Edie Meidav
LOLA,CALIFORNIA now out
From IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER by Calvino:
"Anyway, the conclusion to which all stories come is that the life a person has led is one and one alone, uniform and compact as a shrunken blanket where you can't distinguish the fibers of the weave. And so if by chance I happen to dwell on some ordinary detail of an ordinary day, the visit of a Sinhalese who wants to sell me a litter of newborn crocodiles in a zinc tub, I can be sure that even in this tiny, insignificant episode there is implicit everything I have experienced, all the past, the multiple pasts I have tried in vain to leave behind me, the lives that in the end are soldered into an overall life, my life, which continues even in this place from which I have decided I must not move any more, this little house with a courtyard garden in the Parisian banlieu where I have set up my tropical-fish aquarium, a quiet business, which forces me more than any other would to lead a stable life, because you can't neglect the fish, not even for one day."
"Anyway, the conclusion to which all stories come is that the life a person has led is one and one alone, uniform and compact as a shrunken blanket where you can't distinguish the fibers of the weave. And so if by chance I happen to dwell on some ordinary detail of an ordinary day, the visit of a Sinhalese who wants to sell me a litter of newborn crocodiles in a zinc tub, I can be sure that even in this tiny, insignificant episode there is implicit everything I have experienced, all the past, the multiple pasts I have tried in vain to leave behind me, the lives that in the end are soldered into an overall life, my life, which continues even in this place from which I have decided I must not move any more, this little house with a courtyard garden in the Parisian banlieu where I have set up my tropical-fish aquarium, a quiet business, which forces me more than any other would to lead a stable life, because you can't neglect the fish, not even for one day."
"I saw that long-forgotten Russian boy as clearly as anything, leaping about the meadows with his butterfly net; I saw him as a messenger of joy, returning from that distant summer day to open his specimen box and release the most beautiful red admirals, peacock butterflies, brimstones and tortoiseshells to signal my final liberation."
-- W.G. Sebald, THE EMIGRANTS
-- W.G. Sebald, THE EMIGRANTS
Quick Links
preview of most anticipated 2011 books
The Millions
LOLA a WNYC Arts Highlight for 2011
thumbs-up from Champion
Lola, California blog
Birth of a blog not a nation: a diary turned inside out, footmarks upon it
Podcast interview about Crawl Space
At Cafe Med
Excerpt from CAUTIONARY TALES, forthcoming artist's book
Collaboration with painter Ken Stout
Quirky Scottish imbroglio
Dreaming of a common language
LitBlog Coop Nomination of Crawl Space
Literary blogs discussing the novel
Readers' Circle
Link to book groups
The Daily Freeman
Bard fiction prize newspaper link
One Shard
Edie Meidav was born in Toronto and has lived in New York, Cuba, France, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and other international zones. A former director of the MFA program at New College on Valencia Street in San Francisco, she divides her time between California and New York, where she is a writer-in-residence at Bard College. As a child, she acted as if language were indeed a virus.
Poetry, fiction, nonfiction and homages have been published in Ms., The Village Voice, The Kenyon Review, Terra Nova, The American Voice, New Letters, Conjunctions and elsewhere. She has received a Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, a Bard Fiction Prize for Writers Under 40, a Kafka Award for Best Novel by an American Woman, a Fulbright in Sri Lanka, and her books have been called editorial picks by the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Electric Review, the Litblog Coop and elsewhere.
Poetry, fiction, nonfiction and homages have been published in Ms., The Village Voice, The Kenyon Review, Terra Nova, The American Voice, New Letters, Conjunctions and elsewhere. She has received a Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, a Bard Fiction Prize for Writers Under 40, a Kafka Award for Best Novel by an American Woman, a Fulbright in Sri Lanka, and her books have been called editorial picks by the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Electric Review, the Litblog Coop and elsewhere.