LBC Podcast #1: Valerie Trueblood

Nominator: Anne Fernald

Nominee: Valerie Trueblood

Subjects Discussed: Weaknesses for beautiful books, life as "structured anarchy," the definition of plot, David Markson, narrative flow, cause and effect in narrative, unexpected events, Seven Loves' "eventless" perception, on being "anti-plot," the beginnings of May Nilsson, family characteristics, the relationship between unpredictable life and fiction, compartmentalized American novels vs. compartmentalized British novels, Edward P. Jones, MFA workshops, the short story form, the paucity of older protagonists in fiction and how older people are underestimated, Faulkner and race, Sidney Thompson, verboeten perspectives, underlying nuances beneath sentences, Trueblood's unintentional wisdom, two-inch items in newspapers, "quiet" vs. melodramtic reader perceptions, people who disappear, and being an apocalyptic person.

Backup Link: (MP3)

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky's Paperhaus and The Bat Segundo Show)

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Trueblood: Narrative seems to me to be something that sort of flows in many currents through us and carries us through life, but is not -- I guess what I mean by plot and why I'm sort of anti-plot is the sort of contained arc: the beginning, the complication and the resolution.  Novels like that, I just don't believe.  It's hard for me to see that things could really ever be tied up with a resolution. 

Comments

[brd]

In regard to your comments about elderly individuals, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a lawyer for my 93 year old uncle the other day. She had visited with him a time or two and said to me, "Ah, he's such a sweetie." My response to her was, "He's a lot of wonderful things, but 'sweetie' has never been one of them." Let's not throw the whole lot of people over 80 into some benign category of "sweeties."