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Sharon: yes! and heels. can i tell you two of my favorite things she said? i typed them up.
Mark: yes!
Sharon: On writing: "I write for myself. I write the story to make it exist in the world."
Sharon: On relationships: "I don't have an opinion on love. I just know that sometimes people throw away good, loving relationships. And sometimes they should have."
Mark: yeah, those're great
Sharon: i could NOT STOP STARING AT DEBORAH TREISMAN'S GLITTERING WEDDING RING. it blinded me, mark. but i thought she was an incredibly good interviewer and very sensitive about her follow-up q's... it flowed so well.
Mark: huh. she's hella married, apparently. i bet she has a flower behind the "taken" ear most times... treisman did a good job, i thought, starting with her biography, it informs a lot of stuff. especially the being a creative person in a practical place, which tends to be the case with a lot of artist/observers, it seems. (a phrase that shows up in both "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" and in one of the memoir-y bits in Castle Rock is a white-collar literary person thinking that a tacky, hardscrabble woman is intimidating because she must be "good in a crisis"... which seems a pretty fair way of thinking about how both the small-town people and the Girl Who Got Out can be both condescending and condescended to)
Sharon: it's nice to know that alice is juliet, basically
Mark: yes, it is. did you go up to her with your copy of Runaway, speaking of?
Sharon: no, i did not. i didn't see her afterwards...
Sharon: but after malcolm gladwell...well let's just say he was mobbed by girls my age attacking him with pens and their free copies of Blink
Mark: ha
Sharon: i hovered on the fringes and scurried away
Mark: i am so the opposite of surprised to hear that. what did you think of the questions put by the audience to our alice?
Sharon: i thought they were very thoughtful, and there was a point where i will presume to think deborah treisman and i were smiling over the same thing, which was that the lines to the mic were all girls in their 20s. we are alice's posse, yo
Mark: i know, it was fascinating.
Sharon: what did you think about what she said re not being able to build up a thick skin, even after all these years?
Mark: i was thinking i wish people would occasionally, just occasionally, ask writers if they pay much attention to good press. especially given as alice chalks so much of her process up to intuition, i wonder what she thinks of close readers of the meaning and implications of individual storytelling choices -- does she put much stock in that, et cetera. but i do think that makes sense, to take criticism too seriously, given that she's still in awe of those Serious Novel Writers
Sharon: definitely... there's just something about that, the fact that it still bothers her, and yet she attempted to give up writing and be "normal" but wasn't capable. that and the fact that she revises and revises -- the anecdote about how she'll somehow know herself what isn't working, and rework the page without being told and pages back to Treisman...
Mark: yeah, i was interested in the revision, and also in her statement that she doesn't go back and read old stuff very much -- the implication being that it'd occur to her how she could have done it better (I'm generally embarrassed by the apparent naivete and infelicitous style of anything i've written not within the last six months, so i can only imagine what somebody with her lifelong project of knowing people thinks of the silly young woman she must have been to write such and such a thing all those decades and experiences ago)
Sharon: i feel the same way about my writing
Mark: yeah. which is sort of the point of the whole thing, innit? (feeling the same way, i mean)
Sharon: yes.

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In the current issue of the L, we draw your attention to a reading tonight, at the Cornelia Street Cafe, for the anthology Submerged: Tales from the Basin, a book comprised of stories (real and made-up) and art by two-dozen-plus women in response to Hurricane Katrina, with a percentage of proceeds benefitting relief efforts. Well, with the whoo-hoo less catastrophic than it might have been Hurricane Gustav still causing flooding and keeping people exiled from their homes, it may perhaps behoove you to look again at what you might do to assist the recovery of New Orleans, either via this anthology and reading, or the usual channels.

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Yeah, we at the L are of the opinion that the Beijing Olympics are, ultimately, shameful, but they've created/brought attention to a really fascinating social and political moment. (Moment? Preview of coming attractions?) To that end, in a pretty specific rejoinder to the smoothed-over pageantry of the Olympics, the PEN American Center is hosting a pretty big reading, Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China, at the New School tonight. Blockquote because it's pretty straightforward:

Edward Albee, Russell Banks, Philip Gourevitch, Jessica Hagedorn, Hari Kunzru, Rick Moody, Martha Southgate, Francine Prose, and others will read new and previously untranslated statements and writings by several of the jailed writers and other dissidents and members of the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

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So by now you've maybe had a chance to look over our Summer Fiction Issue, and enjoyed the stories and all that. Or maybe you haven't but are curious. Well, dig: come to the KGB Bar at 7pm for a reading of stories from the issue. Ed Park will be there to read Variations on Original Sin; April Wilder will be there to read Bring the Heat.

And, because three is a magic number, we'll be filling out the roster of the reading with Distinguished Literary Upstart Spokesjudge, New Yorker editor, author and writer of topical musical theater Mr. Ben Greeman.

So you should come to KGB tonight and have some vodka-flavored vodka with us.

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Hey guess what, what, no guess, but I have no idea, come on guess anyway, ok um The L's Summer Fiction Issue comes out on Wednesday maybe ... what did I get it, you said you had no idea, no really I just took a stab in the dark, yeah right, why are you so pouty just because I guess right, I'm not pouty, this isn't about my guessing it right this is about something deeper isn't it?

Anyway, yeah, The L's third annual Summer Fiction Issue comes out this Wednesday, featuring brand sparkly new stories by Benjamin Percy, Ed Park and several others, along with Literary Upstart winner Lauren Wilkinson. (The other two finalists will have their stories here at thelmagazine.com.) It is really exciting for us, maybe even for you.

Also exciting is the fact that the day after the issue comes out, so this Thursday, we'll be having a reading at KGB Bar, featuring stories from the issue. Ed Park (author of the new novel Personal Days and a co-founder of The Believer) will be reading, as will fellow contributor April Wilder (whose work has appeared in McSweeeney's and elsewhere), and, as a special guest reader, Lit Up's Distinguished Spokesjudge Ben Greenman. It will be surprisingly classy, oh will it, yes really it actually will, well that's terrific then, you really don't sound happy for me, oh no I am I just don't feel the need to jump up and down and caricature myself so that you'll feel better about yourself.

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Here's a feature that's been popping in and out lately where we share what we've been enjoying in our spare and/or professional time. Today it's what I'm reading now...

These aren't cutting-edge recommendations, but I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo, which basically defined the fiction thriller genre back in 1844, and as far as I know it's never been beat. 1,100 pages of murder, poison, jewels, passion, betrayal, suicide, and hashish. Took me about a month--never boring (except possibly the first 30 quick pages). $13.99 for days of entertainment.

Now I'm reading Deadwood, the National Book Award-winning novel by Pete Dexter that crushes the TV show it spawned. I gave that show a chance, like a 5-episode chance, and it fell flat. Mostly because of Timothy Olyphant's polished, affected strutting, his fake tan and his whitened teeth, his paper-thin tough-guy act, and the fact that he didn't swing his arms when he walked. Anyway, the book blows the TV show out of the water. The only bad part is that so far I can't get the TV characters' faces out of my mind when I read.

Both books are terrific, if you're in the market.

It's not a very hard code, actually. Here's what it is: if the article is about old people, cooking, health or animals, it will be on the list. For instance, here's today's most-emailed list:

1. Cookies
2. Cookies
3. Listening to people
4. Husbands
5. Buying food
6. The trouble with playing in the grass
7. Health food
8. I almost had a heart attack
9. Pets
10. I should have done a better job with my elderly parents

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For some heartwarmth this evening, WQXR hosts (including Jeff Sturgeon, who wakes me up so pleasantly each morning) will be reading Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol at The Strand at 6pm. Bring your children, bring your friends, bring your friends who are children.

There will also be wine and cheese afterward, as well as Liz Thorpe, author of Murray's Cheese Handbook, signing that book.

To get you in the mood, here's the famous end of that story. Spoiler alert!

"A merry Christmas, Bob," said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!