My 'male to female' author ratio is 'imbalanced', to be sure. If you want to frame it that way. However, that old classic short story, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is absolutely one of the creepiest tales I've ever read. Katherine Dunn is pretty noteworthy as well. I'm sure I am forgetting sexes for some authors, as it is pretty far off my attention reticule... and, to my mind, anyway, the sex of the author doesn't need to manifest itself in the writing unless it is autobiographical. Good writing is good writing, right?

daniel robert chapman wrote:Stevie Smith

I think that I might look her stuff up after following that link. The title therein, Not Waving but Drowning did it for me. The poem itself is to my liking:

Stevie Smith - Not Waving But Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Funny, sad - cheers!

Mary Robison (read "Oh!" - it's very funny)

Mary Robison---Oh yeah. If you've yet to read Why Did I Ever, I envy you. People call it her "ADD" novel. The chapters are three or four sentences long, reminiscent of Joan Didion's "Play it As it Lays," but much funnier. "Oh" is great as well. And "Subtraction" is way underappreciated.

IceManCometh wrote:

Mary Robison (read "Oh!" - it's very funny)

Mary Robison---Oh yeah. If you've yet to read Why Did I Ever, I envy you. People call it her "ADD" novel. The chapters are three or four sentences long, reminiscent of Joan Didion's "Play it As it Lays," but much funnier. "Oh" is great as well. And "Subtraction" is way underappreciated.

Yep, loved it - as well a Subtraction. A lot of people didn't though. Check out some of the reviews on Amazon. BTW, if you're ever upset over a bad review you may have gotten, just look up your favorite book/movie/record on Amazon and I'm sure you'll find at least one 1-star review.

I've had her follow-up to WDIE on pre order for 2 YEARS now. Man, she's taking her time with that one. Hope it's worth it. Ever read any Frederick Barthelme (friend of hers, brother of Donald, writes in a similar vein)?

For her MFA, My girlfriend studied with both Mary and "Rick," as she calls him. They were both very sweet and encouraging people.

I've never met either one of them, but I know about them second-hand through my girlfriend. Mary Robison, who now teaches at UF, was supposed to have released a book called One DOA, Another on the Way a few years back, and the release date kept changing. Now, it's off the Amazon system entirely. Don't be surprised if it never comes out. Some of her students describe her as being a little off her rocker these days. I take these reports with a grain of salt, as the egos of "creative writers" are easily wounded and sometimes these rumors are started out of spite. My girlfriend describes her as polite, deferential, but definitely in her own world.

Rick Barthelme is a very stand-up guy from what I hear. Goes out of his way to help his students. And I went through a tear last summer, reading almost all of his novels in a row. Probably not the smartest thing to do, as they are similar in structure and approach. I found their meandering plotlessness appealing, however. My favorites were "Second Marriage," "Tracer," "Elroy Nights," and "Bob the Gambler." By the way, all that stuff in "Bob the Gambler"? Pretty much true. Frederick Barthelme and his brother Steve wrote a nonfiction book about it, whose title I forget.

murderedman wrote:

IceManCometh wrote:

Mary Robison (read "Oh!" - it's very funny)

Mary Robison---Oh yeah. If you've yet to read Why Did I Ever, I envy you. People call it her "ADD" novel. The chapters are three or four sentences long, reminiscent of Joan Didion's "Play it As it Lays," but much funnier. "Oh" is great as well. And "Subtraction" is way underappreciated.

Yep, loved it - as well a Subtraction. A lot of people didn't though. Check out some of the reviews on Amazon. BTW, if you're ever upset over a bad review you may have gotten, just look up your favorite book/movie/record on Amazon and I'm sure you'll find at least one 1-star review.

I've had her follow-up to WDIE on pre order for 2 YEARS now. Man, she's taking her time with that one. Hope it's worth it. Ever read any Frederick Barthelme (friend of hers, brother of Donald, writes in a similar vein)?

Off the top of my head:

-Mary Shelly "Frankenstein"

-Gertrude Stein "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," "Everybody's Autobiography," "The Making of Americans"

-Djuna Barnes "Nightwood"

-Virginia Woolf "To The Lighthouse," "Orlando"

-Toni Cade Bambara "The Salt Eaters"

-Kate Chopin "The Awakening"

-Flannery O'Connor "Wise Blood," "A Good Man Is Hard To Find"

-George Eliot "The Mill On The Floss," "Middlemarch"

-Margaret Atwood "The Handmaid's Tale"

-Iris Murdoch "A Severed Head," "The Sea, The Sea"

-A.S. Byatt "Possession"

I'm switching between Donald Barthelme's 40 Stories, Jim Shepard's Love & Hydrogen and V.S. Pritchett's collected works.

Shepard's book supposedly has a story about the Who in there told from Entwistle's perspective. V.S. Pritchett is as unfashionable as it gets but I enjoy him.

Inspired by Mr. Jung, I started Anna Karenina tonight.

I'm having concentration problems.I can't read.
Maybe it's this insufferable heat and humidity.I don't know...
I'm trying to read "Conversations with Zizek". By Glyn Daly and Slavoj Zizek.

I just read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, which is a really elegant and highly enjoyable novel.

I just read Awaydays by Kevin Sampson. Fucking really shit book.