The Upper West Side's Metro Diner is fast becoming my favorite place to eavesdrop over breakfast. There is always some boisterously opinionated writer or professor or loudmouth who stepped out of a late-seventies Woody Allen film to pontificate over five rounds of coffee and plates of bacon to his mild-mannered and mostly silent companion.
I always carry a book with me, but the neighboring monologue never fails to prove more arresting. The pontificator is generally someone who, if cast in a movie, would be flawlessly portrayed by Wallace Shawn. His tone is typically one of controlled outrage, along the lines of "how can no one but me understand the absurdity of this situation?" And the voice is significantly louder than the average level of conversation in the vicinity, like some sort of innate PR tactic, sharing his brilliance with those who can't help but choose to listen to this windblown Socrates.
This is precisely the sort of eccentric character a transient from a small town expects to find inhabiting a quintessential New York City diner, and the effect is not unlike listening to a well-informed but kooky conspiracy theorist who can't help but impress you with the range of his imagination. In other words, prime entertainment. What fascinates me most is the impression that this person shares a similar, but not entirely identical, universe as me, and I wonder what it's like for him.
27 February 2010
Socrates at the Diner
26 February 2010
20 February 2010
Writers Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules
Ten rules for writing fiction from The Guardian.
I heavily disagree with Elmore Leonard's rule #3 - Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. When I read an author whose dialogue attributes are long strings of "said... said... said..." the monotony makes me irritable. "Is that the only word this @#&% writer knows?" I grumble. As a reader I register it as a sign of an author's limitations. I understand why going overboard on attributes is to be discouraged, just as going overboard on practically anything is. But why on earth would you advise someone to "not" use their imagination? Plus it's not particularly economical if you wish to squeeze the most mileage out of the least amount of words.
On the other hand I must concur with Roddy Doyle's rule #6 - Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Despite their detractors, thesauri are top notch vocabulary builders. Even if you don't find the appropriate word you're looking for at the time, you often stumble upon a few sparklers to jot down for future use.
19 February 2010
Piccolo
There's not much I appreciate more than a storefront that lets me pretend I'm in vintage-era New York. They're still around if you know where to look.
