Actually published writing

I rose up from the dead, and so on, and so forth.

I published my second thing¹ that has actually gotten from the cradle to uh… well, not the grave, but you know… since I got stricken in the pancreas. I reviewed Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood for the New Yorker! “Eleanor Catton Wants Plot to Matter Again”:

“Birnam Wood” ’s true turns are all carefully set up, as long as you’re focussing on the right details. But none of the characters pay attention to the right things; they all think their snap impressions tell them what they need to know.… Discovering that they live in a world of consequence, with stakes bigger than self-image or self-respect, is as much of a shock to the characters as it is to us. Congratulations, Catton seems to say, on being just smart enough to play yourself.

As the title indicates I think part of what makes Catton an interesting writer right now is her commitment to plot in what are also unabashedly literary novels, whereas right now self-consciously literary writing tends to be plotless. Sometimes that plotlessness …