Francine Prose
Francine Prose
Francine Proseis an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a Visiting Professor of Literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 April 1947
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
army white zombie
You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males.
war army night
With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.
supposed
I think of myself as someone with a kind of Tourette's. I cannot help saying the thing you're not supposed to say.
time
Of course, I've always read. I started when I was four years old and just didn't stop. I read all the time.
aesthetic approach art fresh start suggest work
A work of art can start you thinking about some aesthetic or philosophical problem; it can suggest some new method, some fresh approach to fiction.
time
I'm in a rage all of the time.
emerge polished satisfying sentence snap ultimately
For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what's superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It's satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.
comedy conference learned lucid plot prose samuel sentences studied work writers
Long before the idea of a writer's conference was a glimmer in anyone's eye, writers learned by reading the work of their predecessors. They studied meter with Ovid, plot construction with Homer, comedy with Aristophanes; they honed their prose style by absorbing the lucid sentences of Montaigne and Samuel Johnson.
long seven-days week
I work really long days and I work seven day weeks.
sports kids loss
I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.
thinking fiction dramatic
I think poets are much more dramatic, more theatrical than fiction writers.
four journalism novel
I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.
writing thinking twelve
If things are going well I can easily spend twelve hours a day writing, but not writing writing, just thinking and revising and taking a comma out and putting it back in.
college ideas support
I went through college in the 1960s without having any idea that I was going to have to make a living. When I graduated in 1968 it was quite a shock to find out that there was a world out there and that it wasnt going to support me.