Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Short Stories - 50 words or less -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PCModem who wrote (869)	10/14/1999 9:33:00 AM
From: Thomas G. Busillo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2634

PC, FWIW I like Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing. "Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!" Just a great book. Not at all technical (if that's the word for something like John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, which is great too), but, as you can gather from the excerpt, very inspirational. I guess it depends on why one writes. Towards the end of The Cider House Rules John Irving has a line in the to the effect that "a writer writes because he is disappointed with the world and is compelled to create his own alternative." I guess the alternatives in general in rejecting "the world as is" are to fashion are even more interesting/fascinating/better worlds or worlds that are even more irrational than our present one. And in both cases hopefully illuminate something about "the world as is" that maybe makes us act a little more humane or thoughtful. And does one do that because their basic stance is skewed towards optimism or pessimism (this world is killing me and one alternative is to draw my own small, dulled rapier on it and maybe hold it off for a little longer)? I don't know. Maybe I should have taken more Lit. classes as and undergrad. If I had, maybe I wouldn't be fashioning cosmologies where those pronounced clinically dead by the authorities don't merely go back to work on the assembly line, but buy framed ceritificates of their "achievement" and revel in it <g> Tom