9-4-08 Week One Orientation

Today we have class and I have been thinking about authors. I have read a few of the poets from Legitimate Dangers, but I want to go to class to see how we discuss their work before I write on them. The two popular fiction authors that I am most interested in are Marya Hornbacher and Stephenie Myer. Stephenie Myer would be impractical and impossible for the visiting writer’s series. She writes teen lit about vampires and, while insanely delicious and addicting, her work would not be termed “literary”. Also I’m sure TCNJ could not afford her rate for a reading, if she even does readings, I don’t know.
I think Marya Hornbacher is a bit more practical, but not much. I discovered her around a year ago when I read her memoir Wasted. Like usual, I was browsing through the Addiction/Recovery section of B&N when I saw the book, which from the first page captured my interest. Wasted tells her story with anorexia and bulimia. The story is captivation but the way she tells it is what makes this book truly beautiful. Her prose is graceful, energized, and completely smooth; it tells her autobiography from childhood to recovery with the delicate ease. Her ideas are solidly profound but never pretentious. She wrote the book at twenty two but it was published after she was much older.
I know recovery stories have a reputation as being formulaic, popular, or voyeuristic, but hers book is truly a remarkable piece of art. She wrote one book of fiction The Center of Winter which I have not read but is on my list. An example of her prose from Wasted:
“You cannot trick your body. You body, strange as it seems to we who are saturated with a doctrine of dualism, is actually attached to your brain. There is a very simple, inevitable think that happens to a person so is dieting: When you are not eating enough, your thinking process changes. You begin to be obsessed with food.” Pg 105
As much as I would love to suggest Hornbacher for the visiting writer’s series, I remain hesitant. First, her work that has received the most acclaim is not technically fiction. Second, like Meyer she is too popular (aka to expensive). But I would recommend her as my most favorite current author.