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Review of All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthyPosted by John Woodington on January 20th, 2012

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a really beautiful novel. As always, McCarthy’s prose are phenomenal and engrossing. In all honesty, Blood Meridian is a far superior novel to this one, and I think that has something to do with themes explored in each work. This novel is about freedom and love and heartbreak and desperation, whereas Blood Meridian is about violence and human nature and eternity. For some reason the themes in Blood Meridian carry more weight than the ones in All The Pretty Horses.

That’s not to say this isn’t a great novel in its own right. It is. If I had read this before Blood Meridian, I think I would find this to be one of the best novels I’ve read. It appealed the the younger, freer spirit in me, which I found refreshing.

Looking forward to The Crossing, which I started the day after I finished this one.

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(Fake) Subtropics Rejection LetterPosted by John Woodington on January 13th, 2012

Everyone.  It’s Friday.  It’s Friday the 13th.  How are we still alive?  I can’t believe we’ve survived it this far.

I received this rejection letter from the esteemed publication Subtropics yesterday evening.  I had sent them a short story, which I think is pretty darn good.  The Editors at Subtropics disagreed, and sent me the following rejection:

John,

No.

The Editors

Can you believe how curt that is?  I mean, sheesh.  I sent them 5,000 words.  The least they could do was send me a subject, verb, and object.

Okay.  That’s not the real rejection letter.  I just wanted to put that there for all you superstitious writers out there who think that the whole publishing industry is against you.  It isn’t.  Publishers don’t hate you.  They just hate your work.

Here is the real rejection letter from Subtropics:

Sincerely,

The Editors

Ice Fishing and Story FlailingPosted by John Woodington on January 10th, 2012

Well, I’m working on a short story right now, and it’s at that crappy stage where I think it has some gumption, but I know I will have to expend a ton of mental energy to figure out why this story needs telling.  I hate that part.  It’s the most important part of writing, so I know I’ll have to do it at some point, but I’m just not ready for it.

In order to delay this troubling-yet-eventually-rewarding work I went ice fishing with my cousin and my uncle.  The fishing ended up being a moderately harrowing story of its own.

Reasons that ice fishing was pretty fricken’ harrowing:

• The ice is kinda thin around here, on account of the crappy warm weather.
• The ice we fished on kept cracking and popping every few seconds, and shifting under my feet when I stood out on the ice to pee:
  

  The ice cracking under me.

• Luckily, I had a magical golden Bottlefish to keep me company in my icehouse:
  

  The ellusive Bottlefish (which is only ellusive until you go to any liquor store in the state).

• Then, after much hard work nursing various Bottlefish back to health, I caught a pretty sweet Bluegill:
  

  A loner Bluegill who is now in my belly.

• Then the moon came up and we were forced to head in for the night as the cover of dark can be hazardous on the frozen lakes of Minnesota:
  

  The moon rising up like it has any choice. And my tip-up there, not catching any pike at this time.

• We went in for the night, filleted the fish we’d caught, ate them (because warriors gain ethereal strength from devouring their defeated adversaries), and then proceeded to lie about giant fish which we had not in fact seen, and wouldn’t have seen anyway, because by the end of the day we’d gotten WAY too carried away with the four-wheeler on the frozen lake surface, and dang it if that wasn’t a friggin blast in its own right.
• Then we went home and our dog was so overjoyed to see us that he fell promptly asleep:
  

  I totally don't care you guys were gone ice fishing.

So now that I’m back, I’ll have to figure out that story and how it’s supposed to go.  Or maybe I’ll just keep ice fishing all winter and do my darndist to accomplish nothing.

Review of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthyPosted by John Woodington on January 3rd, 2012

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the only book I’ve read that compares to the greatness of Moby-Dick. The prose are unmatched, the violence is brutal, and the depth of this story is bottomless. I feel like I could go back and read through this novel again and still be awestruck by the violence and beauty of every page. Not only does McCarthy deliver a page-turning plot, but he dives into the meaning of war and violence, and how they are formed out of the nature of man.

This book easily jumps into my top-ten all time greatest books, and reaffirms my belief that McCarthy is writing on a level unmatched by any other writer alive today.

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The Epoch Rejection Letter, with a heart-felt comment on therePosted by John Woodington on December 16th, 2011

Happy Friday, Earth.  Except for all you Earth people in that part of the Earth where it is already Saturday.  F you.  And by “F” I mean, “Wow, isn’t that Fun for you?!”

Seriously, that’s what I meant.

I received this rejection letter from esteemed literary journal Epoch, which is published out of Cornell University.  And let me just say that those boys and girls over at Cornell have a lot of heart.  I mean, check out the kind note they wrote on my rejection letter:

D’you see that?  “Sorry.”  They are sorry that they can’t publish my story.  They read my short story and thought, “Dude.  This is some great fiction right here.  It is truly beautiful.  I think we should publish it.  What?  What!  We can’t?  We have to reject it?  Oh.  Oh no.  Well, I’ll write out the rejection letter.  I’ll give this guy a lot of praise for his prose.  What?  What!  I can only write one word on the rejection letter?  All right.  There’s only one word I can think of to say in this tragic situation.

“Sorry.”

And no, for all the skeptics out there (i.e. Erin, Evan, Don Delillo, my mom, the entire editorial staff of Epoch, Jesse Ventura, etc.) I am most definitely NOT reading too much into this single word written on the rejection letter.

So you can just forget that shizzle right now.  Ya heard?

The Cimarrom Review Rejection Letter and J.K. Rowling the NinjaPosted by John Woodington on December 13th, 2011

I received this rejection letter in the mail yesterday, and found it just beautiful enough to post here.  It’s from the wonderful literary journal The Cimarron Review out of Oklahoma State University, and it looks a little something like this:

Hard to argue with a rejection letter that has wheat on it, naw mean?  In terms of sheer size, this thing is pretty small, which is good, because I ran out of big SASE envelopes and had to send out some smaller, less professional-looking ones for a few submissions I made this month.  This letter fit perfectly into the smaller envelope.

I got a comment a while back that I shouldn’t post these rejection letters, and that famous authors like J.K. Rowling don’t post their rejection letters on their websites, because they don’t receive them, and that I should refrain from posting them because it will give the impression that I, too, am not receiving them.

But that would be straight up hogwarts.

Wait.  Did I say “hogwarts?”  I meant “hogwash.”  Who in their right mind would say something as crazy as “hogwarts?”

“It’s not crazy.”

“Ah!  J.K. Rowling!  What the H are you doing here?”

J.K. Rowling: “I heard you speak ill of Hogwarts.”

Me: “Man, you ninja’d in here like smoke, girl.  And I didn’t speak ill of hogwarts.  I just misspoke.  I wouldn’t ever speak unkindly of someone who suffered from warts so badly that they had to be referred to as ‘hogwarts.’”

J.K. Rowling: “It’s not a medical condition.  It is a magical castle/school/thing.”

Me: “That sounds really cool.  Not.”

J.K. Rowling: “It is really cool.  And it made me rich beyond both of our combined wildest dreams.  So you can just suck it.”

Me:  “Oh yeah?  Well you look like Garth from Wayne’s World”:

Yeah.  Eat it.  How’s lunch?

Glimmer Train Honorable MentionPosted by John Woodington on November 29th, 2011

I received a wonderful email to day from the fine editors of Glimmer Train, informing me that my short story “Reunion” had been selected for honorable mention in their September Fiction Open competition.  What this means is that my story made it into the top 5% of all of the submissions they received for the competition, of which there were over a thousand.

So that’s pretty awesome.

Here’s the cool page they put together announcing the list of Honorable Mentions:

2011-Sep-FO-HONORABLE-MENTION-list[1]

My name is the last one on the list, because “Woodington” often comes last when things are listed in alphabetical order.

Thanks to Glimmer Train for the wonderful honor.  I’ll definitely continue to submit work their in the future.

Review of Melville: His World and Work by Andrew DelbancoPosted by John Woodington on November 25th, 2011

Melville: His World and Work by Andrew Delbanco

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Delbanco does a great job of placing Melville in the time and place in which he lived, and shows how his personal milieu contributed to his ideas and his fiction and poetry. Particularly interesting is Melville’s personal struggle with his desire to believe in God, and recent findings in his day and age which pointed to a lack of God’s existence.

The sections of this books center around Melville’s major works, Moby-Dick, “Bartelby: The Scrivner,” and Billy Budd. Delbanco shows with exacting detail why these stories not only stand the test of time, but also stand as some of the greatest literary creations in American history.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves Melville’s writing, or anyone who doesn’t understand why they should love Melville’s writing.

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And the Nominees Are…Mostly Women, Which is FinePosted by John Woodington on November 18th, 2011

It’s Friday, which means I am really in need of a nap.  Our wiener dog Penny is recovering well from her surgery, though maybe a little too well.  We left her home alone with our other wiener dog, Oscar, for the first time this week.  We gated her up in the guest room so that she and Oscar wouldn’t play together (we left Oscar downstairs).

Apparently Penny didn’t like that, and instead of sleeping peacefully upstairs, she chewed a wiener-dog-sized hole through the gate.  Then she leapt two more gates on the stairs.

Not good.

But she’s still doing well, and I’m glad for that.

I read a pretty interesting article in Slate the other day about the nominees for the National Book Award, the majority of which are women.  This, apparently, has not been the case until just recently.  I always find these discussion fascinating because a subset of readers usually reads some level of discrimination (or reparation for discrimination) into the reasoning behind the genders of the nominees.  My feeling is the National Book Award people are probably just trying to pick the best writing, and they undoubtedly don’t take gender into account.  It isn’t an award meant to further a politically correct agenda.  It’s an award meant to reward and recognize excellence.

My congratulations to the nominees (even though I haven’t read any of them).

Incidentally, if anyone from the National Book Award nominations committee is reading this, I’d be very glad to be nominated for your prestigious award.  I saw the pics of that banquet y’all throw for the nominees, and I would love to be a part of anything that involves free food.

Just sayin’.