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Transparency, Barthelme and Lahiri

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I've been reading Jhumpa Lahiri's short story collection "Unaccustomed Earth" recently, along with "Donald Barthelme" (by Lois Gordon) and "Reading Network Fiction" by David Ciccoricco. First I'll mention some general language features, then I'll compare the writers. In some aspects they're opposites though I like them both. Language Knowledge of, and skill with, words isn't a sufficient condition for understanding the world. In itself it's not even a necessary condition. We learn by doing, by writing. Learning leads to new instruments, new worlds. The Word and World inform each other. For writers in particular, words are not passive mediators. The Self isn't a separate layer either. It needs to be added into the mix. The " World -> Self (Author) -> Word " pipeline is misleading. There are eddies and backflows. Authors write in order to understand. The Reader needs to be added into the mix. The ...
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Breaking into print

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Contents What's the point? Inhibitions and how to overcome them Planning Sending off - Where and How (and electronic submission ) Keeping records Rejection Acceptance Marketing No Reply Shortcuts Conclusions References So, you have some poems, or short stories or maybe even a novel. You all know about the Writers and Artists Yearbook, you've all seen stories and articles that you could have written yourselves, so why don't you send things off? Today we'll try to identify what's holding you back. I'll talk first about general issues, then deal with the details about sending off, then what to do after. I'm not going to deal with blockbusters - I'm going to assume you're happy to start at the shallow end. If it all sounds like too much work, don't worry - I'll offer some shortcuts at the end. What's the point? I suppose firstly we should look at the incentives to sending things away. Money - Unless you regularly write articles, you won...
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The Legacy of Form

Formal poetry typically includes the following features line-breaks - Most forms specify where these need to be. Making a virtue of necessity, poets discovered ways to exploit them, using enjambment, surprise, and varieties of end-rhyme. Rectangular stanzas - Most forms produce lines of near-equal length in stanzas of near-equal length, resulting in poems that are a series of blocks. Initial capitals - Early verse took from prose (especially religious texts) the idea of a complete thought per line, and with it, perhaps, the capitalizing convention. Also the capitals help to counter-balance the weight of the end-rhymes. The rise of free verse made the line-break a more flexible device. Numerous experimenters explored the potential of layout. Some poets used ragged-left as well as ragged-right formats - not as the Alexandrians, Herbert or Lewis Carroll did (making a shape on the page), nor to emphasise the rhyming pattern, but to guide meaning and control rhythm. At the same time ee...
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