Work
Vega focused on writing since 1972 and published his first short story "Wild Horses" in Nuestra Magazine in 1977. He wrote 14 novels and 3 story collections. He said that he often worked on several books at once and had no problem keeping track of them:
Since my work is about people and my affection for them, I don’t lose track of who they are just like I don’t lose track of my children or other relatives and acquaintances. I have friends – and characters – whom I don’t see for a long time, but as soon as we get together we pick up where we left off.
Vega's literary influences were subtle and complex. In addition to William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and the magic realist writers, he was heavily influenced by Holocaust literature and by the concern of the Irish members of his childhood neighborhood, for the independence and reunion of their native country.
Vega's published fiction includes the novels The Comeback, Blood Fugues, The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle, and No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again. His short story collections include Mendoza's Dreams and Casualty Report, which were adapted for the stage and anthologized internationally.
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Famous quotes containing the word work:
“But the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations to the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A perfect personality ... is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,—the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“It’s important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.”
—Joy Harjo (b. 1951)