Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer
Three quick things.
1. Surprising myself, I entered a few poems into a (low-fee) contest a few days ago, hours before the deadline. Results should be announced in a few weeks.
2. Speaking of poems: I’m making progress on some of the interviews-by-email and guest posts that are part of the pre-publication promotion work for Birthright. (And none too soon! Less than a month to go to Pub Date!)
3. Among the readings I’ve assigned my students this semester is Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. Which means that I’ve just finished re-reading this novel myself. I knew that it was good when I read it back in 2004. But now, I’m just stunned by how extraordinary it is—on the sentence level, and on the story level.
Philip Roth was almost always extraordinary!
True! I think that my appreciation has matured with time–and of course, there’s something about reading this work after his death now, too. Plus, reading this particular novel in our current moment….
I agree on all points! Hope you had an easy fast and a meaningful holiday.
Likewise!
I couldn’t read it because it was too good, too real – I have enough fantasies about dystopia in my own head, I just couldn’t go there with him…which is a measure of his writing power.
Fair enough.