from LA Weekly, Sep 20-26, 2002
Where Chuck gushes about his fav author, and gives us a lesson in minimalism all at once.
Oh, and in minimalism, no abstracts. No silly adverbs like sleepily, irritably, sadly, please. And no measurements, no feet, yards, degrees or years-old. The phrase “an 18-year-old girl” – what does that mean?
In The Harvest, Hempel writes, “The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.”</em>
…Amy Hempel does this. Instead of telling us the boyfriend in The Harvest is an asshole, we see him holding a sweater soaked with his girlfriend’s blood and telling her, “You’ll be okay, but this sweater is ruined.”
the Hempel page at chuckpalahniuk.net
….meanwhile Miriam is on her second book written in Bosnian. Hello! It is comprised of stories from the seige of Sarajevo. The cover shows (I pressume) the author, typing by candlelight. Next November I plan on participating in national novel writing month; I hope that life will be settled and organized enough at that point to do so. And I plan on getting myself a nice old typewriter, one where you can feel the key engage under your fingers and that makes a loud crack noice with each letter. And I plan on writing, if not some new idea, then at least the Newspaperwoman. And maybe at night I’ll turn off all the lights and light a couple candles to write by, in memory of the time we missed.