"Have you ever asked yourself the deepest philosophical question that drives all introspection, which is: Why am I so neurotic and screwed up? Well, stop blaming your mother. It's because you have three brains, and they have never once agreed on anything."
100% is a love story, after a fashion. Or, more accurately, three loosely connected love stories, all told without so much as a drop of sentimental syrup.
Grandpa bought the place for cheap back in the sixties, a Communist blessing. Grandpa did good for high-ranking Reds. Black-and-white photographs of him with the Chairman hang where house guests will look.
"For the poet / a tree is the fruit / not the root of poetry. / Origins are unimportant. / Color, shape misleading. / What's lovely is the sound."
Somewhere in the inaccessible reaches of my brain a control panel was lighting up, buttons were flashing, bells were ringing, but my feet were nailed to the floorboards of the Last Gasp Hotel.
"The story-like essence, that deep narrative structure, is the thing that is most true about a life. Writers who make up additional facts or change the facts in order to make of their memoirs 'a better story' are breaking faith with the proposition that the story-like essence actually exists."
The good news about C.E. Morgan’s debut novel is that it is not a big, noisy novel where information and sub-plots sprout like weeds on every page. In fact, rather than suffer from an excess of vitality, it might be argued that All the Living suffers from a vitality deficiency.
"I guess we got into more of this British folk thing and a 'fair maiden' thing as I call it, but I don't think we really sound like these bands, though there is more than a hint of it on the new album."
"If you can't enjoy being in front of the computer for a couple of hours and writing something and throwing it out, you’re probably not going to enjoy being a writer."
Though I am definitely myopic, I’m not naïve. I’ve met Communists in America before today. But not the real ones.
Author of No Job? No Prob! discusses how to engage in a proactive job search, revamp your resume, and remain optimistic even when the odds are against you.
"William Trevor influences me more than any other writer, so in reality I write stories to talk to his stories. And a story can talk to another story in many ways--a line, a character, a few details, or sometimes it is the mood of the story, the pacing and the music of the story..."
After this, you will leave the chocolate factory for a job on the Kölner-Düsseldorfer Linie bringing American tourists to see castles along the banks of the Rhine.