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Fascinating article by Robert McCrum in the Sunday Observer (”The masterpiece that killed George Orwell“):

On Jura he would be liberated from these distractions but the promise of creative freedom on an island in the Hebrides came with its own price. Years before, in the essay “Why I Write”, he had described the struggle to complete a book: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist or [sic] understand. For all one knows that demon is the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s personality.” Then that famous Orwellian coda. “Good prose is like a window pane.”

In one minute and nine seconds:

It seems odd to quote my own blog post, but I never find the time to get all my different projects widgetized. I blog almost daily at Likely Stories and tweet almost hourly (well, it seems like it, anyway) on Twitter. So those are good places to check for more frequent updates, should you desire them. (The Designated Drinker site is under reconstruction; apparently the software I was running was too primitive to survive the latest php upgrades at Bluehost.) At any rate, here’s what I wrote yesterday, reflecting on the death of J. G. Ballard:

After paying some bills last night, I clicked “headlines” on my browser bar and saw that J. G. Ballard had died. There’s no shortage of news about this now, but as many of the obits seem to focus on his role as an influencer (see “Author J. G. Ballard dies after lengthy illness,” by Ben Hoyle, Times), I’ll add a few words about Ballard’s influence on me.

Which makes sense, because it’s spring. Still weeding the old stack of papers (will anyone say that a generation from now?) I came across the August 1, 2005 issue of the New Yorker, which my brother Sean had given me, folded back to George Saunders’ short story “Commcomm.” It’s about a government flack and I wish I had written it and you absolutely must read it. It’s brilliant.

Tuesday morning, Jillian from Disasters calls. Apparently an airman named Loolerton has poisoned a shitload of beavers. I say we don’t kill beavers, we harvest them, because otherwise they nibble through our Pollution Control Devices (P.C.D.s) and polluted water flows out of our Retention Area and into the Eisenhower Memorial Wetland, killing beavers.

My most recent book, One Nation, Under God, is now available in paperback. If you’ve been worried about the state of the beleaguered book-publishing industry, buying books is the perfect bailout: unlike your assistance to Wall Street, you’ll actually get something in return for your money. Even better, I promise not to give myself a multi-million-dollar bonus at the end of the year.

As always, I urge you to support your neighborhood bookstore. (After-Words, The Book Cellar, and Fact & Fiction are three excellent choices.) If you’re one of those unlucky people without a neighborhood bookstore, buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell’s. Your purchase is a vote of confidence for the continued production of quality American fiction by yours truly.

Weeding a stack of papers and articles the other day, I came across something I’d clipped from the November 2007 Atlantic. In “The Future of the American Idea,” the magazine’s editors asked various contributors to share extremely concise thoughts on, well, the future of the “American Idea.” Some were good, some were bad–the whole exercise seemed a little stagey–but David Foster Wallace hit it out of the park in “Just Asking“:

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Yet another reason to miss Wallace.

My Fellow Americans received a very nice mention as one of Rick Roche’s “Books That Matter 2008.” Finding my name on a list that includes Sherman Alexie, Kurt Vonnegut, Nathan Englander, and Jhumpa Lahiri makes me swell with pride. Thanks, Rick!

Over lunch I read Juan Villoro’s short story, “Mariachi,” which will be published in February in Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction (Dalkey Archive).

It. Is. Hilarious.

It’s not too rare that I read a story I wish I’d written myself–but I rarely wish I could steal it and put it in my own in-progress collection. Villoro doesn’t seem to have been translated into English much, but I’m hoping to find more.

My dear friend Allen, who I miss a lot, was invited to go sailing on Long Island Sound (hard G, please). He sent me this photo, captioned, “what the well-appointed luxury sailing yacht wears on its navigation table.”

I love it.

So, if you happen to be in Western Montana this weekend, come to Missoula for the Montana Festival of the Book. It looks like it’s going to be a good one. I will be in exceptionally good company, as you can see:

Friday, October 24
2:30 p.m.
Crime Pays Panel
w/Peter Bowen, Alafair Burke, Craig Johnson, and Neil McMahon
Holiday Inn Ballroom A/B

Saturday, October 25
2:30 p.m.
Reading
w/Neil McMahon and Craig Johnson
Holiday Inn Yellowstone/Glacier

You can find the full schedule of events here.