The following is excerpted from Manifesto: Maximalist Expressionism, or "Shut/-/Up(!) Fiction". In his afterword to Paul West’s novel Tenement of Clay, critic Bill Marx quotes West on the nature of his narratives (what Marx refers to, somewhat irritatingly, as West’s “streams of dreams”). These narratives, West said, “...which appear to be the voices of those…
Craft Notes: Paul West’s Technical Advice for Fiction Writers, Part II
The novelist Paul West has had the greatest influence on my development as a writer. I first had the great fortune of encountering this member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Prix Médicis and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, Literary Lion of the New York Public Library system, and…
Craft Notes: Embracing the Pleasure Principle
The following is excerpted from Manifesto: Maximalist Expressionism, or "Shut/-/Up(!) Fiction". I find it hard to believe there are those who counsel aspiring writers to hold as suspect that which amazes or delights in its writing. And while, to be sure, a knee-jerk exultation in every word slapped on the page will most likely spell…
Craft Notes: Paul West’s Technical Advice for Fiction Writers, Part I
The novelist Paul West has had the greatest influence on my development as a writer. I first had the great fortune of encountering this member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Prix Médicis and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, Literary Lion of the New York Public Library system, and…
Craft Notes: Mind Mapping My Work, Then and Now
Before I knew what a mind map was, I was mind mapping. Using scrap paper and pen I worked out some of the more difficult lines of association comprising the worm hole structure of my novel Flicker in the Porthole Glass. The following artifact shows a mind mapping exercise I completed sometime in 1993 over…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 