PolySci 197, I think, in which we read five spy novels -- it was very much like a lit course, but also like a history course. The professor was awesome and could range back and forth between narrative theory and Cold War politics in ways that seemed easy and natural. When I tried to do it, I usually ended up sounding like Billy Madison talking about The Little Dog Who Lost His Way (I need a fact checker for that title).
I loved the course, but I never got terribly into reading the spy novels -- I saw them as genre novels, formulaic novels: beneath literary writing in all ways (except they could potentially earn an author an income and sometimes got made into movies). I have been trained to think of junk fiction as somehow lesser than "real" literary fiction, but I've grown to see them more simply as two separate things, and I no longer privilege one over the other.
I should note that all with Gorky Park and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, we also read Going after Cacciato and Our Man in Havana, such that the often arbitrary nature of the distinctions between forms showed its unkempt head from time to time.
Sooooooooooooooooooo what?
Yeah, well, right, I'm writing a spy novel these days. Actually, I'm collaborating on a spy novel with a poet friend. I've never tried my hand at a spy novel before, but it's going quite well, I think. It stems from conversations I've had with my poet friend that always ended at closer to two or three in the morning with us saying to each other, "We should write a spy novel." And slapping high fives, but then sleeping it off and not writing a spy novel. The point is:
I'm writing again. It feels good. One thing I had to do to start writing again, since losing the novel deal, was to move on and try something else. I've tried, over the past four months, to get back into "I'll Tell the Mill" to give it another draft, but I haven't been strong enough yet. Soon, I think, with some more practice, I'll be ready to enter back into that world. For now, though. I'm writing a spy novel.
Wish me luck.
Good luck.
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