D. A. Hosek

Author: D. A. Hosek

  • 2016 in rejections (and acceptances)

    I set a goal for the year of 200 rejections (with the idea that the number of acceptances would likewise increase). I fell well short of my goal, however, with only 144. The number isn’t reflected in the chart above since it also includes rejections from queries and poetry (more about this later). I tweeted…

  • 2016 in reading

    My diversity report for the year: Women authors 48% (down from 51.4% last year). Non-white authors were 16.4% of my reading (up from 14.8% last year). I chose my book to hit diversity targets 25% of the time, down from 37.5% last year. I think part of that is that I’ve been more reluctant to…

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 241 CAM 20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid to Touch

    When my wife was an undergraduate , she and a group of her friends decided to do an event with the lure being Tony Campolo giving a talk. Of course, Campolo was not remotely within their budget so they came up with the idea of asking if Campolo would record a video message that they could…

  • Dewey Decimal Project: 230.0732 The Collar

    An amazing book. It was captivating to read about these not-so-young men on the road to the priesthood. Englert, after a number of attempts, managed to find a Catholic seminary willing to let him spend a year following the students who attended. Where he ended up was a non-traditional seminary, one catering to “second career” would-be…

  • Salinger Revisited: For Esmé with Love and Squalor

    This is, as far as I’m concerned, Salinger’s greatest title (and he has some mighty fine titles, especially once we get into the uncollected stories). The structure here is a bit unusual, With the first part being a first-peron recollection of the narrator’s meeting with the titular Esmé (and her younger brother Charles). Esmé is…

  • Salinger Revisited: Down at the Dinghy

    The first Glass family story without a Glass fatality. I found Salinger’s use of indirect storytelling reasonably effective here. Even though we’re never in the point of view of Lionel, we still manage to get a sense of the world through his eyes. The opening section of the novel, a conversation between two of the…

  • “Girls”: The Story behind the Story

    I think “Girls” will win the prize for the longest gestation period of any story I’ve ever written. The opening sentence is exactly as I wrote it in 1984 as part of my autobiography for Mr Caravello’s sophomore English class. Mr Caravello liked that so much he had me read it out loud to the…

  • The Big Countdown

    My life expectancy this year has dropped five years to 83 from 88. I’m not entirely sure what led to my precipitous drop in my expected life span, but it appears the grave looms closer than I thought.

  • Salinger Revisited: The Laughing Man

    In “The Laughing Man,” Salinger is telling his story while ostensibly telling a different one. It’s a great use of a narrative frame to illuminate his story in ways that wouldn’t be possible directly. We have a narrator relating memories of his nine-year-old self and not employing the understanding that the older self would have…