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My Writers: Ann Beattie

Dan Seeger

I have a foolish aversion to short stories. I’m perplexed about its origins. It may stem from the fact that my time chipping away at an undergraduate English major forever associated the form with the toil of assigned text. (I swear “Hills Like White Elephants” was on the syllabus of every third class I took.) I also worry that I have some strange, snobbish guilt that triggers a lurking, unshakable sense that I should be working on a weightier novel when I’m reading a short story, under the so-many-books-so-little-time provision of life as a consumer of written fiction. Ann Beattie … Continue reading My Writers: Ann Beattie

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“Barrett watched the wrangling without pleasure. It all seemed impossibly dull and dreary to him, this quibbling over the phraseology of a manifesto. That was essentially what he had expected to find here; a bunch of futilitarian hairsplitters in a draft basement room, battling furiously over minute semantic differences. Were these the revolutionaries who would hold back the world from chaos? Hardly. Hardly.” –Robert Silverberg, Hawksbill Station, 1968 “SEA-BLUE AND BLOOD RED: THESE ARE THE COLORS THAT WASH PAST THE GOLDEN AVENGER’S EYES AS HE STRUGGLES, DESPERATELY, AGAINST HIS OWN ARMOR! FOR MERE HEARTBEATS AGO, BENEATH THE CHILL WATERS OF … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“Now he was fifty-four years old and was as intriguing to corporate America as an airplane built from mud. He could not find work, could not find clients. He had moved from Schwinn to Huffy to Frontier Manufacturing Partners to Alan Clay Consulting to sitting at home watching DVDs of the Red Sox winning the Series in ’04 and ’07. The game when they hit four consecutive home runs against the Yankees. April 22, 2007. He’d watched these four and a half minutes a hundred times and each viewing brought him something like joy. A sense of rightness, of order. … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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My Writers: Jeffrey Toobin

Dan Seeger

There are a few broad style of writing that regularly face criticism, not without justification. Academic writing is one of them. Another is so ruthlessly dismissed as impenetrable that it has its own description: legalese. It’s understandable. The fundamental nature of the writing makes it dense, thorough, and bloodless. But within the occupational impetus for the writing style lies a key to great nonfiction writing, at least for those authors who chose to properly leverage it. Legal writing shares some genes with the best of journalism. It presents facts and analyze them, then briskly, smartly, capably makes a case. The … Continue reading My Writers: Jeffrey Toobin

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“I made a big entrance when I arrived in my flying DeLorean, which I’d obtained by completing a Back to the Future quest on the planet Zemeckis. The DeLorean came outfitted with a (non-functioning) flux capacitor, but I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d installed an artificially intelligent onboard computer named KITT (purchased in an online auction) into the dashboard, along with a matching red Knight Rider scanner embedded in the DeLorean’s grill. Then I’d outfitted the car with an oscillation overthruster, a device that allowed it to travel through solid matter. Finally, to complete my … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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Fly High By My Window At Night

Dan Seeger

Thanks to the bends of the calendar, it’s been a couple years since Halloween has fallen on a day that this digital space didn’t have regularly scheduled programming. It’s time to revive an old tradition. These are things that have scared me…. Yes, there’s a Stephen King entry. There’s always a Stephen King entry. That’s how I once rolled. “The Mangler” is an exceedingly silly short story. I know that. I knew that at the time I read it. And yet this tale of a demonically possessed industrial laundry press left me highly rattled when I first read it, probably … Continue reading Fly High By My Window At Night

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My Writers: John Skipp & Craig Spector

Dan Seeger

I was a skittish kid, even a bit of a fearful kid. The mere idea of engaging with something scary — a book, a movie, or a television show squarely in the horror genre — made me preemptively woozy. Once I did finally engaged with such material, though (beginning, of course, with Stephen King), I spent a few years pursuing ever more spins into the darkness. For the most part, I stick with any given author for only a single tome. While the form doesn’t deserve the disdain often heaped on it, accomplished literary figures writing such novels were a … Continue reading My Writers: John Skipp & Craig Spector

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My Writers: Tom Stoppard

Dan Seeger

There are writers who leave me dumbfounded, so thoroughly dazzled by their inventiveness and command of language that I can’t help but speculate on what it must be like within the interconnected passages of their brain. I make no claim on an exhaustive knowledge of the voluminous works of Tom Stoppard, especially since most of the touchstone efforts are best experiences from a seat positioned to face a stage. Still, whenever I come upon one of his landscapes of intricately interlocking ideas, I feel humbled and blessed in equal measure. Like most, I suppose, my welcoming entryway to Stoppard’s art … Continue reading My Writers: Tom Stoppard

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“After that, I started walking. I walked aimlessly for over an hour, through the driving rain. The pedestrianized centre of Ashbury was mine alone. I decided, somewhere along the walk, that I have to do something. I have to make amends for being insufficient.” –Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train, 2015   IT’S AS IF PART OF THE SKY HAD TURNED TO LIVING FLAME. BEFORE THEIR EYES, A BLOOD-HUED BEAM OF ENERGY LANCES UPWARD FROM THE MUSEUM AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, WASHING THE LANDSCAPE IN ANGRY, GARISH SHADES OF CRIMSON. SOMEONE NEAR PETER SCREAMS. A GRIM-FACED POLICE … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature