1) All good stories use some kind of formula Everyone knows that pop genres like horror, mystery, musical comedy and adventure, use formulas, of course — that’s what ”genre” means. The highbrow ideal says that art should be original and (usually) true to life; those are supposedly the hallmarks of quality. But we now live…
For an hour or two the evening has no limits Or so it seems to you as you walk the pavements Of this, your adoptive city. Before you the sun At play lights the windows of the office buildings In the vault of the avenue, conveying odd images Like the faces seen in the flames…
From Paul Fussell’s Abroad (1980) As I have said, it is hard to be a snob and a tourist at the same time. A way to combine both roles is to become an anti-tourist. Despite the suffering he undergoes, the anti-tourist is not to be confused with the traveler: his motive is not inquiry but…
(An excerpt) Once a young woman walked every afternoon along a stretch of beach. She was tall, with a slender tanned body, and her bathing suit was very short and tight and of a soft gay green yarn. Every afternoon as she crossed the warm sand to the steps up the cliff, she passed close…
1) On why humans seek out stories We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape…
Shot List 1. Night. River. subtitle: It was for such a night she had waited. 2. Trunk of her car is open and lit by a funnel of light from the porch. 3. She loads the trunk: 4×6 trays, photographic papers, strobe light. Strobe doesn’t fit, she angles it into the backseat. 4. She is…
1) On authenticity Now suppose some loon comes up and says: “Have you found the real Asia?” It is all real as far as I can see. Though certainly a lot of it has been corrupted by the West. Neither Victorian Darjeeling nor the Kennedy-era Oberoi can be called ideal Asia. I remember Deki Lhalungpa…
For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what’s superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and especially, cut, is essential. It’s satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp. –Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer (2006) This sentence…
A little more than seven years ago, I wrote “travel stunt” essay — “Around the World in 80 Hours (of Travel TV)” — that recounted the experience of holing up in a Las Vegas hotel room for one week and spending all of my waking hours watching the Travel Channel. The experience was uniformly awful,…
Friends and vagabonders, Here’s a rundown of what I’ve been working on of late — including my Deviate with Rolf Potts podcast; my new book, Souvenir; and upcoming creative writing classes in Paris and Santa Fe. Podcast: Deviate with Rolf Potts Deviate, which debuted last November (and has since surpassed a quarter of a million downloads), features engaging, off-topic…
A couple awaiting the arrival of their first-born delivers instead a ring-tailed lemur. They are beside themselves. The father beats the obstetrician with clenched fists. He curses the nurses and flings himself to the floor bawling. The mother stands up on the table and denounces God. The next day they go home. The lemur eats…
