Archive - MacAllen's Theater GUide

What to Read

Reading is an essential part of writing. Expecting to create a story without having read other stories is absurd. Besides becoming familiar with different styles of writing, reading exposes writers to new ideas and ways in which other writers have presented similar ideas. Poets who do not read poems are like architects who do not live in buildings.

Of course this is not to say all writers must be derivative of previous writers. But to fail to recognize what has been written and what is being written in the present is inappropriate.

Opinions on the matter of what to read vary greatly. The tradition of the Western Canon, the works of famous, dead white men is by no means dead. But post-colonialists argue of course that lesser known and marginalized authors are as valuable or more valuable to read. The choice of what course of study a writer chooses is of course an issue that he or she must grapple with. For those interested in the Western Canon, W. Dowling at Rutgers has this comprehensive list . Post-colonialists can find a similar list here.

To reduce progressive and traditional thoughts on literature to postcolonialism and the western canon, respectively, would be to simplify the issue to greatly. Reading a cross sampling of both lists will produce a more well rounded understanding of historical literature. But neither of these reading topics addresses the key issue of contemporary poetry and fiction, nor where either of these areas is headed in the future

Keeping up to date on current trends is much more difficult. Now more than ever, large volumes of material is being produced from all sorts of writers. New technology too has reduced the costs of publishing and reproducing literature. Some of it is good, some of it is trite, and then there are the few smart pieces that might be kept around in literary circles for centuries to come. Determining what to read is critical because to read it all would be impossible.

The standard bearer for literature in the United States is still The New Yorker To some extent, the Atlantic Monthly also fulfills this role. Both these publications are highly commercial and minimally literary. If these were used to determine What Is Literature Today, the entirety of culture would be summed up in one consumerist pop culture orgasm.

There are more literary and less commercial publications such as The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and the Georgia Review.

These publications are the vanguard of literature, or at least would like to claim to be. While the New Yorker is rarefied for a much more general audience, these publications tend towards academics. But to find the truly experimental, and more importantly, publications more willing to take risks, it is best to seek out the smaller college literary journals. With student staffs and a small audience, these journals publish stories and poems that take greater risks since failure is less detrimental. Indeed, these small journals, generally with a circulation of under five or ten thousand, are the breeding grounds for the next generation of writers.

The magazine Poets and Writers is one of the better magazines dedicated to the art and craft of writing. While there are not stories or fiction, there is information on authors, interviews, information on publishing, and practical articles. As a magazine, P&W is decent. As a resource for writers, its about minimal, but far better than many of the other ‘dedicated’ magazines.

Finally, the essential book for all want to be and actual writers is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Buy it. Read it. Live by it.

For Fun

Sometimes as a writer, you simply need a little bit of side reading that is not as academic as say, Don Quijote. The book The First Time I Got Paid for It is a collection of short, short stories collected from dozens of now fairly famous writers, mostly of television fame, but some from other areas. I first picked up the book because of the cover and title, but after reading a few stories from the book, new it was ideal for encouragement when feeling down or simply to pass the time. The stories are mostly a page or two, and there is nothing better than reading one or two to energize and relieve writer's block.

Proofread This

There is no better or more absolute guide to write and wrong grammar than The Chicago Manual of Style The drawback is that only the most obsessive compuslive, neurotic writers really need to be as precise as this book wants of you. But what would be an article about what to read without it.