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Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 25, 2003 - 12:21 pm: | 
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I am currently reading CONVERSATIONS WITH JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN ( a collection of interviews with the author going back to the 60's) and ALL STORIES ARE TRUE, his collected short stories.
Wideman makes you work but he's worth it. |
InPrint
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 03:58 pm: |
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The man is the god of great prose. I think if he cared more about plot, and less about white women, he'd be the biggest thing out there. I mean Nobel level.
If you want to get a quick taste of Wideman, look at his short short "Casa Blanca." Just ill. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2003 - 10:13 am: |
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InPrint. Do you mean Casa Grande? If not, where can I find Casa Blanca? |
InPrint
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2003 - 11:17 pm: |
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My boo, I'm thinking of "Casa Grande." "Casa Blanca" is on Pennsylvania Avenue.
You want a great book of his though, try Fever. The guy just gets off. |
Chris Hayden
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 29, 2003 - 11:33 am: |
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In Print--
Yeah, that Wideman makes you work. A technique of his that took some getting used to was how he imbedded the real story in a story or bracketed it with two other stories--"Backseat" for instance, talks about his adolescent sexual experinces in the backseat of his uncles car and ends with his first sexual experience (to return, in circular fashion to that back seat experience at the end) but is REALLY about his grandmother.
It is helpful reading his interviews while reading his stories because he explains his philosophies of literature and these techniques (these you have to dig out, too. I think Wideman as man, teacher and artist, erects walls between himself and his listeners, walls of words)--but I am left wondering why he would want to tell this story of his grandmother in that manner.
I got an inkling of it wherein he writes of his friends commenting on her in a sexual manner, and of how he saw her naked in the bathroom one time as a boy, linking them up, but that is almost too far out.
Casa Grande I thought was masterful, how he begins with a story written by his son as a 10 year old and then talks about visiting him in prison. You wonder how a young man who showed such imagination and promise wound up doing life for murder.
Have you run across anything that explained the incident, how it happened? etc? Does he cover that in "Fatheralong"? |
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