In Pursuit of Silence by George Prochnik
My review of IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE by George Prochnik is now up on the Globe & Mail website. Recommended, especially for those of us who spend a good deal of time with our fingers in our ears.
Lauren B. Davis
novelist, essayist, teacher
Examined on the Examiner
June 2, 2010 by 1 Comment
Maybe I should travel more often! I’ve had some lovely things happen while I’ve been away these past two weeks. One was the interview I did with poet Diane Lockward on www.Shewrites.com, which I linked to in the preview blog, and now this: Renee Miller, at www.Examiner.com has written a beautiful review of THE RADIANT CITY and has also published an interview we did. Renee, like Diane, asked terrific questions, and both interviews were a pleasure.
5 Questions
June 1, 2010 by 1 Comment
I am writing from beautiful Stow-on-the-wolds in England — cheerful beyond measure by splendid countryside and cream teas. While I’ve been away, the folks at the social networking site for women writers, Shewrites.com, have kindly posted a feature on me, called “Five Questions for Lauren B. Davis.”
This week poet Diane Lockward asks award-winning novelist Lauren B. Davis five questions about The Radiant City. A native Canadian, Lauren lived in France for a decade. She now makes her home in Princeton, NJ, where she is Writer-in-Residence at Trinity Church.
10 things I wish I’d known before I published
May 19, 2010 by 2 Comments
A long time ago, I was standing in my kitchen with my friend, Michael. Michael a big Guyanese guy with an easy smile and a laugh to fit his size, asked me if I had a piece of gum. I said I did and handed him one, but forgot to mention it was a new sort of gum, and with a liquid center. Before I could warn him, he bit down. The expression on his face was of instant horror and disgust, as though he’d just bitten into a nice juicy cockroach. When my laughter subsided, I explained, and happily he found the event funny as well.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse asks we pray to stop the bleeding
May 18, 2010 by 1 Comment
I was in New Orleans recently, arriving shortly after the oil catastrophe (‘spill’ is hardly an adequate word). Even though officials said they didn’t know how bad the damage would be, every Louisianian I spoke to had little doubt, and the horror showed in their faces. My heart breaks, as I’m sure yours does. I am angry, as I’m sure you are.
Please read this request from Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Wolakota Nation, and join us in prayer. Pass the message along.
Facebook — naked in the public square?
May 12, 2010 by 6 Comments
If you read this blog even occasionally, you know how ambivalent I am about social networking. I do it mostly because it’s part of my job, to be honest. It’s not that I don’t want to hear from readers — on the contrary, hearing from readers is one of the things I LOVE about being a writer — but rather because my natural resting state is in solitude, quiet solitude, and somehow all these tweets and posts and so forth seem so…well…distracting and LOUD. I often wonder, to be truthful, if the people reading this blog, or connecting with me on Facebook and so forth, are actual readers. How many of you/them buy my books and read them, and how many are just scuffling round the web?
ADDICT AT 10 by Derek Steele
May 9, 2010 by 1 Comment
Derek Steele’s publicist at Synergy Books (a self-publishing outfit) approached me about this book, asking me to review it. I agreed to read the book, but frankly, didn’t expect much. I’ve read a lot of addiction memoirs over the years, and not many of them are any good. They’re often poorly written, or clearly untrue, or full of self-pity, or some similar combination.
The author’s blurb on the back of this book tells me Steele is “currently pursuing his life mission of helping others to achieve success by sharing his experience, strength, and hope through writing and public speaking.” Oh dear, I thought. A book written to support the author’s real agenda, which is speaking fees.
You don’t know what you don’t know…
May 5, 2010 by 5 Comments
This week a friend called me, her tone a bit tightly-wound, and asked if I had a few minutes to talk. My friend is a writer, someone I’ve met only recently, and she’s just published her first book. It’s done pretty well. A few nice reviews, a bit of attention. She should be happy. But she didn’t sound happy.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I feel like an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. What happened?”
“I just got my first royalty statement.” She groaned. “I’m an idiot. I thought I’d get royalties. I thought I’d get some money.”
All’s well that ends “well”
April 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment
I read a novel yesterday by a promising young writer and although I enjoyed it, I was reminded of just how important satisfying endings are. Like openings, endings are tricky. When editors send back a short story or reject a novel, nine times out of ten they’ll say the ending didn’t work for them. It’s also often the first criticism you’ll here from other writers in workshops. Endings need to satisfy. Your closing, it’s been said, caps your story the way a roof caps a house. It’s the last impression and, like first impressions, counts heavily in fiction. If it’s predictable, implausible, trite or saccharine, you’ll disappoint your reader, and a disappointed reader is unlikely to buy another book by you.
Newsflash — nobody has a clue
April 21, 2010 by 4 Comments
Perhaps these seven sages are searching for the next bestseller.
Before I published, I had this fantasy that somewhere, perhaps on the top floor of a glittering skyscraper in New York City, at the end of a long corridor lined with books and the portraits of famous writers, was a room in which stood a heavy oak table surrounded by high-backed leather chairs. In these chairs sat The People Who Knew Literature. Oh, how I believed in them. From the fetid pile of manuscripts (some stained with mysterious rusty-red marks, others with tear-blurred ink) these sages picked out sparkling gems, sure to become classics. They discerned the wheat amongst the chaff, the figure inherent in the uncut granite, the gleam of the diamond in the lump of coal.
