Hyperink.com Question of the Month

The fine folks at Hyperink post a good question: What makes a compelling character in a book or movie?

To me, a flat character is one who always acts in the way that’s expected. The good guys shouldn’t always be good and the bad guys shouldn’t always be bad. But too often, especially with amateur works, the characters do little that’s surprising. The easiest way to spot this trend is by looking at the villains in almost any action flick. I’m going to be writing about Percival Everett’s Assumption for the Front Porch blog, but the book is haunting because the main character, Deputy Sherriff Ogden Walker, doesn’t always act like you’d expect a Sherriff to act. This is an important lesson for me to learn while I’m working on my own novel. Don’t be afraid to make a character do something, within reason and motivation, that he or she would not normally do.

Unstuck Magazine and Literary Genre Fiction

This Saturday, in Austin, I attended the launch party for Unstuck #1.

http://www.unstuckbooks.org/issue-1

The goal of the new magazine is to blend literary fiction with speculative/fantastic fiction. Unstuck will only come out once a year, which is probably good since, at more than 300 pages, I'll be able to take my time with the journal.

The launch party, at the Hyde Park Theater, featured dramatic readings of four stories. "Monument" by Amelia Gray, "Death and the All-Night Donut Shop" by Rachel Swirsky, "Second Grade" by Charles Antin and "An Account of My Neighbors"  by Edward Carey.

Each story was read by a single actor, and the Edward Carey story was read by Edward Carey.

"An Account of My Neighbors" will appear in Issue #2 of Unstuck and was the most enjoyable performance of the show. Carey's narrator is a hyper-aware, most likely unstable, observer of his neighbor's peculiar tendencies. For example, one of his downstairs neighbors has a disease unique to fish, and another neighbor has a small dog that smokes Winston Lights on the roof. The narrator clamors for, but seems unlikely to find, peace and quiet. Carey's story manages to be both disturbingly funny and sweet. It's impossible not to feel sorry for the manic narrator even while laughing at his ridiculousness.

Criminal Element

I'm going to be blogging both here and over on Criminal Element for awhile. My posts for Criminal Element will mostly cover crime films and fiction while over here I'll ramble on politics, writing my  novel and other things. My first post at CE is live. It's a little piece on A. Alvarez's classic book on the 1981 WSOP "The Biggest Game in Town."

http://bit.ly/nmVD02

An Important, if Obvious Realization about Dialogue

 

OR: A Realization Courtesy of Edward Albee

 

I'm writing a novel. Sometimes just saying that phrase impresses people, but really, hang on to your impressed face until the novel's done--or even better, hang on until it's done AND good. 

Anyway. One element I've been struggling with is dialogue. I mean, I can put two characters in a room and have them talk and their words will sound fairly realistic--not too wooden or strained. But there was still something bothering me about several of the conversations in my book. I'd read the scene, tweak a few words, delete something obvious, move something around, and it'd be better, but still not quite right.

 

This summer, I'm helping out in an American Literature class at Texas State and the kids are reading Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It's one of my favorite plays, but I hadn't read it for years. Re-reading the play yesterday I realized what was wrong with my dialogue and what was so right about Albee's.

 

 (Here's where the obviousness might start for you fellow writers out there, but I was blown away.)

 

 Too often the dialogue in my novel is about something. My characters are discussing plot points, important facts about their past or their present, they're chattering away about things that should be remembered by the reader.

 

 Now, back to Albee.  Virginia Woolf really doesn't have much of a plot--George and Martha have a party, Nick and Honey comes over, everyone's ruined forever. That's pretty much it. And that frees Albee to focus on the subtext, the hidden struggles that the characters are going through. The really dramatic stuff, the plot-heavy stuff, happened long before the play actually starts. 

 

Palin Not Running/ Santorum Not Running/ Gingrich Not Dead and Perry's Secret Dilema

more thoughts on the GOP candidates...

Sarah Palin...still not running for President...still not going to run for President.

       It's pretty clear to me that once she says she's out then the media will stop paying attention to her. Right now she commands attention. She's not going to say she's out and chop off her own publicity at the knees.

       Also, and the press will eventually turn on her for this, I think that she will NEVER actually say she's not running. She'll combine a little bit of Trump 2011 and Clinton 2008 and string along her potential campaign for months and months for the extra TV time (that's the Trump part). Don't be surprised if there's even rumors of her throwing her hat in the ring at the RNC convention (that's the Clinton 2008 part) and of her joining the ticket in the number 2 slot again. 

       It is in Sarah Palin's best interests if she remains the legendary GOP savior forever perched at the edge of the race. In no way is it in her best interest to get in the race and have to deal with the actual dirty mechanics of campaigning. She gets the best of both worlds now--hyper coverage every time she says a thing, but not the real scrutiny that derailed her the last time.


Santorum (google it) isn't actually running for President

       He's running for his old Senate seat. This may be obvious to everyone but it just occurred to me. He gets national attention (sort of, or at least more than he'd get if he was just running for Senate) and theoretically gets to look all statesmany and wise. This enables him to pivot to the Senate race (and transfer what money he's raised to that campaign) and say that he traveled the country, has spoke to the people, and now has the broad experiences to make an even better Senator than he was last time. He'll still lose to Casey in the general, but there will be a large and vocal contingent of Republicans who will welcome Santorum back home with smiling faces and open arms.


Gingrich isn't dead yet--he's like a movie serial killer, don't turn your back on him. McCain was declared dead in the primary back in 2007.

Perry doesn't actually want to run. 

I've had trouble trying to figure out what Rick Perry was up to. For awhile I thought he actually wanted to be VP and wouldn't actually enter the race. Now, it's looking increasingly likely that he will run for President. But why is he waiting? Is he waiting for the debt ceiling impasse to end? Is he just biding his time for some reason?

Here's what I now think, although I feel less confident in my Perry predictions then in my other forecasts. I think he wasn't planning on running, that he wanted to flirt with running so he could get the attention and then be an automatic, stone cold VP lock.

 Seriously, Romney/Perry would be a dangerous ticket.

But then people began to tell him that Romney might not win. That someone Bachmann might win. Someone as conservative as Bachmann will need a relative moderate on her ticket--not Perry. Once Romney's hold on the nomination began to slip, Team Perry realized they needed to make their own noise. That hitching themselves to the Mitt Train was not the only option.

However, I think that behind this hesitation is also the fact that Perry doesn't actually want to run for President. It sucks. It's tiring. He has to go to places like Iowa and NC and SC where he's not automatically worshiped. Perry hasn't had to introduce himself to voters in twenty years, not since he ran for Lt. Gov with W. way back in the day, and he's not eager to start now. 

And if he does run, then I think he's going to fall apart because he hasn't had to do serious campaigning in so long. This is the Perry dilemma--don't run and risk your relevance vanishing, or run  and risk getting all dirty with the grime of real electioneering.

Something New and Webby

You don't have to look too hard to find all sorts of accounts of how the internet has changed how writing is distributed to readers. But here's my recent story, which I think is interesting for how "new" it will sound. Some of the terms in this story would have been total nonsense only four or five years ago.

My most recent publication is called "Something Bad and Stingy" and you can find it at SnakeOilCure.com. Briefly, here's the story of how my story made it that site:

1. The First Line
2. Twitter
3. Submishmash
4. Saved Twitter Searches

Why I'm Nervous About The GOP Candidates

The five guys in the first GOP debate...really.

As of today the frontrunners for the Republican nomination for President are a guy who was a moderate governor who installed universal healthcare, a 75 year old U.S. Rep who wants to get rid of the Department of...well, everything, Newt and a pizza magnate. 

Standing on the sidelines of the race, out of it for now, but possibly entering, is a Representative who said abolishing the minimum wage would help unemployment, a Bush, a less-than-half-term-Governor who’d run if he didn’t have more skeletons in his closet than Jame Gumb, and the most famous half-term Governor in U.S. history. 

There’s been much gloating from Democratic-leaning commentators and blogs. Comedians from David Letterman to Andy Borowitz have made jokes along the lines of “the Republican race to determine who loses to Obama.”

And at first glance it seems that there’s much to be hopeful about. The Republican Party has moved so far right that Mitt Romney is likely to face an organized Tea Party Revolt, which would lead to their endorsement of someone patently unelectable like Paul, Bachmann, Santorum or Cain. Roger Ailes is reportedly lamenting helping turn the right into a bunch of conspiracy-minded Palin/Beck worshippers (click that link and read the NY Mag article, it's amazing). And the Republicans in the Senate are doing their best to not win a majority next year by nearly unanimously voting to end Medicare, and likely voting to not investigate terrorists who buy guns.

The long primary battle between Obama and Clinton made the Democratic Party stronger across the country. They took the fight, and Democratic messaging to places that hadn’t seen real campaigning and organizing in years. Obama lost Montana to McCain by 3,000 votes, and performed better than any recent Democrat in a number of other states. 

Now we’re eighteen months away from the Presidential election, and the Republicans are flying so far under the radar they might as well be driving lawnmowers.

But why I am so nervous?

Other Stuff (not mine)

Rachel Zucker learns a thing or two about poetry from kids who can’t read or write (Poetry Foundation). Also, wondering if you’re a confessional poet? Zucker can help you figure it out. 

Does an online reviewer’s grammar matter? Or, would you buy anything that’s awsum? Michael Agger from Slate explores a troubling online trend.

A musical about a bookstore has one indie seller in Jacksonville singing. (The Florida Times-Union)

William Burroughs thought Scientology could be a great way to break free from the prison house of words…until he changed his mind. (via Io9 and Small Press Distribution)

And, finally, from the vaults we have a never-delivered Nixon speech commemorating a tragedy that never happened and Robert Stone’s “Art of Fiction #90” interview from the Winter 1985 Paris Review: “I know it’s all a world of words—what else could it be?”

Thor's Misguided Lack of Diversity

From EFavata.com

Let's start with a note: there's a boycott of Thor being organized by racist and neo-nazi organizations. They're upset because the movie based on a comic book about made-up deities has cast a black man as one of the important made-up deities.  No, really, they're pissed off and organizing a boycott of the film.This post is not about that boycott or about Idris Elba--who is totally great in the movie. No, this post is about a different aspect of Thor's casting. 

 Thor is set in three equally fantastic realms—Asgard, where Anthony Hopkins and lots of dudes in armor live; Jotunheim, home to the very literally named Frost Giants; and a town in New Mexico that is completely devoid of Mexicans.

Marvel Studios built a fake town and named it “Puente Antiguo,” spanish for “Ancient Bridge.” They also filmed a bar scene in a Santa Fe stripclub (sans strippers) and other locations throughout the state. A look at the film crew's dozens of Spanish surnames shows there are enough people named Gonzalez, Flores, Martinez, Luna, etc that the filmmakers were at least aware of all the brown-skinned people that have been living in that area for the past few millennia. 

Go ahead, watch Thor, you should, it’s good, but keep your eyes peeled, watch the background. There’s a nurse who looks like she might be Latina, and one of the SHIELD agents is played by an actor of Honduran descent, but that’s it.

So, why is this a problem?

Jane's Blanket

Also posted on Broadcastr, check it out there.

Today, a woman named Jane came by the house to drop off a blanket she crocheted for my mom. This Saturday there's going to be a fundraiser and silent auction to benefit my mom, and a child with leukemia.

My mom met Jane in outpatient oncology. Jane's husband had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant--just like my mom. He didn't even lose his hair and was back in near-perfect health two weeks after the transplant--unlike my mom.

Jane's from Lubbock, and sounds like it. She wore a t-shirt with a painting of horses on the front. "Texas" was embroidered in cursive over the right breast--just in case you didn't know that's where horses came from. Her hair was frosted blond, she wore big earrings--heavy, costume jewelry--that had stretched her earlobes down.

She was here for five minutes. She asked why there weren't newer pictures of me and my sister on the mantle. She told us her two-year-old granddaughter has a belly and looks like one of them Ethiopians.The granddaughter's name is Palin.

The blanket is white, with pastel green, pink and yellow trim. I wonder how much it'll sell for.

Park Road between 13th and 14th Street

Park Market. Corner store with guys wearing tank tops going in to by lotto tickets and 24 oz cans of beer. Beer. Ice. Lotto. Bars on the windows and a cashier behind bulletproof glass. An old one story, blue building with a white overhang with decorative blocks attached to the sides like legos. It’s squat and hard next to the new three-story condo building attached to it with a circle driveway and units with floor to ceiling windows so  you can see the size of the tenant’s TVs.

Couples walking their dogs and trying to make conversation with each other while hoping passing strangers don’t notice their dog shitting in public. They talk about whether or not they can afford to leave Columbia Heights and move into the more baby-appropriate areas of Cleveland Park or Tenleytown. They hold plastic bags over their hands like gloves.

The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter

The newest Spotlight Series blog tour is on Graywolf Press. Graywolf has been around since 1974 and has become one of the largest and most interesting indie publishers in the country. Their catalog is wide-ranging and includes not only fiction and poetry, but a significant amount of cultural criticism and creative writing texts.

The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter is (as you might have been able to guess) part of Graywolf’s creative writing “The Art of...” series, which aims to provide small, erudite and useful texts on “a singular craft issue.” The book is aimed at creative writing students, but could be enjoyed by general readers, especially fans of the author’s Baxter spends the most time analyzing.

Baxter defines “subtext” as “the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken” deeper truths that lie beneath the best fiction. The important stuff that characters, and narrators, only partially admit, but that is necessary for true emotional depth in fiction.

The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches

The heavyweight champion means something, and always has.

Each of the men to hold the title has a narrative behind him, and occupies an important historic and symbolic role in American life. Jack Johnson in the 1910’s became a pure, dangerous embodiment of American swagger a couple decades before the rest of the country developed a similar swagger. Joe Louis was an important part of the stoic, hard-working “Greatest Generation.” And Louis’s eventual, heartbreaking descent into irrelevance and drug abuse was caused by America itself, and serves as a warning of what we do to our celebrities and heroes. Ali became one of the most important dissenting voices in American history. The list goes on we could do this all day, and if anyone knew who the current world champ is we could talk about him in a similar way. (On a side note, the fact that the “title” has devolved into an endless maze of belts and divisions and conferences so labyrinthine and repetitive that it renders the idea of a single champ irrelevant certainly fits this digital age.)

In “The Devil and Sonny Liston” Nick Tosches tries to analyze Sonny Liston and redeem his role in boxing history. Tosches is a dynamic writer who has written multiple biographies and novels, and is an editor at Vanity Fair, he’s also likely written the definitive biography of Liston, and the book, much like Liston himself, is seriously flawed, yet still packs a hell of a punch. 

She and Him

On Wednesday I saw She & Him in a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. Embarking on their first tour, She & Him set out to prove they were more than just a studio-friendly, movie star-fronted, kitschy novelty act. Over the course of their 90ish minute show I think they for the most part proved themselves to be a “real” band, but with somewhat serious flaws that kept me from being fully invested in the show.

This is Zooey Deschanel’s band. The spotlight, literally and figuratively, was always on her and the rest of the band, including M. Ward, seemed to be part of her group, not vice versa. Thankfully she has enough presence and charm to pull it off. The crowd loved her and she seemed engaged with the audience; after the show it felt like she had talked and interacted with the audience more than she actually had. As an actress she has a presence that she was able to transfer to the stage.

The Washington Senators

The  driver saw me running for the bus and stopped to let me on. I was wearing a dark blue hat with a thick red capital "W" bordered with white thread. The driver looked at me, "What's your hat for?"

"The Senators, Washington Senators, the baseball team."

"Oh right, yeah, that's nice I like that better than that other joint with the curly W they wear now."

"Me too, I picked it up at the stadium."

I walked down the aisle to find a seat and passed a thin, nearly gaunt, man who looked to be in his 60s. He said in a friendly, grumpy old man voice, "And what do you know about the Washington Senators young man?"

I laughed and sat down behind him, "Well I know about Walter Johnson and about the World Series they won and I know that they left for other towns, twice."

"Did you know that they used to play in Griffith Stadium where Howard University Hospital is now?"

"I did, I did."

The man was tall and thin, his arms and legs like straws. He was wearing white shorts and a loose short sleeve button up with blue lines. He was wearing a beige hat that snapped down onto the brim; he had faint white stubble and had what looked like a bandage or maybe a towel that he was pressing on to the side of his neck. On the seat next to him was a reusable shopping bag and two full plastic bags, I couldn't see what was in the bags.

"Was Griffith nice? I wish I could have seen it."

"Oh it was beautiful, or at least it was to me when I was a boy. My father took me there quite a few times."

He angled his body to the right into the aisle in order to stiffly move his neck to the side so he could look at me; he moved like someone with bolts in his neck or pain in his back.

"It was a chance to watch some ball, eat some cracker jack, drink some pop and he'd even give me a sip of beer." He popped his eyes wide and smiled.

"That sounds great."

"It was fun, you know for a kid to spend time with his dad, that was very important to me. I remember the Senators very well. He died when I was young so these memories of him are very nice."

"That sounds great, sounds like a lot of fun."

"It was, it was. He took me there, me and my brothers, whenever he had a chance. You know my parents did their best, they did a good job, I was very lucky. A lot of people out there can't even raise one kid, much less me and my three brothers and my two sisters, hell. I was lucky."

He kept the bandage/towel pressed to his neck.

"Oh we had it pretty good. I remember my dad taking me ice skating, there used to be an ice skating rink at Florida and New York. But you know, even then I knew we were different. I'd look around and not see any other dads there and knew that, you know, that I had it different."

"Right, yeah I know what you mean." I thought of my mom dropping me off at roller skating rinks in Texas.

He nodded, "Now, now I just don't know I think its gotten even worse. DC was different then, or maybe it was me, but it seemed nicer then. Easier maybe."

We were both quite for a moment and felt the heat on the bus.

He craned back around, "It got rough later in the 70's when I was trying to go to school. I was drafted out of college, and god I didn't want to go, I tried to get out of it, but they told me, 'you can do five years in prison or two years in Vietnam.'" He laughed, hard, like a cough, "And I knew I'd die in prison so I decided to take my chances in Vietnam."

I laughed, "Yeah, well you made it out."

"Damn right I did, I got out in '74, but the economy went down, there were gas shortages later, no one had any  money, and I needed a job and damnit I had to go back into the army. I been all over the place, went to Iraq twice, went to Afghanistan and got blown in half, but now I'm out. On the day I hit my 35 years and retirement I said get me the hell outta here i'm sick of killing people, I'm sick of people trying to kill me I want to go home. I was in the convoy on the way to the airport to head to Germany to be processed out and BAM," he clapped his hands together. "Blown to hell, they told me later, and some of those guys were giving me a hard time about it, making fun of me you know, they said I was trying to push my own guts back into my body. I said, what the hell was I supposed to do? It's not like I had a MASH unit in my pack, I did what I had to do. And you know what? I survived." He hooked his bags onto his shoulders.

"Damn right you did."

He stood up to get off the bus, "I'll tell you what it was," he reached up to grab the bar above the seat but his fingers slipped off and he fell to the side and landed on his hip and the side of his thighs, his bags sliding off his shoulders onto the floor.

"I'm alright, I'm alright."

I stood up and grabbed him by the right arm with my hand on his left side and helped him to his feet.

"There you go, you just slipped a bit, you're okay, no problem."

"I got it, I got it." He stood up. "Thanks. Have a good day." And he walked off the bus.

Two young women had looked at him with shame when he fell, and I saw them make eye contact as he stood up, they may have rolled their eyes behind their sunglasses. I sat back down and watched Columbia Avenue go by the window.

Two Thoughts, Similar

"While we search for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, the new, that which can only be found in the unknown, we must continue to turn to sex, books and travel, and knowing they will lead us into the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place we can find the cure."

              ----R. Bolaño


"By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

             -----V. Woolf

Migraine Links: What Is It? Who Gets It?

So what causes a migraine? Let's see what the Mayo Clinic says are frequent migraine triggers:

• Hormonal changes in women.
• Food: alcohol, aged cheeses; chocolate; aspartame; overuse of caffeine; MSG; salty foods; and processed foods. 
• Skipping meals
• Stress
• Bright lights and sun glare, loud sounds, unusual smells.
• Missing sleep or getting too much sleep.
• Intense physical exertion.
• A change of weather or barometric pressure
• Certain medications

So...according to The Mayo Clinic, migraines can be triggered by eating, not eating, sleeping, not sleeping, light, sound, exercise, medicine, weather, travel....basically, they don't know. It seems that if your parents had them there's a good chance you will have them. (Side note: my parents and my grandparents don't get them.)

Ok, so we don't know what causes them , but what exactly are migraines? The answer there can basically be summed up with "it's when something goes wrong in your brain."

Theories on migraines include such scary sounding things as:

• "Cortical spreading depression" in which brain activity is reduced over part of your cortex, which causes your brain to release inflammatory agents to wake your brain back up. During the migraine your (let's just switch to the first person), MY brain becomes depolarized, and the migraine peaks in intensity when a majority of my brain is depolarized. I'll rephrase this: last Friday, my brain's electrical charge reversed itself.

• Vascular Problems. Or maybe the blood vessels in my brain were just contracting and expanding when they shouldn't have been. Under this theory some of my brain arteries are spasming shut and the lack of blood in parts of my brain leads to the visual aura. Then when the arteries loosen these same blood vessels get too full of blood and some leaks out (into my brain), my pain receptors spot this and release inflammatories because they think that's a good idea. It's not, because every time my heart beats (which is something it tends to do) blood goes through the inflamed area and results in terrible pain.

• Serotonin Problems. Some think that if my serotonin levels are too low then it causes this constriction and dilation of my brain arteries, causing a migraine.

• General Brain Problems. Or, maybe just part of my brain stem is sorta irritated and inflamed, which causes my body to release chemicals, which just pisses my brain stem off even more and which leads to a migraine.

• Or all of the above.

There's basically no working theory that doesn't involve something going wrong in my brain. There's also a possibility that the chances of me having a stroke (what with all the brain/blood/artery problems) are about two or three times higher than non-migraine sufferers.

(Confession: much of this info came from wikipedia. Get over it.)

So who gets migraines? Turns out it's a lot of people. It's obviously hard to determine stuff like this but 6% to 15% of all adult men are migraine sufferers (meaning at least one a year). Women are more vulnerable to migraines with 14% to 35% of women suffering from migraines. Sorry ladies.

And they get more common later in life, so if you've never had one before don't worry there's still time.

There's a ton of websites devoted to migraine sufferers documenting their experiences. Some of their stories are incredibly honest and heartbreaking. There are people out there suffering a lot more than I ever have, and their coping mechanisms are truly miraculous. Severe migraine sufferers have to figure out how to live their lives, and it's inspiring to read their stories of living with migraines and even turning them to their advantage and finding the beauty in them.

One of the leading sites is The Daily Headache run by Kerrie Smyres who has had a persistent headache and migraine everyday for 20 years. She's amazing and has been blogging about her life since 2004. It's a spectacular site. Also, look at the list of links to other migraine blogs in the right column of the Daily Headache--she lists dozens of people blogging about their migraines and there are countless more.

The NY Times had a short lived migraine blog, which I wish they would bring back. The contributors included Oliver Sacks, Jeff Tweedy and Siri Hustvedt (migraine sufferers all).

This NY Times audio feature has several people discussing their migraines and what they've done to help ease the pain. One sufferer participated in an experimental trial and had an electric device implanted in his spine in order to disrupt the migraines. The operation was successful, he used to get migraines everyday, but now he only gets them once every ten days.

Finally, The Migraine Aura Foundation contains an overwhelming amount of information including migraine art, info on famous migraine sufferers and a ton of testimonials. This link contains some really accurate depictions of the aura. Only 20% - 30% of migraine sufferers actually see auras, and some people have auditory or olfactory hallucinations that accompany the visual aura.

The most interseting part of migraine week on Paperclip People is the number of peole who have said they had no idea what a migraine even really was before reading my posts. They're bizarre experiences, and I hope I've conveyed some of what it's like. I've also learned a lot in researching this post and the rest of them. Thanks for following along. Please leave comments or links to other sites or articles on migraines in the comments.

Saramago Links

The italicized quotes in this week's migraine diaries are from Saramago novels--they're not all from Blindness.

Saramago was a master at exploring a surreal event (the Iberian peninsula breaking off, a city going blind, death dying) and using it to reflect human nature. His allegorical stories could have easily veered into the shallow waters of bad fantasy writing, but they're grounded in actual human emotions and, no matter how weird they get, they still feel real.

Saramago, who died at the age of 87, was a tireless writer who published a new book every couple of years; his last novel, Cain, was published in Portugal last year and should be in English by the end of this year. His most recent book in English is The Notebook, a collection of his blog postings with special focus on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

For all of his mourners, there are many people who are not sad to see him go. An editorial in the Vatican newspaper refereed to him as a "populous extremist" and an "anti-religious ideologue."  Saramago's 1991 novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was attacked by Catholics who felt it inappropriate to portray Jesus as a fallible human being. The Portuguese government refused to submit the novel for any international awards, and Saramago spent the rest of his life living in the Canary Islands. On Sunday, Portugal's conservative president did not attend the funeral of the only Portuguese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, but 20,000 other mourners did. Saramago was also accused by the Anti-Defamation League of being anti-Semitic after some explosive comments he made after visiting Palestine.

This "Art of Fiction" interview he did with The Paris Review is required reading. He describes his writing process in great depth.

The Guardian obituary.


An article on his funeral and some of the controversy surrounding him.

The ADL press release on Saramago's comments and David Frum's editorial titled "Death of a Jew Hater."

Info on The Notebook and a review.

Migraine Diary, Part Two

"I don't think that we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing...".”

I make it to my front door and open my eyes wide to make sure I get the key in the lock. The house is hot, I climb the stairs, lock my  bedroom door behind me, open the windows but close the curtains, and turn on my fan to the highest it can go.

The headache is starting. 

Migraine Diary, Part One

“Then she lifted her head up to the sky and saw everything white, It is my turn, she thought. Fear made her quickly lower eyes.”

It’s before 10am on Friday and Ruthie, my co-worker, and I are in Starbucks. We’re talking about their pastries and wondering if they make more of a profit from food or coffee. I look up to order a grande bold roast, then look back down at the pastries when I notice the sparkling spot in my vision.

I get migraines 4 or 5 times a year and they follow the same steps; the pattern is nearly comforting because I can anticipate what’s next and when it will end. The spot is always in the same spot in my upper left field of vision, somewhere around 11oclock if I described things like I was in the air force. In the upper left field of vision, not in my upper left eye, closing that eye doesn’t make the spot go away.

Instinctively I blink and tilt my head to the left but the spot doesn’t move, it has never moved, but I tilt my head just the same.