Over at Identity Theory we posted a fiction piece by Bezalel Stern called “Election.” It feels like a parable.
We also have an essay Continue reading
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Category Archives: Literary Matt-ers
“The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.”
I am reading And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields. Finished Cat’s Cradle over Thanksgiving. So Vonnegut is on the brain. He said, in defending the straightforward writing style he developed during his brief career as a PR man and journalist, “The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.”
List of Websites That Make Me Jealous
My literary webzine, Identity Theory, relaunched recently with a minor redesign, which I put online for the purpose of generating new submissions while I redevelop the entire site.
The task of rebuilding Identity Theory from the ground up is daunting because there are so many old stories — ten years’ worth — that are difficult to transfer to a more high-powered content management system, not to mention that the site contains a handful of multi-author blogs, substantial “orphaned” content, and dozens of photo galleries. (I also worry about losing the search placement we’ve built up through eleven years of backlinks, though I have some faith in 301s.)
Kerouac and Buddha: Compassion is Not Enough
You probably know the legend of Buddha. Princely Asian questioner-of-existence sits under a tree for like 8 years, exercises extreme mental focus and physical discipline, works out the problems of the world in his mind, then tells everyone who will listen what he learned, which alters millions of lives and leads to a major world religion.
Imagine if after only a few days of meditating, he had said, “That was cool, now I’m gonna go drive around for a while, try every drug imaginable, meditate some more, write a bunch of rambling novels, get famous and drown myself in alcohol.”
According "Wake Up," Jack Kerouac loved dogs and "dogs loved him."
Then he would have turned out something like Jack Kerouac.
It turns out Kerouac wrote a little tome about his ancient alter ego called Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha, which I picked up at a used bookstore in Tennessee while on a not-totally-Kerouacian road trip this summer.
In the foreword to this long-lost religious fiction, Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman (a brilliant/awesome fellow actually) points out that Kerouac’s interest in Buddhism focused on the Tibetan/Indian sects of the religion that emphasize compassion. He wasn’t crazy about the Samurai-rigid, discipline-minded Far East Zen schools, which he referred to as “mean” when discussing it with a fictionalized Gary Snyder in The Dharma Bums.
The Goal: One Blog Post Per Day in September
As a tune up for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo, coming in November), I am trying a more modest writing goal this month: one blog post per day, every day.
People call this NaBloPoMo. And while NaNoWriMo is an annual November event only, NaBloPoMo is really pretty much any month you feel like trying it.
The first three days of the month have gone smoothly. Today was a little tricky because it’s my b-day, but I still made a sliver of time to put together this post.
(I am not doing all my posts on one blog–I will be spreading the love to the various blogs to which I contribute on Identity Theory as well.)
Identity Theory Featured in Vermont Alt-Weekly
Margot Harrison wrote a nice article about my work at Identity Theory in this week’s Seven Days (that’s the alt weekly here in Vermont, for those of you outsiders).
The conclusion? “With content ranging from John Cusack’s views of torture to a wickedly satirical short story about a marketing consultant, IT defies demographic niches, and proves that you can do serious reading on a screen.”
Check it out over at: Burlington Resident Explores Identity Theory in His High-Profile E-Journal
New Identity Theory “Issue” Features Tom Grimes, Chat Room Fiction, Gary Lutz
Over at Identity Theory, we tend to avoid regular publishing schedules, but I’ve recently been experimenting with a weekly “issue” system for putting new articles online.
This week’s issue features: