Pulitzer for Fiction goes to Jennifer Egan

The first book Jennifer Egan book I read was "The Keep." I was immediately drawn in and it was a difficult book to put down. I saw a little while ago - via a Twitter feed from friend, writer, editor, and dramaturg Mead Hunter - that Jennifer Egan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her book, "A Visit From the Goon Squad." When I went to her website to get more information, I saw that this book has received many recognitions and awards.

from the Associated Press 4/18/2011

Jennifer Egan wins fiction Pulitzer Prize

NEW YORK (AP) — Jennifer Egan's inventive novel about the passage of time, "A Visit from the Goon Squad," won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction Monday, honored for its "big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed."

Egan, 48, has been highly praised for her searching and unconventional narratives about modern angst and identity. Her other novels include "The Invisible Circus," ''Look at Me" and "The Keep."

Critics were especially taken with "A Visit From the Goon Squad," with its leaps across time and its experiments with format, notably a long section structured like a PowerPoint presentation. Earlier this year, she won the National Book Critics Circle prize.

"The book is so much about how change is unexpected and always kind of shocking," she said by phone. Egan said she was inspired by Marcel Proust's sprawling novel "Remembrance of Things Past," which explored the passage of time.

"His book of time is all about how the work of time is unpredictable and in some sense unfathomable," she said. "So there's no question that winning a prize like this feel unpredictable and unfathomable."

Another book to add to my must-read list!  And I'm looking forward to it.

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Razor's Edge for 11/26/10

I was working on putting together something along the theme of "Black Friday" for today. It's not an event I participate in and, while I understand that it's great fun for some and has even become a tradition, it's just not for me. For many reasons. But it seemed like a good topic for something to spur on creativity and could be fun.

As I was looking around, wondering what I wanted to do, my blog reader program updated and I received this fabulous performance piece via my friend - a dramaturg, writer, editor - Mead Hunter.

Perfect.

Today's theme is "Tis the Season Oddities and Extravaganzas"

I'm borrowing Mead's description of this piece, too, which you can see below the video.


Watch and listen to the video. I see a couple of great options for creative inspiration here: the music and/or the performers. Who are these guys and what do they do? Where do they come from? Where are they going? What do they do on Black Friday and why?

Give yourself 10 minutes to write and then set it aside.




Mysteries of the Macabre from BlueDot Productions on Vimeo.

From Mead Hunter at BLOGORRHEA: Q.E.D.: this performance of Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, as performed by the fabulous Oregon-based new music ensemble Beta Collide, in a video produced by Yachats company BlueDot Productions. Consider this proof positive that new music doesn’t have to be a solemn affair.

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English: now with a million words to choose from

From The Editing Room (can I post it, please? and thanks, Mead!)

All right, so the concept may be bogus, but according to the Global Language Monitor, the English language gets its millionth word this coming Wednesday, 6/17, at 10:22am (Stratford-upon-Avon time).

How does GLM know? Elementary. Because it has ascertained that neologisms are currently entering the language at the rate of 14.7 a day , it’s statistically likely we’ll get to a million words, including those freshly mined, just 30 scant hours from now.

Not everyone accepts GLM’s pronouncement, of course. Leave it to CNN to round up a few nay-sayers. While you’re reading the cheerfully skeptical article on its site, be sure to click on the inner link (what we called an “inset box” in the previous millennium) to see how English stacks up to other tongues — especially in regard to number of words vs. number of speakers vs. degree of global influence. There may be surprises for you there.