Wednesday's Writerly Happenings

Today’s dispatch has the silver lining — and dark cloud — of voyeurism. Sometimes we can escape to foreign locales and create a new identity, maybe even write a cowboy mystery or two. Hell, that’s what one author did when he packed up and moved to Wyoming. You can too, or you can go to college. Get a degree, kid. But what’s in a degree: See answers in First Things. Maybe what you need is a good scare. If so, head over to NPR, where Sarah Waters’ latest ghost story is dissected. Or you can talk about sex, or at least read about its twisted prominence, in the Stranger. Finally, we’ve got a guide to punk music, Dave Eggers’ plan to save print, and from Lit Mob, a well-written review of a book dedicated to bad writing. — Kevin Murphy

– Some years back, during the restless youth that is so essential to myth and writers of cowboy fiction, a young Easterner named Craig Johnson drove a truckload of horses to northern Wyoming and thought, “This is the sort of place I could maybe spend the rest of my life,” or something darn close to it. He hung out at a bar called Buck’s, let the horses romp in the public corral and slept on the roof of the horse trailer, where he could see the thick stripe of the Milky Way galaxy. — Craig Johnson in the NYTimes

– Romance writing could almost be defined by its determination to forcibly unite the explicit and the elegant. Which, let me add, is awkward. If you’re going to be smut, be smut. Go all the way. And if you’re going to be historical fiction, PLEASE DON’T SAY “WEEPING COCK” ON EVERY OTHER PAGE. — Sex Stories in the Stranger

– I am not thinking about the professional value of a college degree or a cost-benefit analysis of education. In general, I am entirely acquiescent to the fact that nearly all college students seek degrees in order to receive a credential that has value in the marketplace. – College Degrees in First Things

– One of this season’s best-reviewed new novels, The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters, is a ghost story set at a crumbling Warwickshire manor house in postwar England. — Sarah Waters in NPR

– At sixteen years old I was sent a rejection letter containing the immortal lines “That there is a vast reservoir of undiscovered talent out there is a delusion.” It is a view with which, I suspect, the authors of How Not To Write a Novel would agree. Sandra Newman has taught fiction at numerous American universities: you dread to think how much terrible craft she’s ploughed through, how much clumsy laundry-list exposition, lumbering description, scattered exclamation marks and capitalisations like a Victorian adolescent’s diary… — Bad Writing in Lit Mob

– Dave Eggers has a new nonfiction book, Zeitoun, coming out in a few weeks, fast on the heels of Away We Go, a movie he co-wrote with his wife, Vendela Vida, and directed by Sam Mendes. Dave talks to The Rumpus about the new book, his optimism for print publications, what the kids are reading, and the advantage of attending a state school. — Dave Eggers in The Rumpus

– CBGB. The Ramones. The Sex Pistols. Rage. Anger. Spitting. It’s all so in-your-face. It’s all so mosh pit wonderful. It’s all so punk. Giving the finger to hippie culture of the 1960s, punk made its stamp on the 1970s, bringing with it a flood of angst, nihilistic notions and a brand new subculture. — Punk Music in Jacket Copy

Video of the Ramones, Live at CBGB