Michael Cunningham: A life trying to "burrow into these little bastards' minds and hearts..."

There's a good article in The Guardian: Michael Cunningham: A life in writing...

Here's what he has to say about the novel. Particularly like the bolded bit below:

"Never more so than in 2011, I feel like a certain interiority is what the novel can offer that no other medium can. I love movies, I love television, I love narratives of all kinds. The novel remains the most effective means of telling a reader what it's like to be somebody else. You can burrow into these little bastards' minds and hearts. And I often find novels that don't do that to be a little unsatisfying. Why would I read a book that doesn't take me some place that otherwise I couldn't go? Watch The Wire. Watch The Sopranos."

 And here's another nice line on Madame Bovary:

"Flaubert took this shitty, shallow little person, and looked at her so intently that he made her a great figure of literature."

Or this one:

"One of the great things about the novel – and one of the terrible things about writing a novel – is that it takes so long. It's so much about going sentence, by sentence, by sentence."

Open Studio - Kellyann Monaghan

They both left a few days ago for London and New York, but here's video of Kellyann Monaghan's cool art from the open studio she had here:



And here's Sarai Michelle Walker reading from her novel in progress "Dietland" which she was working on while she was at La Muse:



We'll also upload Rhea Tregebov reading her poems when we get a chance!

May Book Swap

First up after the crepes and dandelion jam was the American artist Kellyann Monaghan who lives in Williamsburg, New York. After showing us some of her cool, Hopperesque paintings of NYC - she loves to paint NYC at night because of the different "coloring" to the daylight - she donated Paul Auster's New York Trilogy because of its "mysterious gritty world" which she feels makes his work "timeless." Kelly also gave us Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. While at La Muse she's working on a series of oils based on the countryside around here.

Next came the Australian artist Kate McBride who, after showing us her wonderfully diverse and original works, talked about how she's inspired by Shazia Sikander, the Pakistani artist, showing us Sikander's work in the book she donated, edited by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. For a book where she's from she gave La Muse Markus Zysak's The Book Thief. Kate is here on a barter fellowship, and like Kellyannn is creating some beautiful oil paintings.

The American writer Sarai Michelle Walker brought La Muse Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Declares "very political novel" and Cowboys Are My Weakness, a collection of short stories by Pam Houston who was Sarai's first fiction teacher and because it is a book that is representative of "the mountain West" where she comes from. Sarai is at La Muse working on a novel.

Last to present her books was the delightful Canadian writer Rhea Tregebov who donated her recently published novel The Knife Sharpener's Bell, a political novel put out by Coteau and a collection of her selected and new poems (alive). Rhea also gave a reading of a great poem: "Remembering History" from her poetry collection. To "represent what I do" Rhea also donated Carmine Starnino's This Way Out as well as Lisa Moore's collection of short stories Degrees of Nakedness. Based in Newfoundland, Rhea loves the stories for many reasons, one of which being because she loves "the way she writes about sex."

Thanks again to everyone that donated to our living library!

Paragraph - New York

All you New Yorkers looking for somewhere other than your cramped apartments to write: check out Paragraph. We've heard the place is great and we like what they have to say on their site re. memberships:

"Publication is not required for a membership; only serious intent and a strong drive to write."

You can check out their yearly membership rates here and here's what The New York Times has to say about them.