This blog is © Scott Lax 2009, 2010 & 2011
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ABOUT SCOTT LAX - August 2011

Scott Lax is a novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, film and television writer and producer, corporate communications specialist and teacher. He graduated from Hiram College and studied Shakespeare at the University of Cambridge. Scott then worked as a salesman and drummer, performing with Bo Diddley, among others. Scott began writing in 1992, becoming a Bread Loaf Scholar in Nonfiction and Sewanee Fellow in Fiction. He was named Midwest Filmmaker of the Year, and his novel, THE YEAR THAT TREMBLED called one of 1998’s “Milestones in Fiction.” has received many journalism awards, and wrote for Comedy Central. Scott is in final rewrite on his new novel. He's also writing a collection of short stories and a memoir about becoming a first-time father at 58. Scott is currently writing and executive producing a TV pilot starring two legends of American comedy. He lives with Lydia, and his first child, Finn Scott Lax, born January 2011.

AWARDS-SCOTT LAX

FICTION
February 14, 2010 - Scott Lax's short story, "Sales Call," won 2nd Place for MUSE Magazine's 2010 Literary Competition.

1999 - The Year That Trembled, a Novel named Vermont Book of the Year, Runner-Up.

Dec. 1998 - The Year That Trembled, a Novel, named of of 1998’s “Milestones in Fiction by Denver Post.

1998 - Sewanee Writers’ Conference (Univ. of the South), Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Fiction

NON-FICTION

March 2011 - In the Ohio Professional Writers 2011 Communications Contest, Scott won First Place for "Writing for the Web - Column or Commentary," for "The Long and Winding Road to Your Ultrasound," for THE FATHER LIFE: The Men's Magazine for Dads

May 22, 2010 - In the Ohio Professional Writers 2010 Communications Contest, Scott Lax won Second Place for "Original Columns, General."

May 16, 2009 - In the Ohio Professional Writers 2009 Communication Contest, Scott Lax was awarded:

1. First Place for "Original Columns, General"

2. First Place for "Feature Story, Magazine"

3. Second Place for "Special Series, Print Media."

June 2008: Ohio Excellence in Journalism Award, statewide competition, sponsored by The Cleveland Press Club, Honorable Mention, Best Single Essay, Open Print

1993 - Bread Loaf Writer’ Conference (Middlebury College), Bernard J. O’Keefe Scholarship in Nonfiction

1994, 1995 - Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Staff Scholarship

FILM
2002 - Midwest Filmmaker of the Year, Cleveland International Film Festival

2002 - Producer’s Award, Winner, People’s Choice, Cincinnati International Film Festival

2002 - Producer’s Award, Winner, Best Regional Feature, Cincinnati International Film Festival

2002 - Bessie’s People’s Choice Award, Burlington, VT City Arts, Favorite Film

TEACHING
2010 - The Hub City Writers' Workshop of South Carolina awards the second annual Scott Lax Prize in Writing to Bertrice Robinson. The Scott Lax Prize is a full-ride, one-week scholarship to the Wild Acres Writers Workshop in North Carolina. This award was established in 2008 by Hillcrest Publications of Spartanburg, S.C., "in recognition of novelist Scott Lax of Ohio."

2009 - The Hub City Writers' Workshop of South Carolina awards the first annual Scott Lax Prize in Writing to Josette Davison.

OTHERS
2002 - City of Cleveland Certificate of Congratulations for body of work

1999 - Named to fourteen-person list of Hiram College’s “Most Illustrious Alumni"

READING LIST 2011
(An Incomplete List of novels, nonfiction books, short stories, long-form essays and poetry I've read this year. If I don't like it or decide not to finish the work, it doesn't go on; neither do most regular feature stories or newspaper articles, reviews or columns.)

1. PAUL McCARTNEY: A Life (Biography) Peter Ames Carlin
2. "Getting Closer" (Short Story, The New Yorker) Steven Millhauser
3. "The Rise of the New Ruling Class: How the global elite is leaving you behind." (The Atlantic Monthly) Chrystia Freeland
4. "Does Football Have a Future?: The concussion crisis" (The New Yorker) Ben McGrath
5. "Fed Up: Gluttony Dressed Up As Foodie-ism is Still Gluttony" (The Atlantic Monthly) by B.R. Myers
6. "The Apostate: A former Scientologist speaks out" (The New Yorker) by Lawrence Wright
7. "The Other Place": The New Yorker (Short Story) by Mary Gaitskill
8. "The Bridle" (Short Story) by Raymond Carver
9. "Vermin of the Sky: Who will keep the planet safe from asteroids?" (The New Yorker) by Tad Friend
(Starting this up after many months - I'm going to list books only; I read a lot of essays, especially in The New Yorker; suffice to say that)
10. WHITE NOISE - Don DeLillio


Reading list 2009

1. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (novel) - John Le Carre
2. SNARK (nonfiction book) - David Denby
3. A YEAR IN PROVENCE (nonfiction book) - Peter Mayle
4. A SIMPLE PLAN (novel) - Scott Smith
5. TENDER IS THE NIGHT (novel) - F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS (nonfiction book) - Malcolm Gladwell
7. ENCORE PROVENCE (nonfiction book) - Peter Mayle
8. THE DEVIL TREE (novel) - Jerzy Kosinski
9. BIG BAD LOVE (fiction, book of short stories)- Larry Brown (re-read)
10. BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY (novel) - Jay McInerney' (re-read)
11. A HEDONIST IN THE CELLAR: Adventures in Wine (nonfiction book) - Jay McInerney
12. NETHERLAND (novel) - Joseph O'Neill
13. "A Sliver Dish" (short story) - Saul Bellow
14. "Gesturing" (short story) - John Updike
15. "Janus" (short story) Ann Beattie
16. "The Things they Carried" (short story) - Tim O'Brien (re-read)
17. "Crazy Sunday" (short story) - F. Scott Fitzgerald (re-read)
18. "Once More to the Lake" (essay) - E.B. White (re-read)
19. "Indianapolis (Highway 74) - (short story) Sam Shepard
20. "In the Garden of the North American Writers" (short story) Tobias Wolff
21. "Next Door" (short story) Tobias Wolff
22. "Hunters in the Snow" (short story) Tobias Wolff
23. "That Room" (short story) Tobias Wolff
24. "A White Bible" (short story) Tobias Wolff
25. "Her Dog" (short story) Tobias Wolff
26. "A Mature Student" (short story) Tobias Wolff

READING LIST 2010
(Novels, Nonfiction Books, Short Stories, Long-form essays and some poems are included)

1. "The Deposition" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
2. "Down to Bone" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
3. "Nightengale" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
4. "The Benefit of the Doubt" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
5. "Deep Kiss" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
6. "The Liar" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
7. "Top of The Pops," about Andy Warhol, essay by Louis Menand, The New Yorker
8. "Soldiers Joy" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
9. "The Rich Brother" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
10. "Leviathan" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
11. "Desert Breakdown, 1968" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
12. "Say Yes" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
13. "Mortals" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
14. "Flyboys" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
15. "Sanity" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
16. "The Other Miller" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
17. "Two Boys and a Girl" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
18. "The Chain" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
19. HAVANAS IN CAMELOT (Essays) William Styron
15. "Smorgasbord" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
16. "Lady's Dream" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
17. "Powder" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
18. "The Night in Question" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
19. "Firelight" (Short Story) Tobias Wolff
20. "Bullet in the Brain" (Tobias Wolff)
21. "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish" (Short Story) J.D. Salinger
22. INDIGNATION (Novel) Philip Roth
23. "It's Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
24. "Smoke" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
25. "Invisible Fences" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
26. "The Madonna of Turkey Season (Short Story) Jay McInerney
27. "Third Party" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
28. "In the North-West Frontier Province" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
29. "Appetite" (Short Story) Said Sayrafiezadeh
30. "My Public Service" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
31. "The Waiter" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
32. "The Queen and I" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
33. "The Debutante's Return" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
34. "Simple Gifts" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
35. "How it Ended" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
36. "Head Case: Can psychiatry be saved?" (Essay) Louis Menand
37. "Story of My Life" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
38. "Philomentha" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
39. "Con Doctor" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
40. "Getting In Touch With Lonnie" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
41. "Summary Judgment" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
42. "I.D." (Short Story) Joyce Carol Oates
43. "I Love You, Honey" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
44. "Sleeping With Pigs" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
45. "Everything is Lost" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
46. "Reunion" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
47. "Putting Daisy Down" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
48. "The Business" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
49. "Penelope on the Pond" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
50. "The Last Bachelor" (Short Story) Jay McInerney
51. "Gavin Highly" (Short Story) Janet Frame
52. "The TV" (Short Story) Ben Loory
53. YOU: ON A DIET: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management (nonfiction book) Mehmet C. Oz, M.D., Michael F. Roizen, M.D
54. "The Lower River" (Short Story) Paul Theroux
55. "Master of Revels: Neil Simon’s comic empire" (Essay) .by John Lahr
56. "The Hunted: Did American conservationists in Africa go too far?" (Essay) by Jeffrey Goldberg
57. "Trailhead" (Short Story) E.O. Wilson
58, "Ash" (Short Story) Roddy Doyle
59. "What Did Jesus Do? Reading and unreading theGospels" (Essay) by Adam Gopnik
60. "Exhaust" (Poem) C.K. Williams
61. "Roanoke Pastorale" (Poem) David Huddle
62. "Agreeable" (Short Story) Jonathan Franzen
63. "Extreme Solitude" (Short Story) Jeffrey Eugenides
64. "Letter From Chicago: The Daley Show-the most powerful mayor in America" (essay) Evan Osnos
65. SCOUNDREL TIME (Novel) Lillian Hellman
66. THE RED THREAD (Novel) Ann Hood
67. "Boxed In: The struggle for supremacy in a shifting sport" (essay, The New Yorker) - Kelefa Sanneh
68. WHAT'S A WINE LOVER TO DO? (nonfiction book) Wes Marshall
68. "The NBA's Oligarch and His Games" (NY Times Magazine feature) Chip Brown
69. "Groovin' High: The life and lures of Keith Richards" (The New Yorker) David Remnick
70. "The Last Incarnation: As the Dalai Lama turns seventy-five, what is Tibet's future?" (The New Yorker) Evan Osnos
71. "Assiilation" (Short Story; The New Yorker) E.L. Doctorow
72. "The First Kitchen" (Essay; The New Yorker) Laura Shapiro
73. "The Fun Stuff" (Personal History; The New Yorker) James Wood
74. "Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume I (Criticism; The New Yorker) Adam Gopnik
75. "Sarah Palin's Alaska" (Criticism; The New Yorker) Nancy Franklin
76. "Brilliant Mistakes" (Profiles; The New Yorker) Nick Paumgarten
77. - Virtually every film review, every week, by David Denby or Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
78. - Every interview by Deborah Solomon, and many article each week in the New York Times magazine.
80. "The Gift of the Magi" (Short story) O. Henry
81. "Costello" (Short Story; The New Yorker); Jim Gavin
82. "A Widow’s Story: The last week of a long marriage" (Personal history; The New Yorker; Joyce Carol Oates
83. A CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE. BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS (novel) Charles Dickens
84. "I Take Supper With My Wife' (Short story) Antoine Gustave Droz
85. "Boys Town" (Short Story; The New Yorker) Jim Shepard
86. "The Five-Forty-Eight (Short Story) John Cheever
87. "A & P" (Short Story) John Updike




SCOTT LAX'S BLOG

Happy Holidays from Scott and Family!

December 24, 2011

Happy Holidays from Scott, Finn and Family
(Photo by Lydia)

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IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK AT LOT LIKE (HIS FIRST) CHRISTMAS

December 2, 2011

Tags: Christmas

Finn in November, getting ready for Christmas
Finn loves Mickey Mouse, playing catch (at 101/2 months!), singing, music, and being irrepressible.

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A Future Voter Considers

November 11, 2011

Tags: democracy, Aristotle, future

Finn at 10 months old
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
- Aristotle

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TAKE SHELTER, a Truly Great Film

November 1, 2011

Tags: take shelter, tyler davidson

I think Finn can wait a few years to see TAKE SHELTER. I'd rather just shelter him.
My nephew and former producing partner, Tyler Davidson, recently screened his film, TAKE SHELTER, in Cleveland. It's gotten praise and awards from all over the world, but of course I wanted to see it for myself.

I was completely stunned and moved by this great film. I could write a long review of it, but I'll make this short. If I were to blurb it this is what I'd say:

TAKE SHELTER combines a literary, lyrical, sensitive character-driven drama with a psychological thriller. The over-arching effect of it is that these shocking, scary and even apocalyptic images and scenes bring out tenderness and love for family. That is one astonishing accomplishment in today's cinema. The performances were excellent, but Michael Shannon's role as Curtis is simply one of the finest performances by an actor I've ever seen on film. Like Jimmy Stewart and Marlon Brando at their best, there is no one to compare him to in his day. He's that good, and should win an Oscar for his epic performance.

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The Kind of Food Writing I Like

October 17, 2011

Tags: food writing

I'm not one for food writing. I find it boring, and there are others who do it much better, though too many are doing it, which diminishes it the real food writers. But that's another matter. Now feeding Finn, and watching him eat on his own; that I find incredibly wondrous.

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At the Diner & Great Books in 1934

October 10, 2011

Tags: 1934, great books, diners

At the Diner
Here's our little man Finn at the diner. His hat says, "Since 1934," so I checked to see what was happening in literature that year. What a heyday it was: New books by Samuel Beckett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitgerald (TENDER IS THE NIGHT), Henry Miller (TROPIC OF CANCER), Ellery Queen, P.L. Travers, Evelyn Waugh, Nathaniel West, H.G. Wells, Frederico Garcia Lorca....

To name a few. Inspiring, yes; and a little sad. The country was awash in literary genius, in new ideas, and all of this during the Great Depression. Can you imagine?

What's happened? Where is the great literary art and the great literary writers? We have some, but I mean, that partial list...it's tough to dispute that 1934 boasted more greats than today. (Even genre writers: James Patterson instead of Agatha Christie?)

Some possible answers: Lost in a fog of distractions, both electronic and otherwise; writing for television; writing for advertising agencies; the pace of life; MFA factories; deciding not to write at all because it's usually not valued like it used to be.

Literature, and books in general, despite the availability of tablets, Kindles and such, is suffering. Too many other things to do with one's eyes than read a book. So what can we do we as lovers of literature? All I can think of is read more and better literature. And if you're a writer, set your bar higher, whether you write genre, literary or whatever it may be. That's what I'm doing. That's about all I can do.

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Listening and Writing

September 19, 2011

Tags: Rick's Cafe, writing, listening

Sooner or later, everybody goes to Rick's
People learn most of what they know in the first few years of life. Part of the reason for that is that babies watch everything; but they also listen. They soak it all in; it forms much of how they think about the world and how they approach their lives. Hence language; hence logic; hence sensibility; hence writing.

As writers, we need to listen: not just to what's being said, but to the cadences of speech; to the inflections of stress or excitement or satisfaction; to ambient sounds and to beautiful sounds and to harsh sounds.

One of the problems writers have with fiction is when all or most of the characters sound the same. No one sounds the same... not really. Babies pick up on inflections and attitudes before they understand language. So should writers. Those underlying aspects of speech are referred to as subtext: that which is going on underneath the text, or in this case, speech.

Here's our little man, Finn, at Rick's Cafe...listening.

How Writers Read

August 26, 2011

Tags: writers, reading, Adam Gopnik, Ben Marcus

Finn in late summer
Like most readers, I go through times when I don't read as much as usual. The past seven and a half months -- the best of my life, with the arrival of my son, Finn -- have been such a time. Too tired; too busy. There's no need for any writer to apologize for not writing or reading more. It happens.

And then I got back into it. I'm starting slowly, with not much more time, but maybe a bit more intellectual energy. I just read "Dog Story, a Personal History," by Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker; and am reading Ben Marcus's short story, "What Have You Done?" as well as a novel by one of my favorite writers of light fiction. It's not genre fiction, but it's not exactly Dickens or Kundera. (More on that later.)

If you've gotten away from reading -- and like most of you, I never completely get away from it -- all you have to do to get back in it is open a magazine or book or turn on your iPad or Kindle. (I still like paper, but we'll see.)

Speaking of seeing things, here's Finn about a week ago. He loves nature. And books. And climbing things. And bouncing. And drumming. And singing. And laughing. And...you get the idea.

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The Great Moving Experience

August 16, 2011

Tags: On inspiration, why we write, F. Scott Fitzgerald

FinnyFace
"Mostly, we authors repeat ourselves -- that's the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives -- experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Finn in Summertime

August 8, 2011

Tags: children and priorities

Photo by Lydia
It's strange and amazing to have just turned 59 and understand life in a way I never imagined. Everything looks different: the environment - so neglected, so precarious; our politics, so filled with greed and short-sightedness; the world, still so full of promise. When I try to see life through Finn's eyes, I know that I can't, but I can sense it. Everything is new, much is wondrous, and his trust is pure. I write to make our lives better, and if I can make the world a little better, that's okay too. I think if leaders thought and cared about children first and foremost many problems would go a long way toward being solved. They should be our first priority.

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SELECTED SHORT WORKS BY SCOTT LAX

Fiction
“One of 1998’s Milestones in Fiction--Powerful!”
--The Denver Post, Tom Walker, Book Editor
Film
"The most important movie of the year." - The Ithaca Times (Please click the above link to read more reviews)
Theatre
Click here to read some of Scott's short fiction, columns, essays and features.