This episode finds Ben fresh off the campaign trail. But while the election might have left him feeling weary and picked apart, he’s got nothing on the kid in Adam Lefton’s story “Animals.” (P.S. Nobody tell him that Jon just got elected to office without even running.)
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Reading Discussed
- Adam Lefton’s story “Animals” is available, in its entirety, over at Pank.
- Jon likens the Lefton piece to work by Russell Edson and James Tate, godfathers of the American prose poem.
- Raymond Chandler’s advice: When your plot is flagging, have a guy with a gun walk into the room. (But did he actually say this?)
- Jon sees a connection between more journalistic fiction writing and the rise of blank verse in poetry, as detailed in The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.
- When browsing material to teach in creative writing classes, look no further than the stories in the WITTScast archive.
- Maybe he’ll never be a docent at MoMA, but Ben can certainly go toe-to-toe with anyone on Kazimir Malevich, whose stylistic progress mirrored James Joyce’s march from Dubliners to Finnegan’s Wake.
- Catch Jon and 24 other writers at the Books & Beer Brew-ho-ho at Hardywood Brewery in Richmond on December 14!