Word: fictions
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When I was 10, I wrote in my diary a list of goals, mimicking my favorite fictional character Anastasia's habit of listing random things in notebooks. Goal number three was to "write a book by the time I turn 12." At the time, I felt like this was a fair goal. I'd just finished reading a novel about a 12-year-old girl who'd written a fiction book and become famous; I gave myself two full years to complete the task...
Green is now at that golden fork in his career. His first test comes in May, when he is to direct a science-fiction film from someone else's script. "I've got a lot of films I want to make," he says, "and not all of them are intimate or low-cost. I know that if you get smart people and name talent attached, you can make something a little more ambitious. But there's a big part of me that wants to have ultimate, intimate control over what I'm doing. Those are stranger movies. They're going...
DeWitt knows her linguistic playfulness pushes the boundaries of what is ordinary and acceptable in fiction. She knows she risks trying her readers' patience. But, she says, "I had this proselytizing zeal." If she'd had her way with her editor, her book would have been even more multilayered; for instance, she wanted to include photo stills from The Seven Samurai, the Akira Kurosawa film that is integral to her story. "There was also originally something about counting in Arabic," she says, and bursts into peals of laughter. "I feel I exercised such restraint...
...perfect author for our age of distraction. She appears to have a magpie's fascination with pretty much everything. The other media clamoring for our attention, from the movies to the Internet, are gifts she is delighted to play with. "This is a very exciting time to be writing fiction," she says. "It's so virtuous, completely eschewing all these things that could be explored. We're surrounded by images, and people don't seem to have done very much in that way, so I'd love to think about that...
...what a different story The Bonesetter's Daughter (Putnam; 353 pages; $25.95), Tan's eagerly awaited fourth novel, might have told. For although she conceived of this work as fiction, not a memoir or an autobiography, Tan, 48, began its creation in direct response to her mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1995. Realizing that Daisy Tan's memory was fading, her daughter planned a fictional meditation on "the things we remember and the things that should be remembered." The work sputtered on and off for four years until her mother's death late in 1999, after which Tan finished...