I attended a reading by Salvatore Scibona recently, who just recieved a nod from the Nat'l Book Award committee and was named a finalist this year (the winner has yet to be announced). I also managed to catch about half of a fascinating Q & A session he did for the MFA program before I had to run off to teach. Among other things, he talked about why he uses a typewriter instead of a computer (though longhand is, of course, preferable), about surfaces and their absolute necessity in fiction, and gave this pithy observation on the writing of novels:
"You can't write a novel in a panopticon."Seriously, he said that. I might just make a massive poster and hang it on my wall as a way of encouraging myself to keep those projects I am unsure of to myself for just a while longer, to allow them to become what they will without undue outside influence. I wish I had caught the end of the session, since he was billed as answering questions about the Provincetown FAWC fellowships, of which he is in charge of coordinating this year. But hey, I'll throw logistics out the window for a phrase like the above any day.
His reading was similarly fascinating--he admitted that the first page was really just one long sentence--and I do love a long sentence, especially when the content is good, and in this case, since the novel in question, "The End," was about a tireless baker who worked seven days a week to pay off the rent on his bakery, and since I have a weakness for good bread, it was just the thing to cap off a long day at work (What, descriptions of work as an andtidote for work? Absurd, but yes, true.), and I really had to hand it to Scibona for being as smart in his fiction as he is in person. Okay, I'll get off my rhetorical hobbyhorse now.
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