The sun also sets

John Grabowski — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:12:46 +0000

I saw this picture recently and started wondering, as I always do when I see pictures like this: who had/has it better? Here’s Earnest Hemingway and friends, sitting in a cafe in Pamplona, Spain, where the bulls run. This was around the time he was writing The Sun Also Rises. This is every modern fiction [...]

Demi down

John Grabowski — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:10:46 +0000

Demi

“What’s it about???”

John Grabowski — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:49:02 +0000

I hate this question. And everybody asks it. “What’s your novel about?” I hate it because I don’t know how to answer it. They don’t know it, but what they really mean is, “What’s the plot?” They also, without necessarily realizing it consciously, mean, “What’s the genre?” Both of these annoy me, because I think [...]

Casturbation

John Grabowski — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:00:08 +0000

Because the writer can’t imagine anything as concretely as the person who is going to get up on stage—it’s going to be their voice, their body, their rhythms of speech, of breathing, of moving—the particular quality of their concentration. —Deborah Eisenberg I know my novel isn’t even published yet, and already I’m engaging in that [...]

Underrated!

John Grabowski — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 09:04:34 +0000

Everyone has a list of actors they think is underrated. These people do terrific work on film after film after film yet never seem to get the acclaim and attention of the biggest stars. Sometimes this is how they want it. Not everyone wants the red carpet and the paps and the press. And unfortunately, [...]

A coffee shop like none other…

John Grabowski — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 09:17:47 +0000

Okay, it’s easy to tie this one in with the novel Entertaining Welsey Shaw. Welsey and Daniel meet in a coffee shop, week after week. But their abode is a mere Starbucks in the middle of New York City, no different than thousands of other cookie-cutter Starbucks across the world. It is based on a [...]