Fragmentations, MTV, Jazz Age

I have been thinking a lot about how I express myself artistically. I have been reading about Daniil Kharms, a Russian writer from the first half of the last century, an avant-garde absurdist who wrote various things but is held in high regard for his dramatic fragmentations or incidents. I think in this modern age, with access to so many different things, and MTV (in America at least) introducing to rule of a cut every 3 seconds which has influenced TV and film as a whole, that art should reflect this pattern. My writing seems to emulate this. As long as I am being true to myself, these short stories (whatever you want to call them) are easliy 'downloadable'. I don't know, I'm just trying to make sense of my thoughts at the moment.

I think my brother recognises my writing is perhaps leaning towards this. He bought me two books from Powell's in Portland when he was there helping the Kerry campaign last Summer. They were Short Cuts - Raymond Carver and F. Scott Fitzgerald - Stories of the Jazz Age. Both were great. An important indicator of the quality of a short story is the first sentence and every story seemed to have seismic, heavy first sentences.

I hope to post some of my writings here over the next few months...

books, Daniil Kharms, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver