Marcopocast: The Frank Marcopolos Podcast, with Frank Marcopolos

Saturday Show #22, The Austin Writing Group Podcast Episode 11. Relevant Links and Various Show Notes: Robert Coover Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Pan’s Labyrinth The Talkative Corpse by Ann K. Sterzinger Almost Home by Frank Marcopolos The Domain, ATX * Topics discussed: ~ Flaky girl-texts ~ The Domain, Austin TX ~ Metafiction, Fabulation, and Postmodernism: The Marriage Made in Hell ~ EVERYTHING in a story being subjective, including plot, characters, time, setting ~ Turning traditional storytelling on its head ~ Tight stories told in disjointed narratives ~ “Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl” as a lesson in subtlety ~ Theme vs. Message ~ The necessity of visceral details ~ Orienting the reader in a world s/he’s not familiar with ~ Army black ops

Relevant Links and Various Show Notes and Such: Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood The Talkative Corpse: A Love Letter by Ann K. Sterzinger The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson James M. Cain collection of stories Almost Home by Frank Marcopolos Ben Greenman’s Daily Beast Whine-Fest *** ~ Nostalgia as a theme, and how nostalgia changes memories. ~ Unreliability of human memory/the human brain. ~ Character likeability and dialogue as reader hooks. ~ The importance of correct details. ~”Slice of life” stories as learning tools. ~ Working themes in a story as ACTION, in a narrative element. ~ Foreshadowing: How not to do it. ~ Organic vs. Manipulated Themes. ~ Raising the stakes. ~ Backstory details revealed through character decisions. ~ Post-modern motto: “The truth is UNKNOWABLE.” True or false? ~ Lenny in “Memento” as an everyman. ~ Whining in modern literature.

Saturday Show #20, The Austin Writing Group, Episode 9. Relevant Links and Various Show Notes and Such: “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J.D. Salinger “The Talkative Corpse” by Ann K. Sterzinger “Almost Home” by Frank Marcopolos Topics: ~ The influence of Hunter S. Thompson on the culture, writers, and journalism. ~ “Think Pieces” in journalism. Long dead or still alive? ~ Magazine editors working WITH fiction writers on their stories (as the New Yorker editors did with Salinger’s “Bananafish” story.) ~ Amount of critical attention stories by writers like Salinger and Hemingway get vs. other writers. ~ Sophomoric themes. ~ Theme vs. Message. ~ Dialogue as a HOOK. ~ Specificity of details: When they work and when they don’t. ~ “Themeless artworks” ~ “The Magus” by John Fowles

In episode 19 of Saturday Show Podcast, Frank ponders whether Ernest Hemingway was a sexist and a racist. Also, too, what have post-modernism, MFA degrees, and professional writing workshops done to our literature? Ernest Hemingway didn’t have a degree in writing, after all. He was a journalist. He believed in writing simply and simply writing. All this and more! The player above uses Flash. Here is the link to the show on iTunes.com. Listen and leave a review!

Swashbuckling adventures in literary fiction, continued. Saturday Show #18 Relevant Links and Show Notes: Teaching Salinger’s Nine Stories by Brad McDuffie Susan Sontag Unguided Tour by Susan Sontag

The swashbuckling techniques of the modern literary fictioneer. With jokes. Saturday Show #17-The Austin Writing Group, Episode 6. Some of the topics discussed: – The relative weight of scenes vs. “pacing” and different terminology used by different schools of writing. – Depth of theme, setting, and characters in the movie “Lost in Translation,” written and directed by Sofia Coppola. – The shift in American culture away from moralizing and into objectivism, in historical research AND literary fiction. The impact of this shift on society.

Saturday Show #16 Topics: – “Midnight in Paris” — themes, characters, Owen Wilson – The “weight” of scenes – Narrative flow – “The Contest” by Grace Paley – Noir

In episode 15 of Saturday Show, Frank covers why Jonathan Safran Foer is a “Face-ist” and a bunny rabbit murderer, traditional literary fiction versus commercial fiction, theme of the movie “As Good As It Gets” starring Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson, the dirty realism school of writing (Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Bobbie Ann Mason, et al), multi-voiced literary fiction, Ayn Rand as an example of polemic fiction, visceral details, foil characters, and much, much more!

Saturday Show Podcast #14 Topics: – Theme and message in stories, including “The Bath” and “A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver and the movie “Sideways.” – The evolution of Raymond Carver’s writing style, as evidenced by the differences in the 2 stories mentioned above. – Vonnegut-esque character descriptions. – The effect on the reader of imitating Hemingway’s style, to the point of harming your narrative flow and structure. – The Dirty Realism school of writing. – The redemption/metamorphasis of the character Miles in “Sideways” and how that contrasts to the lack of change in Jack.

From “Rock Springs” … “Sometime late in the night, after Edna was asleep, I got up and walked outside into the parking lot. It could’ve been anytime because there was still the light from the interstate frosting the low sky and the big red Ramada sign humming motionlessly in the night and no light at all in the east to indicate it might be morning. The lot was full of cars all nosed in, a couple of them with suitcases strapped to their roofs and their trunks weighed down with belongings the people were taking someplace, to a new home or a vacation resort to the mountains. I had laid in bed a long time after Edna was asleep, watching the Atlanta Braves on television, trying to get my mind off how I’d feel when I turned around and there stood Cheryl and Little Duke and no one to see about them but me alone, and that the first thing I had to do was get hold of some automobile and get the plates switched, then get them some breakfast and get us all on the road to Florida, all in the space of probably two hours, since that Mercedes would certainly look less hid in the daytime than the night, and word travels fast. I’ve always taken care of Cheryl myself as long as I’ve had her with me. None of the women ever did. Most of them didn’t even seem to like her, though they took care of me in a way so that I could take care of her. And I knew that once Edna left, all that was going to get harder. Though what I wanted most to do was not think about it just for a little while, try to let my mind go limp so it could be strong for the rest of what there was. I thought that the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the people who owned the cars that were nosed into their proper places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the trailers by the gold mine,was how well you were able to put things like this out out of your mind and not be bothered by them, and maybe, too, by how many troubles like this one you had to face in a lifetime. Through luck or design they had all faced fewer troubles, and by their own characters, they forgot them faster. And that’s what I wanted for me. Fewer troubles, fewer memories of trouble. I walked over to a car, a Pontiac with Ohio tags, one of the ones with bundles and suitcases strapped to the top and a lot more in the trunk, by the way it was riding. I looked inside the driver’s window. There were maps and paperback books and sunglasses and the little plastic holders for cans that hang on the window wells. And in the back there were kids’ toys and some pillows and a cat box with a cat sitting in it staring up at me like I was the face of the moon. It all looked familiar to me, the very same things I would have in my car if I had a car. Nothing seemed surprising, nothing different. Though I had a funny sensation at that moment and turned and looked up at the windows along the back of the motel. All were dark except two. Mine and another one. And I wondered, because it seemed funny, what would you think a man was doing if you saw him in the middle of the night looking in the windows of cars in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn? Would you think he was trying to get his head cleared? Would you think he was trying to get ready for a day when trouble would come down on him? Would you think his girlfriend was leaving him? Would you think he had a daughter? Would you think he was anybody like you?”

Saturday Show Podcast #13: Featuring an appearance by the ghost of writing groups past! (In a flow-y dress, no less.) More notes to come, when my brain is fully functioning. For now, please enjoy the audio.

Listen to a discussion about my writing critique group. Are you in a writing group? Has it been beneficial for you? Why or why not? Points made in the writing group as I discuss in the podcast: – In literary fiction, theme is NOT message. A message is: “Be nice to people; it comes back around.” A theme is: “Overcoming grief.” – Academics believe literary fiction is about questions, not answers. That, at least, there should be a polyphony of voices/ideas in a literary story, all vying for the reader’s attention and affection. – Every detail chosen to be illustrated in a story should be an extension of its theme. – Personally, I agree more with W. Somerset Maugham who said: “I want a story to have form, and I don’t see how you can give it that unless you can bring it to a conclusion that leaves no legitimate room for questioning. But even if you could bring yourself to leave the reader up in the air, you don’t want to leave yourself up in the air with him.” This goes against what most literary academics believe a literary story should do. * Characteristics of literary fiction: – Complex, literate, multi-level. Wrestles with universal dilemmas, such as “The nature of reality.” – Has Character, Plot, Style, Tone, and Pace as its vehicles. – Inner plot is often more important than outer plot. – The pace is often slow, and can dawdle longer on small details. – The style is often elegant, lyrical, and layered. – The tone is often more serious, darker than other forms of fiction. – Can be found in classic literature, often uses “dry realism,” and in the post-modern era often features experiments with narrative and structure and meta-fiction. An example of such an experiment is “In media res.” Often-cited examples of great literary writers: Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, John Barth, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike.

As part of a clever, clever marketing ploy to tease you into wanting to buy ALMOST HOME, I’ve provided an audio version of the first chapter above. I am so dang clever it hurts. It hurts every part of my body. TMI, I know. *** What’s the theme of ALMOST HOME? Why should I care about it? ALMOST HOME does an audacious thing. It takes you on a thrill-ride of a story in order to highjack your emotions. It does this so that you may feel like the main character, may go on this thrill-ride with/as him. And the goal is that by the end of the story you’ve come to realize (through the vicarious adventure) something new, exciting, and life-changing. Well, I told you it was audacious. And whether or not the novel meets this ambitious, audacious goal is entirely up to you.

As a tribute to the massive gravity of the loss of the prophet Bill Hicks, I’ve posted an excerpt from “A Widow for One Year” by John Irving in the little audio player above. “American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story” by Cynthia True. This one of my favorite parts of the book, just because of the light it sheds on how much Bill was suffering toward the end, which he tended NOT to acknowledge. Bill was a warrior and a prophet, in my less-than-humble opinion: “There was no time to idle. ‘We’re fighting an art war,’ Bill said solemnly as he leaned across the table. His eyes seemed to turn darker and the look on his face was so intense that [Stephen] Doster almost expected him to rise up off his chair. ‘And he said to me, “I do what I do so people won’t feel alone.” But there was none of this kind of self-important ‘I’ve got to save the world’ type of thing with him. He was more like the little soldier fighting the good fight.’ As they walked out to the parking lot, Bill grabbed his side. ‘You better have that checked out,’ Stephen said. ‘Oh, I have. I’m just fine,’ Bill replied. When Stephen got home, he tried to explain about the lunch to his wife, Melinda. ‘I don’t know where Bill can go from here,’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. Stephen couldn’t explain it.” * Buy AMERICAN SCREAM from Amazon here: American Scream by C. True Buy LOVE ALL THE PEOPLE, THE ESSENTIAL BILL HICKS from Amazon here: Love ALL The People * “I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love, and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.” – Bill Hicks December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994

AMBITION. Where does it begin and where does it end? Have you ever had an experience that fueled your ambition for years to come? What was it and how did it end up? These themes and MORE in “The Moment of Victory,” a short story written by O. Henry and performed by Frank Marcopolos. Listen by clicking Play on the player above. From Wikipedia: William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry’s short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–88), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833–65). They were married on April 20, 1858. When William was three, his mother died from tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the home of his paternal grandmother. As a child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dime novels; his favorite works were Lane’s translation of One Thousand and One Nights, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Porter graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porter’s elementary school in 1876. He then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to tutor him until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started working in his uncle’s drugstore and in 1881, at the age of nineteen, he was licensed as a pharmacist. At the drugstore, he also showed off his natural artistic talents by sketching the townsfolk.