Work by Dan Manchester
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Beyond This Cataclysm of Making & Unmaking
Posted in Reviews, November 2009
Tinkers is the story of George Crosby’s final week (and a day) of life. It is also the story of his father’s life. And his father’s life as well. And generally of families. And reasonable horologists and their reasonably ticking clocks. It also contains at least one complete catalog of household items, an assortment of [...]
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A Conversation with Jason Tandon
Posted in Interviews, November 2009
“I think my view as a writer is primarily external. I do a lot of looking, observing, listing, describing to get started, rather than rolling an idea around in my head. The biggest criticism I got in workshops was that everyone wanted to know more about my speakers. I didn’t think they were all that important. That’s how I came to write “I Don’t Speak Donkey,” a response of sorts to those comments. I just seem to be more interested in the people I’ve encountered and places where I’ve lived (or imagined). I guess places and people are what most attract my eye. And I want to represent them and render them so that anyone from anywhere can briefly imagine or commune with other lives and spaces.”
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Curly Fries & Asphalt Rash
Posted in Reviews, October 2009
A tour of margins: South San Ysidro, New Mexico; Lamb’s Grove, Iowa; Moosalamoo, Vermont; north of Albert Lea, Minnesota; Podunk; Hell. Places where “your mother name[s] you tough”; where in honor of Easter, Mister Donut tops “a traditional glazed / with yellow frosting and jellybeans.” Snails are ground into dirt. Jokes go too far, warrant [...]
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A Conversation with E.C. Osondu
Posted in Interviews, October 2009
“I keep saying this over and over again—Syracuse was the best thing that ever happened to my writing. It was the wisest thing I ever did in terms of my writing. Because the Syracuse program is a very small program, you get to know everybody. Everybody’s interested in your work. Of course, I was different, in that my aesthetics were different. My work attracted a lot of attention, both positive and negative. Which helped me, ultimately. People were interested in my being in their workshop because I brought a whole new aesthetics to the process. My critical values were really different. I thought that a work had to…For an African writer, the whole idea of art for art’s sake is just self-indulgence. We think a work has to engage society, be socially conscious. So I would always ask awkward questions in workshops. Like, “Yeah, this is beautiful and all, but the fact that you went to a bar yesterday—how does that change society?”
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The Art Equation or: How I Stopped Worrying & Learned to Love the Poem
Posted in Learning Annex, October 2009
“In every introductory creative writing class I have ever taught—elementary school, high school, undergraduate, summer programs, community arts classes, all of them—there has come a moment in the early days of the course where some class member surreptitiously approached me and confided in a whisper that reading and writing literature scares a new hole into his belt...”
