Tag Archives: chekhov

Alexander Weinstein talks about Children of the New World

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Interview with Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World

My interview with Alexander Weinstein, recently published in Rain Taxi Review of Books (link at the end of post). This collection of speculative dystopian fiction has been compared to the Black Mirror TV series. It’s quite excellent.

Garry Craig Powell: In a recent interview with 0 + 1 reads, you cite the influence of filmmaker Charlie Kaufman and mention that in spite of his metaphysical concerns, he grounds his stories in a gritty world. It struck me, reading Children of the New World, that you do that too. Unlike some cerebral writers, including some that you acknowledge as influences, you create complex, well-rounded characters with whom we can empathize. In the title story, “Children of the New World”, for example, a couple has to ‘delete’ their virtual son when his program is plagued by a virus—and incredibly, we feel sorry for them.

What Writers Can Learn from Tolstoy’s Novellas

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Lev_Nikolayevich_Tolstoy_1848I’m shocked when I read lists of favorite novels and see that most, and sometimes all, are American. There may be a leavening of British authors too; that’s something. Still, I think, haven’t you read the Russians or the Germans? You really think Toni Morrison or Jonathan Safran-Foer are better than Tolstoy or Musil? Anglo-Saxon culture is lamentably insular, and American culture is not merely insular but downright provincial these days. The greatest weakness of the writing done by creative writing students—graduates as well as undergraduates—is that it’s so rarely informed by wide reading. And however unfashionable it may be, my remedy is to send them to the canon. Not “back to the canon”, sadly, because most of them aren’t familiar with it in the first place.

A Philosopher on Writing

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Arthur Schopenhauer - German Philosophy - Deutsch Idealismus - Deutschland Ostmark - Peter Crawford

4/26/16 — A Philosopher on Writing

One of my favourite philosophers, Schopenhauer is especially interesting for writers because he has a cogent Aesthetics and addresses writing specifically, which few other philosophers do. For instance, he declares that there are three kinds of author. The first are those who write without thinking; this is the largest group. Who can doubt this, even among writers of so-called literary fiction? Most tell stories merely for the sake of it, so as to “express themselves.” The second group consists of those who think while writing, in order to write. These too are common, according to him. Lastly, there are those authors who think before writing, and write because they have thought. Rare, says Schopenhauer.

A (Less Insular) Reading List for Students

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Having taught in an American university writing program for a dozen years, I am convinced that what my students need more than anything is to read more, and to read differently. Many of them do read a lot, but they are reading American writers and very little else. Recently I discovered that two of my most gifted graduate students had not read Graham Greene, which flabbergasted me. And this is not their fault–it’s the fault of the professors who keep feeding them the same predictable stuff. The obvious weakness of the contemporary fiction scene in the US (and of “Program Fiction”) is its homogeneity and its insularity.

In Praise of Women of Genius

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virginia_woolf_01

Virginia Woolf

3/26/15  IN PRAISE OF WOMEN OF GENIUS  After my last essay, “On Talent and Genius”, whose examples of genius were mostly or—ahem—entirely male, one of my readers archly asked if I might be biased, even subconsciously. Of course one can affirm confidently that one is not biased consciously, but the charge of subconscious bias is unanswerable. The only way I could disprove it is by taking a psychological test. (And even then…) However, I do have a couple of responses to the accusation: first, my examples were male not because I believe that no women of genius could have been exercising those arts, but that in fact few did, until quite recently, because of societal pressures.

Talent or Genius? Is There a Difference?

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TALENT or GENIUS?

What is genius? How is it different from talent? Is it a matter of degree, or is it something altogether distinct?
In the past week on Facebook—admittedly not the most elevated forum, though I like to think that most of my friends are fairly bright—I have read that the following people are geniuses: JK Rowling, Prince and Stevie Wonder. I also read that Taylor Swift is extremely talented: she must be, said my friend, an intelligent person, because she is so widely popular. (I had perhaps foolishly, and certainly thoughtlessly, given the opinion that she was ‘completely talentless.’)

For a number of reasons, these comments disturbed me, and forced me to consider—yet again—whether it is possible to make any objective evaluation of the talent of an artist—Aesthetics 101—and also, if it’s possible to discuss the subject without simply getting into a curmudgeonly rant about declining standards, whether there is such a thing as genius, and if so, whether we might be able to define it