Ann Gelder
- Birthday
- December 31
- Bio
- A writer and recovering academic. You can read my work in Alaska Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, Portland Review, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Tin House. I have taught comparative literature at Stanford and Berkeley, and I recently completed my first novel.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Counting minutes, not words?
August 16, 2012 05:35PM - Is silence golden?
August 14, 2012 04:58PM - Riffing and dwelling
July 31, 2012 11:39AM - Advertising, fiction, and Mad
Men
July 17, 2012 07:33PM - Introverts unite! (No, wait,
not so close ...)
July 11, 2012 03:55PM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “As you say, "our fellow
humans who are no better nor
worse,
worthy or
unwort…”
July 11, 2012 04:57PM - “Well done, Kenneth.
Thanks for the laughs (dark
though they
may be).”
April 24, 2012 04:15PM - “Kenneth and
Roberto--thanks for the nice
comments. And for
the Italian
lesson, Ro…”
April 11, 2012 10:55AM - “That was my other
question: what exactly is a
"flaw"? I
suppose the
one…”
March 21, 2012 11:00AM - “Yes, the all-or-nothing
mindset is really hard to get
over. I
find it applies
in…”
March 20, 2012 06:26PM
Ann Gelder's Links
AUGUST 16, 2012 5:35PM
Counting minutes, not words?
Via the PEN Center,
Aimee Bender writes a nice piece on the importance of routine
and structure for writers. Probably more people will be wowed by
the information that she used to write in a closet. But I'm more
interested in the fact that she sets a time limit, as opposed…
AUGUST 14, 2012 4:58PM
Is silence golden?
Insert usual excuses for not blogging here.
Plus:
I have been wondering lately about this whole imperative to say stuff on the Internet as often as possible. Where does this very recent, overwhelmingly powerful requirement to write in public come from? I think it's safe to say it comes from corporation…
Plus:
I have been wondering lately about this whole imperative to say stuff on the Internet as often as possible. Where does this very recent, overwhelmingly powerful requirement to write in public come from? I think it's safe to say it comes from corporation…
JULY 31, 2012 11:39AM
Riffing and dwelling
I have *so* not been blogging. Obviously. As I recently learned
from
a highly scientific test, I am a creature of routine (but no
less fascinating for being one!). When my routine is thrown off,
say by lots of paying work, which, I hasten once again to add, is a
very,…
JULY 17, 2012 7:33PM
Advertising, fiction, and Mad Men
So I recently figured out that people want the same thing from
advertising as they do from fiction: an emotional experience. In
advertising, that experience is designed to spur you to buy, or at
least think favorably, about a product or service--which may or may
not be an admirable goal. In…
JULY 11, 2012 3:55PM
Introverts unite! (No, wait, not so close ...)
Susan Cain's
book about introversion made quite a splash in January, and the
ripples are still going strong. Her work came back to my attention
recently, as I've been doing some consulting for schools that help
children "come out of their shells." There's much to be said for
teaching introverts to…
JULY 5, 2012 8:05PM
I am the grumpiest optimist I know
Having weighed in on
busyness the other day, I thought I'd take a crack at
"optimism."
This article, too, is from the NYT. It's by Jane Brody, who I
generally think is a good person and a purveyor of useful advice,
although the chirpy puritanism of her columns always puts me…
JULY 2, 2012 6:19PM
"I am the laziest ambitious person I know."
I very much enjoyed Tim Kreider's piece on
busyness in yesterday's NYT. Mostly because it validates me,
and the many hours I spend draped on the couch, with or without a
cat on my sternum. I am valuable! I have insights, not despite but
because of my staggering capacity for sloth!…
JUNE 21, 2012 10:45AM
Not dead
... just working a lot and traveling. Occasionally tweeting. I took
a test and discovered that I am a creature of routine and an
introvert, and also very much like Johnny Depp. And Mary Poppins.
Other than that, not much news.
I hope to resume some form of regular blogging next week.
I hope to resume some form of regular blogging next week.
…
JUNE 5, 2012 4:27PM
Mystery novels and the mystery of death
I expect to return many times to this nearly twenty-year-old
interview
with Don DeLillo in The Paris Review. It basically
answers all my questions about writing and validates what I thought
were some of my worst tendencies, especially in relation to
character. So it's awesome!
But today I want to dwel…
But today I want to dwel…
MAY 29, 2012 12:17PM
"Show, don't tell" and hoarding
I spent the past two days purging old clothes from my closets. I
hauled five bags of stuff off to Goodwill, and upon returning home,
I felt ... awful. My sense is that one is supposed to feel
liberated on such occasions, and also not a little holy for
contributing to…
MAY 22, 2012 3:11PM
Personification enlivens abstraction
Here's another thing writing teachers always tell us: Be concrete.
Use words that create images in the reader's mind; make them feel
or hear or see or smell something specific. (Smell is an especial
favorite.) This dictum is a variation of the dreaded "Show, don't
tell," and, like its counterpart, it…
MAY 14, 2012 5:37PM
Flashbacks in fiction: Do they suck?
A writing teacher once told me that you should resist including
flashbacks in your fiction at all costs. If you absolutely must add
a flashback, each one can be no more than three lines (or was it
sentences? Lines, probably, because with sentences you could cheat,
spinning out subordinate clauses for…
I've been dipping into George Saunders's essays in The Braindead
Megaphone. I've always admired Saunders as a writer of the kind
of surreal, hilarious, and deeply sad fiction I wish I could come
up with myself. But man, can he rock an essay.
I suppose that what makes his fiction great is…
I suppose that what makes his fiction great is…
MAY 3, 2012 11:40AM
Just a little more on 2666
...because I'm obsessed, still hung over, grasping at the fading
glimmers this novel's explosion left in my psyche.
I came across this piece, In the Labyrinth: A User's Guide to Bolaño, on the New Yorker web site. Now, I actually receive the New Yorker at my home on a mostly regular basis,…
I came across this piece, In the Labyrinth: A User's Guide to Bolaño, on the New Yorker web site. Now, I actually receive the New Yorker at my home on a mostly regular basis,…
APRIL 27, 2012 11:02AM
Speaking of large, sprawling novels...
While we're on the subject of
large, sprawling novels, why can't I think of any by women? Is
there a female DFW, Dostoevsky, Melville, Tolstoy, or
Bolaño? There is, right? Am I just drawing a blank,
or is this really some kind of guy thing?
Middlemarch, maybe? Anne Rice doesn't count. I'm…
Middlemarch, maybe? Anne Rice doesn't count. I'm…
APRIL 24, 2012 12:08PM
Must the Great Novel be large, sprawling, frantic, and a bit of a mess?
No, I didn't disappear under a pile of fennel, but of work...which
is like fennel, in that it is tough and large and sometimes hard to
cut through, but very good roasted.
In addition, I have been racing to finish
Roberto Bolaño's 2666, because I took it out
of the library, and… Read full post »
APRIL 12, 2012 4:08PM
Instead of fiction, fennel
Not really feeling the literary life today; not sure why, but allow
me to compensate by talking about fennel! It's awesome! Yeah, that
stuff that grows in huge clumps along the freeway here in Northern
California is just the best thing ever, roasted or sauteed. Nor
does one need to park…
APRIL 10, 2012 12:05PM
An adverb of note
From
time to time I like to say something nice about adverbs.
Stephen King has said the road to hell is paved with them, and no
one knows the way to perdition better than King. And it's true that
writers often employ adverbs for the sole purpose of shoring up
weak…
APRIL 3, 2012 6:52PM
A toned-down rant on education, with bonus crackpot theory
So this is very cool.
It's TED Curator Chris Anderson's animated talk, "Questions No One Knows the Answers To." Are kids everywhere watching this? And adults as well? I hope so.
As I have mentioned, I went to an excellent public school and had a presumably excellent science education therein. Yet never/…
It's TED Curator Chris Anderson's animated talk, "Questions No One Knows the Answers To." Are kids everywhere watching this? And adults as well? I hope so.
As I have mentioned, I went to an excellent public school and had a presumably excellent science education therein. Yet never/…
MARCH 27, 2012 6:21PM
Freaks and Geeks and mining your childhood
We just watched Episode Fifteen of the eighteen total episodes of
Freaks and Geeks. As we near the end, it's all starting to
seem darker and sadder, because we know there will never be any
more episodes, ever, and also because the later episodes explore
darker themes (addiction, accidental pet death,…
MARCH 22, 2012 3:53PM
The Hound of the Baskervilles: Pwned by Holmes
So, three weeks ago precisely, I wrote a
terribly excited post about how Holmes and
Watson had accidentally allowed their client, Henry
Baskerville, to be killed! And it was really cool, because, see,
Conan Doyle had introduced this really troubling moral dimension to
the whole sleuthing business, an…
MARCH 20, 2012 1:13PM
For the love of the flawed novel
From Emily St. John Mandel's review of
Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker on The Millions:
It seems so to me, as well. Part of what I love about The Brothers Karamazov, for instance, is the sense that its…
[I]t seems to me that there’s something magnificent about sprawling and ever-so-slightly flawed novels.
It seems so to me, as well. Part of what I love about The Brothers Karamazov, for instance, is the sense that its…
MARCH 19, 2012 12:36PM
A brief but passionate rant about education
I break my usual Monday silence to share some thoughts that came to
me after reading this
article. Its overall point is that homeschooling must be more
closely regulated. While the author, Kristin Rawls, acknowledges
that few formal studies have been done on the matter, anecdotal
evidence suggests ma…
MARCH 15, 2012 12:30PM
Justice and the satisfying ending
Today's writing lesson is nominally about Hound of the
Baskervilles. But since I haven't read any further from last
week, I will have to speak about Larger Issues as opposed to
specific literary techniques. For example, the matter of justice:
What does fiction have to do with it? Can it bring…
MARCH 13, 2012 12:03PM
Staying in touch with your writing
Over the last few weeks I've been fairly consumed with editing
work. Which is good! Very, very good! But it has left me a tad
depleted on the verbal front, not to mention reluctant to spend any
more time in front of a computer screen than necessary. So I didn't
work…
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