Does Los Angeles Times and New York Times Review Self Published Books

Photo: Noah Ulin

No ane knows books similar David L. Ulin. On any given day, the Los Angeles Times book critic has an assortment of books inside his accomplish, and each one is every bit different from the others as the hues of the rainbow. From The Best American Brusk Stories 2012 to Waging Heavy Peace, the meandering memoir by singer-songwriter Neil Young, Ulin's personal and professional person tastes for reading material run the spectrum. He counts iconic author Joan Didion as one of his greatest influences.

"One of the great things about my job at the paper is it's merely a kind of public version of my private reading life," he said. "I pretty much read what I want and write about information technology."

Ulin has also written several of his own books, including The Lost Fine art of Reading: Why Books Affair in a Distracted Time and The Myth of Solid Ground: The Error Line Betwixt Reason and Organized religion, which was named a Best Volume of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He has edited three anthologies: Greatcoat Cod Noir, Some other City: Writing From Los Angeles, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Album, which won a 2002 California Book Award.

His most recent book, Labyrinth, is about a eye-anile homo, at present living in Los Angeles, who travels to San Francisco, his former dwelling house, to confront his geographic and social history. He seeks solace at Grace Cathedral on Nob Colina, where he walks the labyrinth and reflects on who he is, who he was, and the relationships between distance and belonging, retention and identity.

Ulin is besides the author of essays and articles that have appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, The New York Times Book Review, LA Weekly, Black Clock, and Columbia Journalism Review. He also published a book of poems, entitled Cape Cod Blues. His essay, "The Half-Birthday of the Apocalypse," was nominated for the 2004 Pushcart Prize.

Ulin teaches graduate-level writing courses at several Southern California universities, including the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Dejeuner Ticket editor Wendy Fontaine recently interviewed Ulin.

Wendy Fontaine:  You lot're a professional reader and a professional writer. Which exercise you similar better?

I like having written more than I similar actually writing. I started equally a reader and I became a writer because of how much the books I was reading, and the writers I was reading, meant to me, and how much I wanted to be in their company.

David L. Ulin:  Reading is a lot more fun. I similar having written more than I like actually writing. I started as a reader and I became a writer considering of how much the books I was reading, and the writers I was reading, meant to me, and how much I wanted to be in their visitor.

WF:  What's your typical workday like?

DU:  I don't have a typical workday, I don't think. I like to exercise a lot of different things. Information technology keeps me interested. A typical week would include educational activity a couple of classes, reading a couple of books, and writing usually two things for the paper. Generally I write in the morning. I notice that'south when my mind is freshest. If I'thou actually working on something, I'll be writing by 6, but usually I'thousand writing by seven or 7:30. I want the writing time to be as unencumbered as it can be.

WF:  How practise you decide what to write nigh?

DU:  It depends on the projection. It takes me a while [to write a book.] Writing fifty-fifty a short book will take me a while, so if I'one thousand going to be engaged in a projection, it's got to be something I want to sit downwardly and wrestle with. It's got to exist a human relationship that I want to be in.

WF:  Does the marketplace influence your decisions?

DU: I want the market to like my books, simply I have to similar my books offset. With shorter pieces, it's a picayune dissimilar. You live with them for a shorter period of time. I've been lucky. I really haven't had to do much work geared for the marketplace.

WF:  Speaking of the marketplace, what are the literary trends coming downwards the pike, and should nosotros, as writers, fifty-fifty care about the trends?

We practice write for readers. That's part of what the job is. You're writing to be read. You lot're writing to have a connection to the reader, so we demand to be aware of the thought of writing every bit a public human activity.

DU:  For a author, trying to pay attending and tailor one'southward work to trends—particularly to market trends but fifty-fifty to cultural trends—is kind of a loser's game in a sure sense. By the time a book comes out, who knows what the trends will exist and so? It's sort of like chasing smoke.

We do write for readers. That's part of what the job is. You lot're writing to be read. Y'all're writing to have a connection to the reader, so nosotros need to be aware of the thought of writing as a public act. Just we tin never decide who those readers are or how they come up to our work. And then I recollect that your best bet is to find the material, the way, the vocalisation, the writing, the story that speaks to yous commencement. It'southward simply when we write out of that accurate center practise we produce piece of work that is going to connect with the reader.

I'm much more interested—as a reader, equally a teacher, and every bit a writer—in trying to find that essential core and trying to create something that will actually speak to someone, beginning with myself.

WF:  Do you recollect that kind of actuality is what gives a book or an essay its sticking power?

DU:  Absolutely. That other stuff just doesn't resonate every bit deeply. If we're not trying to express ourselves securely and directly and so we're wasting our fourth dimension and we're wasting readers' time. I don't want to say writers should isolate themselves and not worry about the marketplace. Y'all have to worry about the market because y'all have to survive.

In that location is ever that chat virtually author platforms and how to position yourself, and I think that is important for writers to think about. But in terms of trying to market the stuff, or thinking about its marketability, all that can exist centered on after the book is finished or after the writing is done. Otherwise it gets in the way.

WF:  When yous go to read for pleasance, what do you lot cull?

DU:  I love hard-boiled detective novels. I read essays, cultural criticism, literary fiction. I read pretty much the same kind of stuff that I read for the paper.

WF:  Is there a volume that you've read recently that surprised you?

DU: Yes, Neil Young'south memoir. Information technology's the weirdest rock star autobiography I've e'er read in my life. Information technology'due south authentically Neil Immature's voice, which is practiced and bad. Information technology'southward messy, information technology's long…just it's also kind of weirdly cute considering information technology'south so much a representation of him.

WF: Concluding June at Antioch Academy, y'all spoke well-nigh the ethics of nonfiction, specifically about how facts are defined and treated by sure authors, like John D'Agata. (D'Agata wrote an essay in 2002 about the suicide of a Las Vegas teen, having taken liberties with certain details of the story to heighten its literary effect. The fact-checking process for the essay is the subject of D'Agata's 2012 book, The Lifespan of a Fact. Some say D'Agata's method deceptively blurs the line between fact and fiction while others say information technology redefines the parameters of creative nonfiction.)

What are the rules of artistic nonfiction, or are there whatever rules any more?

DU: I don't really believe in rules, in general. I remember in that location are certain ethics. I'one thousand non a D'Agata apologist, but I think he threw a actually interesting bomb into the centre of the room. You don't need to agree with him, just I like the idea of art and literature as a provocation. One of the things we are supposed to exist doing, as readers and equally writers, is shaking upward our preconceptions, so whenever a writer provokes us into something, I think that's a skilful thing.

Nonfiction is an interesting and really complicated territory. You can tell past the way there'southward no good manner for united states to talk about what it is. Fiction is fiction. Poesy, you have a really good sense of what that is. But nonfiction ways everything. It's beyond the board, then we subcategorize information technology as creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction or literary journalism or whatsoever you desire to phone call it. None are satisfactory umbrella terms for what it is we are trying to do. We start to retrieve that, because we are using the word "nonfiction," that what nosotros are dealing with in this kind of writing is fact when what we are really dealing with is truth—and they are not always the same. What D'Agata is trying do, though sometimes a piddling heavy-handedly, is create the space for us to discuss this.

WF:  Books are difficult to write. They take focus, passion and commitment. That said, is it difficult for y'all, as a critic and as an author, to give a bad review?

DU:  Information technology'due south really difficult to write a book, even a book that's a complete disaster. But the critic's job is to tell the truth nigh that book as he or she sees information technology. I tin't practice the job if I'm not willing to say this book didn't piece of work and here'south why. It'southward harder now because I have had that aforementioned experience [of receiving a bad review]. What I remember has inverse since I started writing books is that I'thou much more aware of the subjectivity of the reviewer.

The upstanding requirement of the critic is to be honest from their perspective, to say whether they recall a book works or doesn't work for them. The ethical requirement of the critic is also to be respectful of the process.

WF:  Do authors ever call you afterward and complain?

DU:  Very rarely.

WF: What advice exercise you accept for those of us who are aspiring to be working writers?

Don't believe anyone who tells you that you can't exist a writer. Don't listen to their negative bullshit. The people who became working writers are the people who didn't quit.

DU:  Don't believe anyone who tells you that you can't be a writer. Don't listen to their negative bullshit. The people who became working writers are the people who didn't quit. The lack of perseverance is a guarantee of failure. Only if you tin't be dissuaded, then you will exist a writer.

WF:  Dejeuner Ticket is a literary magazine with a special interest in social justice. What social issues do you wish more people cared about?

DU:  My social justice begins close to domicile. I commencement with the things that bear on the people I care about and and so I motion from in that location. The big bug that I'g involved in are bug of gay rights and women's rights.

The key, to me, is empathy. I think nosotros, as a culture, lack empathy. We are more often than not selfish and self-focused, and nosotros tend to think of the "other" every bit "other" instead of existence of the same human being dynamic. Simply creating empathy is at the eye of our literature, whether information technology's for bodily people in nonfiction or invented characters in fiction, whether information technology creates empathy for people who are very different from the states in terms of point of view or in terms of culture. How tin we not have empathy when nosotros read our way into the life of another human beingness? That is the social value of art.

Likewise, empathy cuts both means. We accept to be empathetic toward those who are non compassionate. At that place has to be a meeting ground in the center, a place where nosotros all share a fix of common experiences, and where disagreement is tolerated equally long equally it's ceremonious.

WF:  What book should every writer read?

DU:  I don't know if I tin can eddy it down to i book but to me the essential text is Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Another book I find really, really of import is The Confessions of Saint Augustine for precisely these kinds of empathy questions that we were talking about and the thought of empathy stretching across millennia. To read that book, you enter into Augustine's head. The stuff that he's wrestling with—questions of meaning, questions of love, questions of experience, questions of fear and mortality—are all the same things nosotros're dealing with at present. Everything has modify but nothing has inverse.

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Source: https://lunchticket.org/david-ulin-author-los-angeles-times-book-critic/

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