I find this time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, almost surreal. It seems to me that it is never remembered for long. Characterized by grinding out to finish the projects and finding time for holiday shopping, it seems like if you blink you might miss it.

Here in Missouri it is getting cold and the hours of sunlight are shrinking. I spent Thanksgiving in Iowa and up there people are already having to scrap off morning frost from their windshield. I think this time of year is odd because when I have a moment of time, I look at to what’s coming and think about how this year has gone. It’s getting to be the time when movie and book critics have started to make their top 10′s of the year and decade. I think it’s not a bad idea, what’s a better way to remember the past than to rank it?

So here are a few of my tops that I read, watched, or just experienced for the first time:

Best thing I read: Grendel, by John Gardner

Between Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Illych and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment I needed a humorous intermission. Gardner’s book satisfied my humor, philosophical and literary needs. I’ve noticed that in the world of literary greats, Gardner is over looked, despite writing The Art of Fiction. Though he is more contemporary (Grendel came out in ’71), I hope he will be recognized more.

Notable runner up: The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemmingway

Best thing I watched:  “Up”

Okay, I will admit, I have not gone out and seen a lot of movies in theater this year. “Up” was one of the few, but it was possibly one of the best movies I have ever seen. “Up” managed to established a emotionally heavy story, within the first fifteen minutes, without any feeling of melodrama. And with the magical realism a house of floating away by balloons- some writer out did himself.

Notable runner up: “Watchmen” (that came out this year… right?)

Best thing I just plain experienced: Thanksgiving diner

Maybe it is a little rash to say I had one best thing that I experienced, but Thanksgiving is up there. I still feel full just at the thought of all the food I ate.

Notable runner up: TMR internship (thankfully, there are a lot of runner ups in this category, but TMR has been a incredibly beneficial experience).

Under my nostalgia lens I lament, have we forsaken good stories containing thought provoking questions for CGI effects and cheap, charming romance? Are screen-play writers in Hollywood simply tapped out of ideas? I find the latter hard to believe, considering the competitiveness of getting a screen-play published. But still, I am left to wonder how directors get by with making a film from such a horrid and/or overdone plots.

All is not lost however, for although terrible ideas like 2012 and Twilight’s New Moon will always be around, there are still a number of directors turning out some movies I cannot wait to see. The two (and drastically different) I have in mind right now are Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and Clint Eastwood’s Invictus. Eastwood’s, if you haven’t heard about it, is “A look at life for Nelson Mandela after the fall of apartheid in South Africa during his first term as president when campaigned to host the 1995 Rugby World Cup event as an opportunity to unite his countrymen.”

With actors Morgan Freeman (who plays Mandela) and Matt Damon, once you get past Freeman trying to speak in a South African accent, and Damon an English one, it seems pretty good.

Politics aside, I loved that book, I found his writing easy and enjoyable, and his story incredible (though when I think it, perhaps it was more his tone, one of a young person trying to find his identity while living in a world he seemed to look at coldly).

I am happy to see that there may be a sequel, and I don’t mean Audacity of Hope. Just a few days ago, Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, President Barack Obama’s half-brother released a semi-autobiographical book titled, “Nairobi to Shenzhen”.

I am curious about this book and have high hopes, despite how easy it must have been to publish such a thing (although I think he tried to self-publish it). From the description it seems similar to Barack’s, a man trying to find his identity. It will be interesting to see what Mark has to say in his closer, detailed account about his and Barack’s father.

Then I reached the bottom, and what really caught my eye was the user comments, which made me take a another look at the list. All the books were by men.

Since I first read about this last night, here has been my train of thought:

Wow, somebody messed up.

Though wait a minute, PW is a private organization and they have a right to choose what books they honestly thought were the best books in 2009.

But, on the other hand, people have just as much a right to call them out.

So I’ve reached this conclusion: Dear Publisher’s Weekly, how do you go about deciding which books are the best of 2009? What are you looking for?

It makes me think, maybe the entire publishing industry should be more transparent with the process of how they go about selecting works. It could be the case that PW selected the 10 best by a non-discrimination method and thus justifying their seeming discrimination. For example, selecting the best by how many copies were sold.

But the problem is they don’t show their methodology, and many critic publications don’t explain how they come to the conclusions they arrive at.

So what do you think? Did Publisher’s Weekly goof?

But before I get to that, I have to say its pretty crazy over here. As we are cracking into these contest submissions, we’ve got another contest that is about to (kind of already is) on way. Its the third annual Missouri Review Audio & Video Competition, with $4,500 in prize money! Awesome? I think so. If I wasn’t working here, I’d submit for sure. Check out our website for more details.

Lately I’ve been reading a gross amount of material. I don’t want to count pages, but one intern here has estimated by now we’ve each probably read about 1 million words (in 8 weeks, I’m skeptical, but only because I don’t trust my math skills).

It could be from all this reading, that my tastes have changed, or it could be that as I accumulate life experiences I just begin to see things differently.

It used be, for a long time anyway, that I did not like poetry. I’ll let you in on a secret: it used to be, that I thought poetry was mostly shallow, and that being called ‘poet’ was often times an insult.

And I thought I was in the right. I had a habit of fixating on a line, dissecting the poem. I would pinch a noun and watch the adjunct adjectives dangle helplessly. And when I did that, the words just seemed too dramatic.

I still do that from time to time. I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing, but what I also do, more often than before, is read things aloud, and when it comes to poetry, what a world of difference that makes!

I used to only really enjoy something edgy, a good beat poem, or even a little Bukowski. But now, its anything good and truthful.

And I have to say I love what’s coming out today. In our last issue, we published Traci Brimhall. I loved her piece, ‘American Pastoral’. Something about that piece just makes me want to cry, yes that’s it! I highly recommend it.

So instead of saying anything more about it, I’m going to take a stroll down nostalgia alley (it’s not a lane) and write about three of the best children books, that AREN’T Where the Wild Things Are.

3) The Lorax. Forget One Fish Two Fish, lets talk about the genius that is Dr. Seuss. Its beyond the obvious underlying theme; The Doc’s great for the complete and crazy world that the story is in, and the odd Lorax character (whom wikipedia describes as ‘resembling an Emperor Tamarin‘), that’s the real gold. The wood chopping machines, the products the trees produce, etc. Its that crazy imaginative land that I loved as a kid. I think a lot of people  hail Dr. Seuss for the creations like “Oh the Places You Will Go” which, in its own right, is okay, but anyone could have written that story. For me, its all about the setting.

2) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I don’t like the movie. It ruins the book, entirely. I don’t like its style, I don’t like the trailers. Cloudy wasn’t about some creation that tries makes life better, that’s malarkey.  Its all about the things in life that come down on you. The good, the bad. Its about getting too much and living through it, starting over. OR at least that’s what it was for me. And also the illustrations in the book were great. They teased me with the idea of delicious foods, then made my stomach sick toward the end. Boo to Sony.

1) Where the Sidewalk Ends. Do I need to justify this? Shel Silverstein just got it. He made poems for kids and they liked them. Who does that? Who can pull that off? I still read this book. The best part? They won’t make a movie out of this one! (please don’t make me eat my words hollywood)

Consolation award goes to Calvin and Hobbes. Technically they are a cartoon, so I didn’t really consider Bill Watterson’s writing in the category. But that being said, the dialogue of Calvin and Hobbes was terrific. I feel like Watterson really understood that kids understand a lot more than we give them credit for.

I think Flash Fiction and digital technology could (already is?) be a matrimony made in heaven. There are right now a number of flash Journals that don’t even produce paper publications and, though not all, some do see success. I agree with Cameron that there is nothing better than reading a real book, but, at the same time, if I got a Flash Fiction piece, sent to me every morning through my phone, or my email or whatever, I would definitely take the five minutes to read it. I think the argument is best described in two words: Why not?

Well, I’ll leave that at that. I want to mention one more new literary happening before I go. I was reading Maud Newton’s blog, apparently there is this new(ish? not sure how new it is, but recently featured in huffington post) site called fictionaut As far as I can tell, skimming through the site and a couple articles, its like a collision of social networking and literary works. Also, I guess anyone can publish. Very weird, interesting and apparently successful. Check it out.

-Eddie Kirsch

Millions of people now own an I-phone/touch. Apps are new, and everyone is downloading them. They are cheap, easily accesible, a way to pursue your endless interests on a tiny gadget. I think there is an assumption that most people aren’t interested in reading short stories, poetry, etc. I BELIEVE, however, that this is only half-true at best, and what’s half true, is still false.

2 ideas.

1) Perhaps the reason why anyone is interested in anything is as much due to the marketing scheme than to the content of the product. Why don’t more people read literary journals? Maybe many people don’t know anything about them. This product gives more face to literary journals AND even if, out of the millions, only say 10,000 get this app. That is still twice the amount of circulation of a healthy Lit. Journal. Oh, and, they won’t pay paper costs, saving them a large sum of money.

2) It’s a no brainer that markets shift, they are ever-changing just like anything else in our world. In one of our meetings, I believe someone made a comment that Literary Journals need to be flexible. They can’t expect to survive, remaining ‘traditional’ in the way they operate. In my humble(sk) opinion, I think journals must evolve and find ways to do well, or they will constantly need to justify to the universities supporting them for why they should continue to do so.

So in conclusion: I should probably never be a wall street analyst, and props to the ‘Scarab’

-Eddie

I was sick for the past week and there wasn’t much to do besides: a) bemoan the large amount of work that continues to pile up, b) watch (for hours on end) Cash Cab, and c) think until complete boredom of thought (where I proceeded then to stare at the the ceiling or some desolate corner or a piece of clothing on the ground). In this era of thought I began to grow aware that suspense carries in to so many things. In so many good journalism stories, the article is designed by laying out 90 percent of the facts in the first two (or so) paragraphs, but withholding some information, making the interested reader wonder what the ending could possibly be.

I remember a music theory class and when thinking about it, even in music there is suspense: in very basic composition you don’t return to the beginning chord without playing a chord before that suspends (by which I am mean, needs resolution).

To philosophize- It’s safe to assume most people want to live long lives, and I want to ask, why is that? It may seem obvious, but answers like ‘To love’ or ‘because there is so much to enjoy’ isn’t necessarily true nor satisfactory, and beyond reasons similar to these it is hard to pin point an answer besides “people are afraid to die”, which in my mind seems too negative.

So perhaps it is the case, that suspense is what drives us to keep living, and maybe ‘the will to live’  can be rephrased as ‘the need to see what happens next’.

I like this idea. I think it gives me reason to consider that if I put myself out into situations, then anything can happen. It makes me feel that I never will be pigeon-holed if I try hard enough not to and has me believe that I don’t know necessarily any outcome before I actually see it.

I’ve noticed that people comment on our facebook page and voice their opinions when they read these articles, which is awesome. So my question this week, is what do you think? How important is suspense in relation to life?

Firstly let me bring to attention this: According to The Millions blogger, Sonya Chung, “Actress Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, will be producing a film adaptation of A Moveable Feast, a memoir of Hemingway’s early years as a writer in Paris”

Awesome. Hopefully it will be good. Hemingway, though not my favorite author (but he is up there), certainly had an interesting life to say the least.

Sort of going along with Hemingway-

I hate to show the same blog as I did in my previous post, but Maud Newton had a really interesting post on depression. In a nutshell, Maud explores the benefits and disadvantages to depression~ ‘one’ might ask what benefits? I encourage ‘one’ to read the post. From the blog- “some scientists are suggesting that depression — peculiarly prevalent for a mental disorder — is not a malfunction at all, but an evolutionary adaptation, a state of mind which can have debilitating effects, but also promotes highly analytical thinking.”

Anyway, the post got me thinking. Of all the books that I’ve read, and all the short stories, there always seems to be a hint of depression somewhere, be it in the tone, the plot, the dialogue or someplace else. So to whoever might read this, I’d like to challenge you to think about this question, could depression be a good thing?