Category: Lit & Crit

And yes, never is a very long timeAnd yes, never is a very long time

“Never take counsel of your fears.” – Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson

Further, tooFurther, too

“The difference between constructing a short story and constructing a novel is like the difference between building a rowboat and building a yacht: They both have to float, but one is bigger and grander and meant to carry more people farther.  Just as the yacht is not simply a bigger rowboat, the novel is not a bigger short story; knowledge of one doesn’t necessarily translate into knowledge of the other.” – John Stazinski, “A Novel Approach”

Pragmatic knowledgePragmatic knowledge

“Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Mount up!Mount up!

“Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

But we do it anywayBut we do it anyway

“Remember that war is always a far worse muddle than anything you can produce in peace.” – Sir A. P. Wavell (quoted in Robert K. Krick’s Conquering the Valley)

And at other times besidesAnd at other times besides

“You have to live with yourself to live by yourself.” – Eugene Marten, In the Blind

Can’t hardly cross the street with all the trafficCan’t hardly cross the street with all the traffic

“It is hard to live above time.  The church bell sounds the hours and the neighborhood streets are trafficked with our pasts.” — Christine Schutt, “Winterreise”

Well, you know, we all wanna change the worldWell, you know, we all wanna change the world

“Revolutions develop the high qualities of the good and the great, but they cannot change the nature of the vicious and the selfish.” – Jefferson Davis, 1862 (quoted in Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative)

Slut for sleep, wakeful and to no availSlut for sleep, wakeful and to no avail

“One does not go to sleep, you had to let sleep come to you, you had to bescatter its path with samples of yourself, maybe just pellets from your thinking, and not be afraid to be a whore for it.” — Gary Lutz, “Womanesque”

I know what boys likeI know what boys like

“The only thing that will ever even begin to understand a penis is another penis.” — Gary Lutz, “Womanesque”

Don’t need that weepy old thing, anyhowDon’t need that weepy old thing, anyhow

“The body had only so many quarts of water in it in which the heart might as well just go and get itself drowned once and for all.” — Gary Lutz, “Womanesque”

(Hey!  I just found out–one of my short story collections (I don’t know which one, I sent them four) was a finalist in the 2011 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest.)

It is for the security of the homelandIt is for the security of the homeland

“Evil that is everyday is lost in life, goes shrewdly into it; becomes a part of habitual blood.  First it is a convenient receptacle for blame.  It holds all hate.  We fasten to it—the permanent and always good excuse.  If it were not for it, ah then, we say, we would improve, we would succeed, we would go on.  And then one day it is necessary, as if there’s been a pain to breathing for so long that when the pain at last subsides, out of fright, we suffocate.” – William Gass, “Mrs. Mean”

Black magic writer, I’m just a black magic writer…Black magic writer, I’m just a black magic writer…

“The people by me primitively guess that I am enemy and hate me: not alone for being different, or disdaining work, or worse, not doing any; but for something that would seem, if spoken for them, words of magic; for I take their souls away—I know it—and I play with them; I puppet them up to something; I march them through strange crowds and passions; I snuffle at their roots.” – William Gass, “Mrs. Mean”

Happens to civilians, tooHappens to civilians, too

“For the military historian, failure to maintain focus on the true objective is among the easiest mistakes to detect.  For the soldier it is among the most difficult blunders to avoid.” – Robert G. Tanner, Stonewall in the Valley

They called it “Bloody Angle”They called it “Bloody Angle”

“The trench on the Rebel side of the works was filled with their dead piled together in every way with their wounded.  The sight was terrible and ghastly.  We helped off their wounded as well we could, and searched for our own wounded in front.  Captain Corey was killed and never found.  Captain Thomas was found with twelve bullet wounds.  He had fallen and then been shot to pieces, possibly by his friends.  The horses of the regular battery were so shot that each was not over ten or twelve inches thick.” – Erasmus C. Gilbreath, 20th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Spotsylvania, Virginia, May, 1864 (quoted in If It Takes All Summer, William D. Matter)

The cure is flight and/or avoidanceThe cure is flight and/or avoidance

“There is no use in hearing the term ‘apartment complex’ unless it is taken immediately to mean a syndrome, a fiesta of symptoms.” – Gary Lutz, “Femme”

My father shows on my south sideMy father shows on my south side

“I have been told that when people say they see my father in me, I am to do one of two things.  The first is just to tell them that it must be only because he’s trying to get their attention because he wants something again.  Otherwise he wouldn’t be showing himself in me of all people.  The other is for when people have already stayed too long.  I’m supposed to say, ‘Where?  Point him out.  Show me where, so I can pull him out all the way.  Maybe I can shit him out.  Think that would work?  Let’s go see.’  I have done both, but sometimes I just picture my body glassed over and my father motioning from within, bobbing up now and then between my bones, no big trouble.” – Gary Lutz, “The Summer I Could Walk Again”

Same as it ever wasSame as it ever was

“Is it one mistake after another, or is it the same one divvied up to make it last from one day to the next?” – Gary Lutz, “The Summer I Could Walk Again”

Res publica and busy bodiesRes publica and busy bodies

“In no time even the least sneaky of things will have already been handled awfully, will have drawn onto themselves a commonwealth of squandered touch: anything eventually sports the lonelihood of people who could no longer keep their hands to themselves.” — Gary Lutz, “The Least Sneaky of Things”

Squinting may helpSquinting may help

“The mind’s eye is the least reliable of the sightholes.” – Gary Lutz, “I Was in Kilter with Him a Little”

Power to the people, right onPower to the people, right on

“The people is an animal which can see and hear, but never thinks.  It is in a state of surprising lethargy or of surprising fury and goes constantly backwards and forwards from one state to the other, never knowing where it came from.” –  Montesquieu, “Letter 111,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

How, indeedHow, indeed

“If the poor be poor in heart and spirit as well as in appearance, how will they be aught but poor to the end of their days?” – “The Poor Turkey Girl,” Zuñi Folk Tales, Frank Cushing

How come these people to feel so entitled?How come these people to feel so entitled?

“When history is missing, it is replaced by fables; it is like a poor country where virtually worthless coins have to be included in the currency.” – Montesquieu, “Appendix 15,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

The highest lawThe highest law

“Where religion is concerned, the more trivial the issue, the more violent the dispute becomes.” – Montesquieu, “Appendix 13,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

Ground down and cast awayGround down and cast away

“Piety, a sign of strength in some characters, is in others a sign of weakness.  It is never without significance: for if on the one hand it is attractive in those who are virtuous, it completes the degradation of those who are not.” – Montesquieu, “Appendix 10,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

Why we never think things throughWhy we never think things through

“To think a thing through meant only hollowing it out, letting it cave in, seeing it to a successful collapse.” – Gary Lutz, “Carriers”

When you can’t even crawlWhen you can’t even crawl

“When you are no good at what you do, it does you no good to triumph at whatever you might come home to, either.” – Gary Lutz, “I Was in Kilter with Him, a Little”

Kick it, it’ll wiggleKick it, it’ll wiggle

“It is no wonder that criticism is a more conservative, more academically elite, more racially exclusive club than fiction writing itself. To be a critic in the manner of Virginia Woolf—the default position of the Anglo-American critic, from F.R. Leavis to Lionel Trilling to John Updike to Helen Vendler—requires more than a simple lack of humility; it requires a self-assurance that one is speaking from the center of things, that one is qualified to pass judgment on any aesthetic object that comes along. This kind of criticism isn’t interested in discussion or debate, except in a very circumscribed sense; what it seeks, above all, is a universal validation of the writer’s own subjectivity.” – Jess Row, “The Novel Is Not Dead”

Put it back where you found itPut it back where you found it

“Just because there is a place for something doesn’t automatically mean it belongs there.” – Gary Lutz, “Onesome”

The Congress is in sessionThe Congress is in session

“Most legislators have been men of limited abilities who have become leaders by chance, and have taken scarcely anything into account except their own whims and prejudices.  They seem not even to have been aware of the grandeur and dignity of their task: they have passed the time making puerile regulations, which, it is true, have satisfied those without much intelligence, but have discredited them with men of sense.” —  Montesquieu, “Letter 125,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)