{"id":505,"date":"2005-03-12T08:36:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-12T13:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=505"},"modified":"2005-12-09T10:18:37","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T15:18:37","slug":"more-on-gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-gates","title":{"rendered":"More on Gates"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our previous installment<\/a>, I wrote about meeting up with Newsweek editor and author David Gates<\/a>. During his conversation with the NYU writing students (the occasion of our meeting), he counseled them against coincidence in fiction. “We all know that this stuff happens in real life–people get hit by cars, tsunamis devastate villages–but in fiction, if an action just happens out of the blue, it feels like the author’s just inflicting it on the character. If a car crashes, it should somehow be the result of decisions, actions or inactions of the characters.” Pretty Aristotelian, and the kids seemed to get what he was about.<\/p>\n

As we were wrapping up the class, I thought I’d ask Gates about a story relating to his second novel, Preston Falls<\/a>. Just like with M. Swann, Gates pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose for a moment.<\/p>\n

“What happened is, my editor and I had gone back and forth over the manuscript of the novel. We’d found a bunch of sections that needed to be reworked, and had written all over the thing. In fact, I didn’t like the ending and wrote a brand-new one. When we finished, his office shipped the manuscript off to the typesetter, out in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

“Then the [shipping company’s] truck it was on crashed, burst into flames, and all the contents were destroyed. And, as it turned out, my editor’s secretary had forgotten to Xerox the pages before sending them out.”<\/p>\n

The classroom gasped. Gates did the thing with the glasses again.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I actually had fantasies about driving out to Pennsylvania and sifting through the ashes, trying to find remnants of the manuscript, so we could reconstruct it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t really tell you how Preston Falls<\/span> ends, in its published form.”<\/p>\n

I chipped in, “And remember, kids: Don’t introduce bizarre accidents or coincidences into your fiction!” They headed off for spring break.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, we went out for drinks after. I had Gates inscribe a copy of Jernigan<\/a> for a friend of mine (“With unironic best wishes”). On the way back to my car, I stopped at the Strand<\/a> and picked up a replacement hardcover of the book, along with Cloud Atlas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last night, I opened up the replacement copy and noticed something funny: this book had previously belonged to a former friend of mine, an author whom I recently “disowned.” How’d I know this?<\/p>\n

Well, his handwritten comments on the pages were one clue; his scrawl is pretty distinctive. The other clue was the part that read, <\/p>\n

“Goshdarn, Gil is so afraid of life, like this Jernigan character. He has to erect a partition of humor between him and everything that might damage him, a humor glove, so he never actually comes in contact with anything.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So remember, kids: Don’t introduce bizarre accidents or coincidences into your fiction!<\/p>\n

Oh, and don’t write your thoughts about your friends on the back pages of novels they like and then sell those novels to bookstores that those friends might frequent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our previous installment, I wrote about meeting up with Newsweek editor and author David Gates. During his conversation with the NYU writing students (the occasion of our meeting), he counseled them against coincidence in fiction. “We all know that this stuff happens in real life–people get hit by cars, tsunamis devastate villages–but in fiction, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “More on Gates”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-89","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7164,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-wonders-of-the-audible-world","url_meta":{"origin":505,"position":0},"title":"Podcast: The Wonders of the Audible World","author":"Gil","date":"July 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories - season 3 episode 14 - The Wonders of the Audible World \"One day, I was on the train to work and I had a terrible anxiety attack and a crisis of whatever, and began just scribbling on a yellow legal pad that I had. It was basically\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcasts"","block_context":{"text":"Podcasts","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/podcasts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gates-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gates-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gates-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gates-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gates-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":948,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/25-years-huh","url_meta":{"origin":505,"position":1},"title":"25 years, huh?","author":"Gil","date":"May 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months ago, I wrote an insanely rambling piece about the crappy state of contemporary literature. In that post, I mentioned a conversation I had with an NYU prof (Elayne Tobin) and an author\/critic (David Gates) about what novels since 1980 will become \"canonical.\" We had slim pickings, supporting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9169,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/new-books-from-old-guests","url_meta":{"origin":505,"position":2},"title":"New books from old guests","author":"Gil","date":"November 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"With the recent release of The Peace Process: A Novella and Stories by Bruce Jay Friedman (and this fantastic review of it by Adam Kirsch), I thought it would be a good idea to get together a list of new books from past guests of the podcast. Enjoy, and remember:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1504011732","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":506,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/see-the-gates","url_meta":{"origin":505,"position":3},"title":"See the Gates","author":"Gil","date":"March 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, dear reader, I have a pretty bad admission to make: I never got around to seeing The Gates, Christo & Jeanne-Claude's big installation in Central Park. The one Saturday that the official VM girlfriend & I were thinking of going, it was too darn cold. So I missed it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2116,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/just-a-lonely-ol-bill","url_meta":{"origin":505,"position":4},"title":"Just a lonely ol’ bill","author":"Gil","date":"June 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Congrats to Bill Gates and Will Leitch on the last day at their current jobs!","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7969,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-wax-rhapsodic-2","url_meta":{"origin":505,"position":5},"title":"Podcast: Wax, Rhapsodic","author":"Gil","date":"June 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories: Rupert Thomson - Wax, Rhapsodic \"There is a kind of comfort in having a part of yourself that will never be known, can never be known, by others.\" Genre-jumping author Rupert Thomson\u00a0joins the show to talk about\u00a0his\u00a0new novel, Secrecy\u00a0(Other Press), a 1690's-based thriller about the Florentine wax-sculptor Zumbo.\u00a0Along\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rupert-thomson-011.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rupert-thomson-011.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/rupert-thomson-011.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}