SALLIS UPDATE: James Sallis is serving as the judge for this year's Wyoming Arts Council creative writing fellowships in fiction. He also will read form his work at the fellowship reading Oct. 1 at the Casper College Literary Conference. As you peruse Sallis's web site, you may be intimidated by the scores of books and articles he's written. He professes no magic formula, just some simple rules for writing: "Put your butt in the chair. Don't look down." But this noir writer also has a playful side, a sense of humor, a guy who likes surprises. In a Writing Life column on Web Del Sol, Sallis writes: "Often, asked what my major literary influences are, I respond, only half joking, 'science fiction and horror movies of the fifties.' It's true. Their proletarianism, the undercurrents of political and social themes, their mistrust of government and of received wisdom, their demotic nature and simultaneous insistence that the phenomenal world was not the true or only world; these all marked and in many ways formed me. I went right from Them! and The Thing from Another World to Richard Matheson and Robert Heinlein, from This Island Earth to Dickens and John O'Hara, from Forbidden Planet to Hemingway and Faulkner." Here's something else, an admission that might help Wyoming writers as they assemble their manuscripts for the fellowship competition: "Another statement I frequently make in interviews is that some years back I wearied of the well-made story and began improvising, improvising the way a musician does, sketching out the theme, then going where the story takes me. Surprise for the writer, the very joy of discovery, would become discovery and surprise for the reader." Find full article here.
- posted by Michael Shay @ 1:56 PM