We writers can be quite annoying.
In the new movie Let Them All Talk, Meryl Streep plays a much-lauded author of “literary” fiction who is crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary to accept the Footling Prize, which, she points out, they don’t give in fiction every year. She is a sanctimonious sourpuss.
“Fix that. And then never, ever do it again!”
One of my all-time favorite teachers said that to me in a workshop once—in a voice more good-natured ribbing than barking command—after I wrote “my sisters and I” when I should have written “my sisters and me.” It was a small flub, one my classmates didn’t even notice.
Yes, it’s been dark lately in our world.
I was recently transfixed by a feature article by Joel Gunter for BBC Africa. A bashful young man from Ghana, who we’ll call Azeteng, was fascinated, like me, by spy stories. Unlike me, he decided to undertake an espionage mission that would intimidate James Bond.
Continue reading “Spying the Light”