Greetings Readers!
I’m coming to you from day two at the Festival of Faith and Writing. It’s been quite the ride thus far. That’s the only explanation I have for what may have caused the 5.1 earthquake felt this morning in Grand Rapids. On a personal note, I woke up horizontal to my normal way of sleeping – I wondered why that was.
I know I have yet to chat about Women of Lockerbie – I will I promise. But I have just a moment in between sessions to talk to you about Michael Chabon.
He spoke on imaginary homelands last night and then a conversational format today at 10am. Both of which were exactly what I thought they would be. When looking at Chabon, you first notice his McDreamy like hair. The man has a good coif. Beyond that, you notice that he is armed with one hell of a vocabulary and an innate ability to turn a good phrase.
It’s no surprise that he really focuses on the sentence and makes sure that his writing can hold it’s own in the most simplest of structures. A festival attendee asked “do you just know a lot of words? Your ability to say just the right descriptor is impeccable.” I have been thinking the same thing for quite some time. What draws me to Chabon is his vivid descriptions. His ability to push you from one sentence to the next and build his characters as though he’s having a conversation with his reader, rather than telling them “here’s what happened.” He is not afraid to use words his readers might not know, and his answer to the attendee was simply thus: “I like words and I’ve always been a fan of etymology – there are a lot of words and someone has to use them all.”
Trust me when I say, I’m not capturing it as eloquently as he says it.
In any event, it was nice to confirm some of my beliefs about Chabon the man.
Oh well – the next session is about to start. More Later.
One thing of note – I’m finding that it’s very difficult to find the time to sit and blog live about what’s happening – I have so much I want to do, hear and see. The thing I most love is that this Festival is really engaging and so my blog posts are less deep than I wish them to be.
One Comment
Completely McDreamy hair.
He was one of my favs at the festival!