Leaving the Atocha Station, by Ben Lerner, came out in 2011 on Minneapolis’ own Coffeehouse Press and everybody liked it. And they were right–it’s actually really good new fiction. I’m mo...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/three-thoughts-on-leaving-the-atocha-station/
Savage Detectives I had been told that my novel reminded a reader of Savage Detectives. After reading it that’s praise I think I’d prefer to avoid. What happens in Savage Detectives is the fo...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/talking-shit-about-famous-novels-dec-jan/
Drape-a-Drapes (sp?), Your comment on BJJ’s facebook yesterday morning offered me exactly the worst/best kind of challenge: an irresistibly delightful topic about which I know precisely nothing...
Smothered in surmise
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/unpublishables-1-hard-to-look-right/
Motherless Brooklyn is a novel from 1999 by a writer named Jonathan Lethem. In the first pages of the novel a small-time Brooklyn gangster called Frank Minna comes to an unhappy end. The remainde...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/three-thoughts-on-motherless-brooklyn/
Inspired by a new friend named Esme, I recently read Salinger’s late novellas—Franny and Zooey; the Carpenters/Seymour diptych. I discovered afterwards that I had inadvertently done something...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/three-thoughts-on-jd-salinger/
I read a Raymond Carver book recently. Here are three thoughts and an explanation. The Second-Most-Interesting Character ‘Collectors:’ An unemployed man is visited by a vacuum cleaner salesma...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/three-thoughts-on-raymond-carver/
A good friend texted on hurricane Friday, reassuring me she was prepared: “I bought some unperishables. And boots.” How perfectly natural—we had been hearing for days how important it was t...
In 2002, a biomedical engineering student at Case Western Reserve released a 10-track album of sampled music entitled Secret Diary. It was not a success. Amazon’s customers have blessed it with...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/predestination-gt-2/
You’ll have seen the picture: in the midst of a throng of dancing people is a single white man, often shirtless. Perhaps he has a beard, perhaps not. If there is no beard there is certainly his...
https://amcorley.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/authenticity-gt-1/