Commentary

A Writer’s Writer: May Sarton

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

Every writer I know keeps notebooks (whether “real” notebooks or virtual) where they write or record things other (usually more well-known) writers have said that strike them as helpful, or just plain lovely. These notebooks are usually also the repository for other random thoughts the writer might have: story ideas, books they want to read, authors they want to check out – basically anything that might pertain to their writing life.

Going back and looking through these notebooks is a favorite activity of mine. I count it as “real work,” which means that when I go through these notebooks I am actually finding all sorts of potential “jumping-off points” for my own work. This is very helpful when I am casting about for what to work on next, or when I need a break from what I am working on.

I often share quotes from other writers on Twitter, but many of the authors I like best do not share their observations in 140 characters or less. With that in mind, I offer some of my favorite quotes from random notebooks – quotes that I liked so much, I felt compelled to find a pen and notebook to record them. (Seems like a somewhat arcane task, nevertheless…) Continue reading →

Why Must Sick People Be Put On Hold?

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(This essay originally appeared in The Beach Reporter in 1991.  Still relevant today…)

Fact: I have never called a doctor’s office and not been put on hold.
Fact: I have never gone to a doctor and not waited at least twenty minutes, and often much longer, for an appointment that I was on time for.
Fact: I have rarely been treated all that courteously by the people who work at the front desks or answer the phones at doctor’s offices. In fact, they usually act put out that I had the nerve to get sick and demand an appointment that very day.
Fact: I have had a doctor take a call from a contractor working on his house while rotely feeling the glands on my neck. I barely got to tell him what was wrong with me because he was so aggravated over how his construction was going.
Fact: All doctors must have gotten together at the last medical convention and decided they would play the same bad music when patients are on hold. Continue reading →

Denis Johnson: An Appreciation

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

One of my favorite writers passed away on May 24, 2017 at age 67. I was re-reading his work and came across this review/appreciation that I had written a couple of years ago.

Denis Johnson writes with a unique, confident, and oddly compelling voice in a style that does not fit “normal” criteria for structure, characterization, or narrative plot. Yet, it doesn’t seem to matter.

The eleven linked stories in Jesus’ Son are all narrated by an unnamed protagonist, a young man who lives a grim life of addiction and alcoholism, but who is also somehow funny and likable (to the reader, anyway). He is the ultimate flawed character, and his only redeeming quality throughout these stories is that he knows he’s flawed. Sometimes he tries to remedy this; often he just doesn’t. The writing has a hallucinatory quality to it, a steady stream of the subconscious that is so dead-on and piercing in its observations of surroundings and of the people the protagonist bumps up against. Continue reading →