Elizabeth McCracken interview

Elizabeth McCracken, author of Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry, The Giant's House (National Book Award Finalist), and Niagara Falls All Over Again (winner of the PEN/WINSHIP award), took time out from her busy schedule nibbling French cheese to answer a few Goatish inquiries.

EG: People in general miss you terribly. Where are you and Edward living now, and is there the equivalent of George's there?

EM: Until two weeks ago, we were living in an actual garret in Paris, around the corner from the Pompidou Centre. Eventually we decided that we'd exhausted that particular expat writer cliche, and moved into a mouse-infested farmhouse in the southwest of France. (We'll probably end up in Morocco, surrounded by drugs and young boys.) This house used to be a home for unwed mothers. Basically we moved because it's cheaper to rent an enormous house in the middle of nowhere than a 2 room apartment in the middle of Paris, plus we're hoping that we'll actually write something if there's nothing else to do.

We have not really explored the fleshpots of Duras (the nearest town). There is, however, a bar called Le Daquiri. I plan to go in next week and demand a PBR.

EG: You're often described as the greatest living writer of Elizabeth McCracken novels. What are you working on now?

EM: Well, I'm delighted that some people still think I hold the title--though I note, Corbin, that you steer clear of committing yourself on the issue. There actually is a dead writer named Elizabeth McCracken, who wrote some short stories and a few books but I think no novels. Once I appeared on a panel at a conference, and on the handout where they listed the participants' bibliographies, they listed her books under my name. This wouldn't have been so strange had they not also included the dates of publication after each one: 1912, 1921, etc.

Anyhow, I'm working on an Elizabeth McCracken novel.

EG: The last time I talked to Edward, he mentioned something about constructing a large puppet that wore a wig made out of your hair. Do you find that to be normal behavior? What was the deal in general with the puppet, and has Edward created anything else disturbing lately?

EM: It's not nearly as abnormal as you make it sound: it's only sort of a half wig, and I got a haircut for it--it isn't like he gathered the hair piece-by-piece off my pillow to weave it together. I got the haircut in Ireland, by the way, and explained to the woman who did it why I wanted to save the hair; when she finished, she said, "Himself will be t'rilled." Anyhow, it's more a mannequin than a puppet. She has glass eyes, which Edward bought in Prague: we were in an antique store, and I overheard him saying to the proprietor, "Do you have any glass eyes?" and I was just starting to think, "That is the most RIDICULOUS question I have EVER heard! You don't just waltz into a store and ask if they have glass eyes!" when I heard the man answer, "Yes. I have three in the back." This taught me a valuable lesson about judging the normality of Edward's behavior.

Since then he has made a wooden head named Harriet Halfhead, who is currently languishing in the backyard in the hopes she'll get some really good mold going. (Since it's Edward's project, I suppose I should say "mould.") And also he carved a death mask out of clay, and then had it cast, 2 copies in plaster and one in wax. For a while they were lined up on a table in our house in Iowa City, looking sort of like Martha and the Vandellas.

EG: What have you read lately that knocked your socks off? I was wondering if you'd read Tristan Egolf's Lord of the Barnyard yet. I thought of you as I excitedly started that book amid gales of laughter, but not when I quietly put it down halfway through.

EM: I am halfway through The Half Brother, a Norwegian novel, which was recommended to me by either Chris Merrill or Paul Ingram, I can't remember which. It's fantastic. Also I recently had the following humiliating conversation with my friend Paul.

Paul: What are you reading?
Me: Well, I'm nearly finished rereading my favorite Oz book.
Paul: Is it good? Should I read it?
Me: I hadn't realized how influential it was on my work. It's very strange. Did you know that the Tin Woodman's real name was Nick Chopper?
Paul [after a pause]: I thought you were talking about the Israeli novelist.

I would have sneeringly said, "That's pronounced *OZE" but I felt my ability to sneer had been seriously undermined.

EG: Any plans to come back to Iowa City for a visit or a semester of teaching?

EM: No immediate plans, anyhow, which is very odd. We were in Iowa three falls in a row--but the farmland in these parts looks sufficiently Grant-Woody. I'm not entirely sure what my plans are after May 26, after we get bounced from the unwed mother's home for summer guests. I'll always come back to Iowa City to visit, if not to teach.

EG: Did you happen to read the Ben Marcus article slamming Jonathan Franzen in Harper's last month? If so, what did you think? Should workshop grads be writing weirder stuff? In class you once said, "Write something STRANGE," and I've taken that to heart probably more than anything else.

EM: Not yet, dammit. I live off my friends' subscriptions to American magazines--they bundle them up, several at a time--so I'm several months behind.

EG: Do you still think about Frank when you're going over a manuscript? What was the best advice he ever gave you?

EM: When I was in Frank's class, people were always pointing out that if Kundera had written the story that was up that week, he would have done a much better job. (Lord, most of my classmates in that particular workshop were a real drag.) One day someone submitted a story that was largely about someone having sex in a patch of poison ivy. I swear to God, every single critic cited a different piece of literature about poison ivy, and how it was better than this particular story. They were probably right. When the discussion got to me, I said, "Well, the only people I know who wrote about poison ivy are Leiber and Stoller."

Frank looked at me with great affection, nay, admiration. He'd been silent the entire discussion. "Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber," he said to me. I nodded. Nothing more was said. It was as though we were alone in the room, and it remains of the great moments of my life.

(Note for people less hip than Frank 'n' me: Leiber & Stoll wrote "Hound Dog," as well as "Poison Ivy"--you know, "Late at night while you're sleepin'/Poison Ivy comes a-creepin'/A-roun-hou-hou-hound.")

I think I probably think about Frank more when I teach than when I write. He was so passionate about his students, so proud of them, believed so deeply in the workshop process and in The Workshop. If I bumped into him in the halls on a Tuesday when I was teaching there, he'd say something about the stories up in his class--"A real interesting story this week. I wonder if they'll get it." He was as interested in how things were going to go over as anyone else. He saw teaching absolutely as a calling, separate from the calling of writing. His belief that bad stories can get better, that young writers will write terribly before they write something interesting, that the whole ridiculous process of sitting around a table and discussing a piece of fiction as though the writer weren't there--well, because Frank believed in it, I can believe in it, too. And so I do.

The Onion doesn't cease, doesn't desist

In an email, occasional commenter "Chummy" points us to this delightful magazine cover, courtesy of The Onion, which was recently asked by White House lawyers (Harriet Miers?) to stop using the presidential seal.

Cracker Unplugged

David Lowry (of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker) and Johnny Hickman (of Cracker) will be acoustically playing The Mill next Thursday, November 3, at 8 p.m. The last time I was at The Mill was for either Vampiro's or Segall's TalkArt. This show will certainly pale in comparison, but folks of a certain age will probably find it highly enjoyable -- the last time I saw Camper they were incredibly energetic, breaking as many strings as eardrums and hearts. Advance tickets are $15 at the Record Collector.

Poets Against the War -- Nov. 5

Sam Hamill's Poets Against War has called for an international day of poetry and consciousness-raising on November 5. The Iowa City event will be 3-5pm in Shambaugh Auditorium. Free, of course. For the current lineup, please check out this post on babies. Come on out if you're in town.

"Summer Crossing" by Truman Capote

New Yorker fiction -- October 24, 2005 issue


For once, I'm sure this is a novel excerpt and not a short story, and for once, I couldn't care less. The writing here is striking, scrumptious, seductive -- all the more incredibly so when you think that he wrote this in 1943, at nineteen years old. The piece is proof that his talent was solid early on, and if the whole novel is this good, it is likely a good novel, Ms. Kakutani's review notwithstanding. She -- or Holly -- calls it "a smidge contrived" among other things. As if fiction by definition isn't. If Breakfast was his Gatsby, Crossing may be his This Side of Paradise -- not as brilliant, certainly, but enjoyable and admirable in its own right. The piece is worth reading for the sentence structure alone, or the mood alone, or the characterization alone.

The 17-column snippet here tells a simple story of an eighteen year-old girl named Grady's two love affairs, beginning with one in the present (with an inattentive parking lot attendant), flashing back to one from a previous summer (with a husband whose wife is pregnant), and returning to the present with the former events still fresh in mind. Grady is a darned advanced and independent young girl for the early Forties, and her tragic, almost masochistic taste in men forms the basis of her story. Yes, like Holly Golightly. So what?

The atmosphere of mid-century New York -- often combining seamlessly with Grady's interior monologue -- is as vivid and broad-stroked as a Hopper painting:

Since she had turned seventeen, however, she had liked only to walk around or stand on street corners with crowds moving about her. She would stay all afternoon and sometimes until it was dark. But it was never dark there: the lights that had been running all day grew yellow at dusk, white at night, and the faces, those dream-trapped faces, revealed the most to her then. Anonymity was part of the pleasure, but while she was no longer Grady McNeil, she did not know who it was that replaced her, and the tallest fires of her excitement burned with a fuel she could not name.

That last line could probably only be seriously written by such a young writer, but such occasional, mild purpleness for whatever reason just makes the piece more charming for me.

Grady's perceptions of people are both precise and dreamlike -- here she is on the topic of her ex-lover's pregnant wife:

She was a trifle of a person, like a seashell that might be picked up and, because of its pink frilled perfection, kept to admire but never put among a collector's serious treasures; unimportance was both her charm and her protection, for it was impossible to feel, as Grady certainly didn't, threatened by or jealous of her.

Using long sentences like that, Capote drums up a fairly funky rhythm, a slightly odd sytax, that sustains an unusual loping sound in the writing. Try this one, about her new interest:

Clyde Manzer's voice, grouchy with sleep but always fairly hoarse and furry, had some singular quality: it was easy to get an impression of whatever he said, for there was a mumbling power, subdued as a throttle left running, that dragged the slow fuse of maleness through every syllable; nevertheless, he stumbled over words, his pauses occasionally separating sentences so much that all sense evaporated.

Then a dash of dialogue, and then Clyde is rendered even more vividly with another, single, virtuoso sentence:

The four-lettered scholarship that carries a diploma in know-how -- how to run, where to hide, how to ride the subway and see a movie and use a payphone, all without paying, the knowledge that comes with a city childhood of block warfare and desperate afternoons when only the cruel and the clever, the swift, the brave survive -- was the training that gave his eyes their intensity.

Grady is pulled, anxiously but not reluctantly, into this man's control. She is willing to suffer through and forgive humiliation, indifference, lewdness -- pretty much anything -- in order to just be with him. She's young. It's simple. We've all been there, and we've all written about it, but the young Capote is writing in a fever dream here, the momentum carrying him into subtle, lyrical areas most writers either get bogged down in or skate over. No wonder Normal Mailer called him the most perfect writer of his generation.

Toward the end we start to get fairly cliche and simplistic metaphors as the story reaches a kind of New York afternoon in the park crescendo: a balloon for her love, a ship for their relationship, the big cats at the Central Park Zoo for her mysterious urges and longings, a 3-way mirror for her conflicted emotions. Somehow the sheer power of the writing slaps a fresh coat of paint on all of them, which still looks new after 62 years. I don't know how he does it, but I do know that he does do it. Maybe we have forgotten the beauty of clear-eyed sincerity. They don't make writing like this anymore.

Alter-ego reviewing

Michiko Kakutani reviews Truman Capote's new novel as Holly Golightly. Is this a new tack for Miss K? Will she review Philip Roth's new book as Nathan Zuckerman?

The War on Tourism

We're back Empire-side. The overall impression I am taking from the trip is that Europe is strengthening and moving forward with putting people first, while America is weakening and moving backward with putting criminal politicians and corporations first. Some sort of new breaking point surely lies ahead. Our paths are diverging.

First, Holland, where when you start a job you get six weeks vacation. If you get pregnant, you get three months paid leave. No one argues about these things. In fact, the issue in the news (here and in Britain) is how much to extend such benefits as self-evident contributors to actual family values (in Britain you currenty get six months maternity leave -- now going up to nine). Numerous political parties represent such citizen initiatives, and the government responds accordingly -- instead of having its hands tied by massively funded corporate lobbyists who, naturally enough I suppose, in their self-interest, don't want to give up a red cent in benefits, and who base their political power on fanning the flames among the most ignorant, fearful constituencies. It's just bracing to be in a place, however briefly, where the main things the people are concerned with are improving and expanding public benefits, transport, and rights -- instead of bogging down in the intricacies of incessant right-wing politics. America by comparison is terribly disfunctional.

The Netherlands remains among those at the forefront of tolerance and progress. It is hard to be a criminal in Holland. The police don't have to spend time and (macho) energy on "soft" drug users or prostitution. This opens up vast opportunities to focus on actual crimes with actual victims. Marijuana and magic mushrooms are grown, sold, taxed, and distributed within a well-organized and established system of coffeeshops and smartshops. Prostitutes have unions, safe, monitored areas to operate, and the same free health care as anyone. The dangers of such vices remain, of course, as they have everywhere since the beginning of time. The difference is that the society is not obsessed with spending huge sums of scarce money to hunt down, harass, arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate those who engage in them. Instead, they "fence off" such activities and easily monitor them because they're now above ground. The police in the red light district patrol, watch over, and isolate trouble when it happens instead of simply treat it all as illegal. We strolled around these places for five nights and never once felt unsafe. Unsavory, perhaps, but never in danger. More to the point -- if you don't like it, don't go there. Holland is the actual land of the free and home of the brave. They should be able to sue us for usurping those terms.

As for Ireland, we were in Galway and Dublin, and the impression is a booming economy bent on continuing to transform the country from an impoverished traditional culture into a modern, wealthy one. Construction is everywhere, roads are being built and widened (with proud signs: "Paid for by the EU and the Irish taxpayer"), and stores are bigger, more varied, and open later. Progress is in the air. (Smoke is not, by the way. Unlike the situation in Holland, where you may as well smoke, you cannot smoke in pubs in Ireland.) We stayed with family in Dublin, where they have a bright, clean new rail link from the particular neighborhood to the city centre. Extending rail service into the suburbs cuts down on traffic, pollution, and fossil fuel use. Duh! It is a very strange feeling to be struck about the head so much by common sense. In Holland, too, they are beginning to restrict "big cars" from city centres. Because why in the world do you need to drive an SUV into the middle of a city? There are cars in these countries that are barely bigger than a riding lawn mower -- that can park in the bicycle areas. But mostly, of course, you don't need a car at all. Gas is taxed to the hilt, both reflecting the true cost of fossil fuels and acting as a disincentive to pollution and energy waste. Duh! Duh duh duh. The people we were with in both countries bestowed on us kind, sympathetic smiles (was there a hint of told-you-so pride? Hard to tell). I was patted good-naturedly on the back more than once when the topic of my country came up, when what I (and all of us) really deserve is a scowl and a swift kick to the bum.

So while Europe is moving aggressively forward into an era of sustainable, people-centered policies, their economies are booming, and the receipts are channeled back into furthering the progress. It's astonishing how strong the Euro has become. It's been less than four years since its introduction in Holland and Ireland. Remember how it was mocked in the beginning? Maybe even that wasn't newsworthy here. Well, in that short span of time the Euro has increased in value by 25% against the dollar -- roughly 6% a year. So it wasn't just from a social progress standpoint that it seemed I was a visitor from some backwater, dictatorial nation -- from an economic standpoint, I felt like a Guatemalan coming to America. "If we could only make Euros!" we kept saying.

And it all feels of a piece with the Bush era. The Furners are to be kept out, the Murcans kept in. Mordechai, the Israeli who owned the shoarma shop underneath us when we lived in Holland in 2001, has always wanted to move to Miami, because his sister is there and he thinks he could make shoarma popular there. "Is difficult now," he just told us. "You can be coming to the U.S., but only for short time, and is difficult to make shop there, and if you stay even one day more, you can never return again. Is too difficult." Difficult! A lifetime ban for overstaying a visa by one day. The harshness of merely visiting the US from Europe is legendary there -- photos, fingerprinting and so forth. The indignity alone of rough treatment has turned many a tourist Euro elsewhere. Meanwhile the newspapers here are not reporting how far behind we are falling compared to Europe with regard to standard of living, and the monetary policies are making it harder and harder to go experience the bloody thing for yourself. Stay here and read and swallow the lies that say we are okay in the good old USA. Buy a car, eat a cheeseburger, vote for Coke or Pepsi, watch TV -- but whatever you do, don't go to Europe.

Care for a final, mind-blowing stab in the eye? In Holland and Ireland, writers pay no taxes. That's so liberal, even I can't really agree with it. I mean, gimme all that stuff, but shouldn't I pay like anyone else? (Not that I would, heh heh, um, currently qualify...)

Amsterdamnation

I'm blogging from the sanity/insanity capital of the world. We're here till Friday, then off to Ireland for two days, back to Iowa next Sunday.

All expectations for Amsterdam smashed. Had heard of crackdowns on coffeeshops, that you couldn't smoke weed in them anymore, that since the attack on Van Gogh's great-great-grandson, the whole nation is becoming less tolerant, etc. It's all a bunch of ballocks and rubbish. Everything is the same here and feels like it always will be and should be: Disneyland for Adults. The maturity of immaturity.

We heart the houseboat we're renting, just outside the red light district. Would post pictures but forgot digital camera. Kicking it old school with 35mm film. Today heading to Utrecht, our old stomping grounds. If anyone (bR!) sees Luka or the Real Grendel, tell them we miss them and drink to them several times a day. We hope the housesitter is doing a great job.

Getting rid of the Hurricane Housing link somehow took with it the Contributors list, will have to fix upon return to Evil Empire.

Quote of the day: "Oh, that's terrible." Irish fella on hearing our reply to his "Where you from?"

john and ben

as in Franzen and Marcus...
http://www.noslander.com/entertainment.html

More on dogs

Jim, the guy retiling our kitchen floor, on the subject of dogs, as we watched The Real Grendel chase Luka around and around and around the yard:

"Now, these dogs are friendly, I don't have a problem in the world with them. But I had a job a while back at this house where the woman had just took in two pups from a litter of beagles. When I showed up next morning, the one had killed the other one. Just bit it till it died. She was crying, and she has a little boy with Down's syndrome, you know, and it was too much of a risk, so I went home and got my shotgun and ... well, killed it. Another time on a different job, I let myself in the gate and wasn't halfway to the house when something hit my ankle. I looked down and there's this growling mutt clamped onto my boot. I kicked it off and told the woman, look I'm not coming back here until that dog is put up somewhere, because if it's me against the dog, I'll give you one guess who's going to win. That very afternoon the dog got out and went down to the neighbor's and went after that guy in his own yard. Now that guy blew him away, just blew away that dog, so that didn't turn out to be a problem for me anymore. My neighbor has three huge St. Bernards, huge, huge dogs, and this tiny little girl, and they made a kind of saddle for the dogs, and that girl just rides one around like a horse till it gets tired, then they saddle up the next one, and so on. I love dogs."

Harold Pinter Wins Nobel

Thought I'd post this over here since this is where the Nobel discussions have been a-brewing.

NBA finalists

The John Roberts look-alike of American letters, one Mr. Grisham, announced the National Book Awards finalists this afternoon. Leading the pack in fiction is E.L. Doctorow's "The March," and the poetry front-runner appears to be the estimable W.S. Merwin, for "Migration."

But Doctorow Probably Won't Win the Cy Young

Awards. Awards. Everywhere. The Booker yesterday. The Nobel is tomorrow in the a.m. And here are the National Book Award nominees. I've had The March on the shelf for a while now and have been putting it off for reasons that baffle even me. Kim's copy of Veronica just arrived in the mail today.

I just hope somebody accepting one of these pulls out a cellphone they've stashed in the podium and calls their mom. Or whips out a Sharpie and autographs the trophy.

New York sends in the Egans

In the ongoing efforts to rebuild New Orleans, the City of New York has decided to send in my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, Daniel. Mom Egan will be doing public health nursing, while Dan is driving some kind of emergency relief vehicle.

Apparently, driving an emergency relief vehicle is quite high on the "cool" totem of jobs to have -- mainly because you get to decide how and where to deliver food and supplies. Dan drives around blasting Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to lift up the spirits of the locals (although, if I was in their position, I think "911 is a Joke" is a litle more appropriate). But, by all reports, people seem to like it. I see Dan as driving some kind of crazy ice cream truck.

In fact, he was on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour the other day -- driving along shouting "Free Food! Get Your Free Good Food!" in his most hilarious New York accent.

He says it's still a war zone, and the smell is incredible. But he seems to be in good spirits. Mom Egan arrives in the next few weeks.

"I'd call a cab because a cab would come quicker." -- Flavor Flav

Irish Eyes Are Winning Giant Prizes

John Banville won the Booker last night. Anyone read the book? Any good?

A frosty morning in hell

Pigs are flying, and lions are sharing hammocks with lambs. I know these things because Bono and U2 are playing a fundraiser for Senator Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum (R-PA). What in the bloody hell is going on with this? It's not April first... I can't figure it out.

Grace Paley out, Engle memorial in

According to the UI Arts Calendar, Grace Paley's reading for tonight is cancelled. Anyone know why? In its place, it seems, there will be a Paul Engle memorial reading. 8pm, Shambaugh, main library.

Wear your love

Many of you might already know about this, but on the site for George Saunders' newest book - reignofphil.com - you can buy Reign of Phil t-shirts (you also get a handful of temporary tattoos with your purchase). T-shirts! I bought one of course, because I'm a GS dork, and I keep getting compliments when I wear it. It's so great to be able to say, oh, it's for a book. Bands have t-shirts, why shouldn't books? Check it out.

camroc

Since this was the place we had our big discussion about "No Country for Old Men," I thought it was the best place to recommend Percival Everett's new book "Wounded," which seems to take the same raw material and apply to it the exact opposite impulse. It's just as brutal but infinitely more human.

New Yorker College Tour

For those of you who are interested, the Iowa City schedule of events for the New Yorker College tour.

George Bush--master poet?

One of my students cited a quote from GB:

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda--"

in response to a discussion we're having about repetition and the villanelle form. Never have I been more pleased to hear from our illustrious leader. Now, it'd be interesting if he did adhere to more closely to the constraints of form (villanelle, sestina, pantoum.....) rather than just mocking them.

A History of Violence

I was very excited to discover that David Cronenberg has a new movie out. In college, I earned a tremendously valuable "Certificate in Film Studies," and the capstone was a long paper I wrote analyzing the films of David Cronenberg. Videodrome is one of my all-time faves. Loved The Fly, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, eXistenZ ... appreciated Scanners, The Dead Zone ... wasn't crazy about Crash (1996, not the one last year that rocked), but everyone is entitled to stumble.

I was horribly disappointed in A History of Violence. What happened to David Cronenberg? It's one thing to stumble, and quite another to dive off a roof. History is the most tedious film I've seen since Signs. The first scene is the slowest and most boring I have ever seen in a film. The story unfolds about as fast as a fern frond, revealing itself to be a string of dismaying mobster cliches. Has he never even seen The Sopranos? There are no surprises -- the viewer has guessed everything up front -- except for the one in which such an established director could think this dreck was good enough to distribute. The acting is stiff. The ending is a groaner -- obvious, premature, perfuctory. The whole movie managed to even look boring. And there is an irritating Howard Shore score that doesn't fit the action -- I can't remember the last time I was actually angry at the music in a film.

Granted, David Cronenberg is not the most stylish or deft director around -- in fact, he's often downright clumsy -- but at least his films have always been interesting. But this dog ... I simply can't explain. It lacks any of the bizarre, gruesome, and radical ideas that are his hallmark. Why? Moreover, it was based on a graphic novel -- which means it came into his hands already storyboarded -- and he still either missed that the graphic novel sucked or screwed up in the relatively simple transfer. Where is Frankenstein, his long-rumored magnum opus? He could sink his teeth into that. He was born to direct that. My boy is seriously off his game. Avoid.

Nobelity

Any early bets on the Nobel Prize? Anyone care to create silly analogies to picking Supreme Court justices? Any takers on whom you would choose given the opportunity? I'd love to give it to Old Alice or P Roth, not because they need the attention, or because they need the cash, but because they both can throw down and have been throwing down well for some time. I'm sure some of you have more original picks than those two.

Rezoning Iowa City?

I know very little about this, but there will be a public meeting Wednesday at 7 at City Hall to discuss proposed changes to Iowa City's zoning ordinance. I know, I know, I hear the word "zoning," and it sounds like somebody snoring in a gently swaying hammock, and it makes me very... must keep eyes open... as does the very notion of sitting through a public meeting at City Hall.

However, the issue was presented to me by Todd at Artifacts as having the potential to reshape the face of the town. For example, he said that the block along Market Street, starting with Artifacts and including Motley Cow, the suspiciously cheap pizza place, and across the street to encompass -- GASP!!! -- George's... a moment of silence please... could all be affected. Some developer supposedly "is drooling over that huge parking lot" between George's and the paint store, and this rezoning effort is the stealth method of replacing this lovely, historic, useful part of town with soulless, hulking apartment complexes that have kegs flying from balconies. Or something. And that nobody but the developer has been talking to the city council about this. Now, maybe that is all rumor. Or maybe They want me to think it's all rumor.

Anyway, if you're curious what might be in the works, you might check out that meeting... I'd love to hear (or shout) things like, "Sit down, sir! Sit down!" or "No, you're out of order!" or "Has the culture of cronyism trickled down this far, ladies and gentlemen?"

Better than. . .

For IC local Goats and others who might be interested, Better than Ezra is playing tonight on the Pentacrest after the parade and pep rally.

Wedding Readings?

Sorry for the cross-post, but I am desperate. Anyone got any good ideas for wedding readings? Please see this on BAF for more info.

Marcus vs. Franzen

Who wants a piece of this one? I don't think there is a link for the wonderful Harper's essay in which Ben Marcus tears Franzen and all he stands for a new one. So if you don't have it, run out and read it in the magazine aisle. I don't have a lot to say about it (that's the problem with near total agreement) but am curious about the fiction response. I'm going to come down on the side of "experimentalism" almost every time. Seeing quotes from Tender Buttons anywhere tends to reaffirm my faith in man (or woman as the case may be). I find the blurring of reader and customer to be particularity troubling. It seems to be happening in the poetry world as well.

Playboy fiction

Anyone know how to submit a short story to Playboy? I don't see anything on the Web site...

Actually, does anyone have a link to a good updated list of mags and addresses -- or should I just bite the bullet and buy the latest Writer's Market?

Respect for a Goat

Mr. Ian David Froeb's "The Cosmonaut" has received an honorable mention in this year's Best American Short Stories (Michael Chabon, ed.).

BBQ

I think I hit all the Babies, but I'm missing email addresses for a bunch of Goats. Thus: BBQ, my house, this Sunday, 1 pm. If you don't have my address, email me.

Sharon Olds turns down Laura Bush invite

"... So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."

Her full letter to the First Lady is here.

Whitney Terrell Reading and Party, Weds., 9/21

Whitney Terrell, Workshop graduate, will be reading at Prairie Lights tomorrow, Weds., 9/21, at 7pm. His first novel, The Huntsman, was highly acclaimed, and now he's reading from his new novel, The King of Kings County. Come watch/hear him read and parry the usual assortment of Qs; afterward, there will be a party chez SER, B., and Mark. Hope to see you then!

If the Bush Administration’s Response to Hurricane Katrina Were Workshopped by BAF

SER posted a side-splitting dramatization of Hurricane Katrina: The Workshop over at the Babies That Do Not Ignite blog. Very funny, and she even included my favorite faculty-related joke at the end.

Jonathan Letham wins MacArthur genius grant

I mean, I loved Motherless Brooklyn and thought Fortress of Solitude was okay, but sheez!... $500,000? Good for him. He's definitely doing something right. "You probably ought to check in with me in six months," he said. "I think I can safely say it's going to give me a lot of the security and freedom that any artist craves."

btw, anyone read anything of his besides those two books that they'd recommend?

Embedded with Oprah

Good news from the battlefield. I've talked with a few of you before about how happy I am with the second iteration of Oprah's Book Club. Not that I've ever watched an episode or checked out the web content or read any of the books in conjunction with her recommendations. (Okay, I reread Light in August last month--good, but not as good as I remembered it--but I bought a beaten copy from a used bookstore, rather than the spiffy 3-book set and I didn't actually participate in any book clubs; and I'm now reading Anna Karenina, but only because the Oprah hullabaloo informed me that Pevear had turned from translating Dostoevsky to Tolstoy.) So when I was reading Light in August, I was curious just what Oprah was doing with these books, especially the more difficult Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. This article, when it doesn't digress into Lit-lectures on Faulkner, gives a bit of a scoop.

I suppose I loved the rise of OBC2 because it was putting in lots of people's hands not only good books, but difficult and original and good books. But I figured that the vast majority of [insert your assumptions about Oprah viewers] would give up a few pages in, and only a minority would get anything out of it besides exposure to something Great. In my mind, a little exposure was good, and that a handful of people might fall in love with it (I remember my silly, ignorant self and how dramatically he was changed by As I Lay Dying) was marvelous. I'm pleasantly surprised to find that maybe people are more willing to work hard for good fiction than I'd thought (as long as someone they respect is prodding them to). It's interesting. And with all the talk of declining readership and lazy readership, it's nice to see something good.

Kidsbeer

Oh sure, NOW they come up with Kidsbeer. It's so not fair! My only consolation is they'll never sell it in this country. Their slogan will surely sweep every ad award: "Even kids cannot stand life unless they have a drink."

Talk Like a Pirate Day

I was just walking up Clinton Street and there was a table set up in the Pentacrest. It had a sign that read, "September 19: Talk Like a Pirate Day." A dude in full pirate regalia was ahoying and arr-ing away. I was suspicious and did not engage the pirate in piratical conversation. I just saw on DailyKos, however, that it is indeed an international initiative. Ahoy.

Jane Smiley reading tonight

She's touring for her new nonfic book Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. She was writing page 280 of Good Faith, her latest novel, on September 11, 2001, when her book "suddenly came to seem trivial." So she set out to reexamine the art form in which she had already won a Pulitzer. She proceeded to read 100 novels, from classics to contemporaries (I'm naturally gratified by no. 79), and then write a book about the experience. The reading is at Buchanan Auditorium in the Pappajohn Bidnass Building at 7pm. I believe there is a party after. And poets, you gotta like that title!

Let's Take A Break From All This Serious Stuff

How about another excerpt from an IMDB Discussion Board. This one is a lot shorter than the famous Grendel post, and I didn't contribute at all. Just happened upon it. So without further ado, here are the entire, uncensored contents of the "Why did they cancel this show?" thread from the Wayne Brady Show Discussion Board:

I liked the show. Does anybody know why they canceled it? They should bring back Wayne Brady.

I am very mad. :(
There are 3 kinds of people:
Those who can count and those who can't.

It's obiously because more women like to watch a windbag like Tony and boy does it irritate me. Wayne was killed by Tony Danza and people like it and don't care aout Wayne Brady That's just wrong!

Because no one came to his IMDB message board.
"I'm Wayne Brady, b!itch!"

>>"I'm Wayne Brady, b!itch!"
You sidew with Tony do you pal! Go to hell with him you son of a damn BITCH!

Yes, I do! Have you seen him in A League Of Their Own?
"I'm Wayne Brady, b!itch!"

This message has been deleted by the poster.

Please remember to ensure all your postings are made in compliance with our terms and conditions. Please pay particular attention to the rules in section #2 and the punishments in section #3. In the event of a violation, IMDb may remove your entire posting history, not only the messages which are specifically in violation and your account may be permanently blocked from posting.

You are the one that started bashing at Wayne first. It's you that started it. Not me. So you are trying to outsmart me by being one of the IMDB people huh? After you sided with Tony and bashing Wayne, you throw me this? Just wondering are you part of the IMDB people? If you are, you have alot of nerve trying to frisk me. You tried to retaliate by sending this message just over your hatred of Wayne and love for Tony. Nice Job Pal! I'm sorry about saying all of the bad messages of Tony but to tell you the truth I like to watch Ellen better than Tony. I will not be ashamed of myself for having an opinion.

My posting here has remained unchanged, and you should be able to tell that you were the one, not me, who went overboard. I in no way shape or form insulted Wayne Brady! It's just that you took my quote as such. I'm a huge Wayne Brady fan, having seen his stand-up several times before he was famous. In fact, any real Wayne Brady fan should know that my Wayne Brady quote came directly from the mans mouth. I respect your opinion, but you should respect mine, even if you don't agree with it. Tony Danza, like it or not, left a TV legacy behind with his passing. We should all respect that. In a better world, Tony Danza and Wayne Brady, and even Ellen DeGeneres (SP?) would have equal ratings and would all get along. What do you say we take the first step and get along here on this board?

OK. I'm really sorry for those bad ratings. Can we both call it a truce? Thank you.

LOL the quote "I'm Wayne Brady Bitch" was from his appearance on Chappelle's show.
Anyway I was wondering why you mentioned Tony. What does he have to do with Wayne Brady's cancellation?

Tony had so much power of the fact that Wayne won an emmy the season he got cancelled! Tony worked with Disney to have deals to take Wayne's show off the air and look at his show, he didn't win any emmys nor did he win any recognitizion. Basically, he lost Ventrini, who is so obnoxious and also Wayne Brady Executive Producer John Redmann. So Tony apparently made a deal with ABC to have the power to cancel an emmy winning talk show and replace it with more mediocre madness in which Tony never even mentioned any hosting careers of Donny Osmond's work on PYRAMID like Wayne did and Tom Bergeron's work on Hollywood Squares like I said again, Tony never give a chance in the world to mention and Wayne acknowledged. SO the hell with Tony Danza and long live Wayne Brady!!! Tony killed Wayne's show so that he could have his show on the air.

You need a life seriously! All you do is post about how Tony Danza forced Wayne Brady's talk show off the air. No person no matter how famous they are and Tony Danza is not that famous can force a person off the air. Wayne's show got cancelled because the ratings sucked. Plus he never had good guests on to attract viewers. The show has been off the air over a year and you still go around everywhere complaining Tony Danza forced him off the air. Right! Why don't you look Wayne up and follow him around dressed in black crying over his long cancelled talk show? I'm sure he'll like that. Especially now that nobody gives a rat's @$$ about him. Before you argue back I'm some crazed Danza fan I'm not. Danza's an egomaniac tool!

Tom Waits sues over German sound-alike ad

And I thought such an anti-commercial attitude was long dead and gone...

"Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car. I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor," Waits said in a statement. "While the court can't make me active in radio, I am asking it to make me radioactive to advertisers."

Call for submissions

I received this (I've edited it down a little) from Ted Genoways (an amazing guy, by the way, and a wonderful literary ally) at Virginia Quarterly Review and wanted to let you all know about it. They pay extremely well. Have a look see:

The VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW is putting together a special issue for 2006--based on an idea given to us by Michael Chabon. We are asking writers to contribute stories that take one of their favorite writers as a central character. It may be a straightforward biographical narrative, such as Robert Walser's "Kleist in Thon," which recounts an actual journey of
Heinreich von Kleist; an imagined (or even fantastic) approach, such as Allan Gurganus's "Reassurance," in which one of Walt Whitman's soldier friends writes from heaven; or a humorous take, such as Ian Frazier's "LGA/ORD," in which Frazier riffs on Samuel Beckett's claim that, had he not become a writer, he would have been an airline pilot. The length is also completely open.

If you haven't seen the magazine recently, I encourage you to visit our website. In the last year alone, we have published new work by Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, E. L. Doctorow, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, and Carol Shields. Our current issue features new work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, and Isabel Allende, and our Fall issue (on stands October 1) features a short play by Tony Kushner, the first installment of a serialized graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, and a long story by Joyce Carol Oates. In the last year we have been nominated for a National Magazine Award in Fiction (and another in General Excellence), and our fiction has been reprinted in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, the PUSHCART anthology, and HARPER'S.

The deadline for this issue is relatively distant--we wouldn't need finished stories until March 1, 2006. I hope that will give you enough time to consider this idea and see what you come up with.

The Southern Review and Hurricane Relief

I received a forwarded note from Bret Lott at The Southern Review about a fundraiser they're doing for hurricane relief, posted here with his permission.


To the Community of Writers, Readers, Teachers, Students, Editors and
Anyone Else Within the Sound of This Email--

Bret Lott here, editor of The Southern Review on the campus of LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I am writing to you and to everyone you can forward this email to with an opportunity to help victims of the hurricane. Forgive this rather long email, but it is important to the welfare of many hurricane evacuees in our area -- please read this all the way through.

No doubt you know the sorrow and hardship that has been visited on residents of our state because of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding caused by the breach of the levee in New Orleans. No doubt you know as well of the thousands of displaced persons who have lost everything because of the evacuation of that city.

As a result of so many New Orleans area universities and colleges closing down for who knows how long, LSU has taken on almost 2800 new students who were displaced by losing their homes and their schools; in addition, many students who were already enrolled at LSU have also suffered great losses. These students have experienced hardships that few of us will ever know: they have lost their homes, their personal belongings, their books, their food -- everything, including, for many, the college or university at which they were enrolled. To help meet their needs -- and these are IMMEDIATE and GENUINE needs -- the LSU Foundation has set up Hurricane Katrina Relief
Fund.

Strangely and beautifully and sadly enough, the latest issue of The Southern Review -- mailed to subscribers just week before last, right as the hurricane was making way for the Gulf Coast -- has turned out to be a very special issue for the artwork on the cover and that featured inside. The artist, Billy Solitario, lives near GULFPORT (and I trust you have seen the pictures of the devastation there); as of this writing, we have not been able to contact him. The paintings themselves are of the Gulf Coast -- one of them is even titled "Spiral Cloud over Levee," another one titled "Storm Over the Mississippi"; still others in the portfolio are of barrier islands on the Gulf Coast -- places that don't even exist anymore. The artwork was selected about a year ago, and the synchronicity of this is a little too much to think about -- the issue, which went out just two weeks ago, celebrates a coastland that is, suddenly, gone. Also, and again the synchronicity of this is too much to behold, the lead poems in this issue are by Peter Cooley, poet at now-closed Tulane University; we have heard that he is safe in Houston at the time of this writing.

Here is where the community of folks to whom this email is addressed can help (and please read the following instructions CAREFULLY as they are being written this way so as to allow all of us to help each other legally!).

1 -- YOU SEND THE SOUTHERN REVIEW A CHECK FOR $8 (EIGHT DOLLARS) MADE OUT TO "LSU FOUNDATION," AND WRITE ON THE MEMO LINE "HURRICANE STUDENT RELIEF FUND." MAIL THAT CHECK TO:

THE SOUTHERN REVIEW
OLD PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
LSU
BATON ROUGE LA 70803

PLEASE INCLUDE YOUR NAME AND MAILING ADDRESS WHEN SENDING THE CHECK.


2 -- I SEND YOU A FREE COPY OF THIS ISSUE OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW.

Please note that these two actions -- your donation, our sending you a free copy -- are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE (does anyone out there recognize yet the legal hoops I am having to jump through in order simply to help students in dire need of help? Sheesh!). Please note as well that it just so happens that the cover price for an issue of The Southern Review is $8 (eight dollars), BUT YOU ARE FREE TO DONATE AS MUCH AS YOU WISH.

Order as many as you want -- use them as gifts with the good knowledge that because of your generosity help is going to students in need; use them in your classes as a means to help your students rally to the aid of their comrades here at LSU; give them to anyone and everyone you know. And please forward this email to as many people as you know so that they might also be able to contribute to a worthy fund, and to enjoy the issue itself.

But finally, please note that NOT A SINGLE PENNY WILL COME EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE TO THE COFFERS OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW; THIS IS SOLELY AN EFFORT TOGET MONEY TO STUDENTS IN NEED AND TO CELEBRATE THROUGH THE PAGES OF THE SOUTHERN REVIEW THE BEAUTY OF A COAST THAT HAS LARGELY BEEN LOST.

I know that to many out there this may sound like some sort of mercenary effort to advertise our journal and somehow to make money through the loss of others. Indeed, we will in fact be losing money in all this. But you have my word -- Bret Lott -- that we will in no way profit from these mutually exclusive actions.

I know the outpouring will be a great one, and please know that we here at The Southern Review are prepared to handle the deluge of good will you are already sending our way. Thank you for reading all the way through this email, and thank you as well for what you have already done for the hurricane relief efforts.

Sincerely, and with thanks to all --

Bret Lott
Editor and Director
The Southern Review

Fiction, poetry, reviewing, and the meaning of it all

Update: I'm promoting this post up in time so it appears closer to the top... it's going for the record in numbers of comments.

I've decided to suspend my weekly New Yorker fiction reviews indefinitely. A few reasons for this. The main one is that I had hoped they would generate discussions about contemporary fiction. They haven't. Plus the magazine routinely puts out novel excerpts without giving a heads up about it. That's lame and wreaks havoc with any attempted analysis. Also, it's starting to feel like a chore, and if you've ever seen the doghair tumbleweeds gliding through our house, you know I don't like chores. And I reckon I miss the old workshop and thought it would be like that. And finally, Nate's comment in the "What did you read this summer?" post --

Why doesn't anyone read poetry? Is it so bad? So insular and unapproachable? I thought this was a literary blog... Call me crazy, but last time I looked, literature went well beyond New Yorker fiction.

-- is still haunting me. Because he's right. Why don't I read poetry? I think because I don't feel up to understanding it properly. Because I never really learned to read it. Because it makes me impatient. It's like some exotic cheese meant to be savored morsel by small morsel, when all I've ever done is gobble up cheddar and monterrey jack and, it must be admitted, Velveeta.

Also, the world seems to be going to hell, and it feels indulgent to relentlessly keep on reading and writing about reading and writing no matter what or when.

Fiction's easy to read for pleasure. Right now I'm cruising through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and loving it. I look forward to picking it up, as if I'm picking up a remote control for a movie in my mind. That has never happened to me with poetry, and I think that's sad, and it means something is wrong, and I've decided to try and fix it.

So I'm starting with the Norton Anthology of Poetry. I'm up to Shakespeare right now. I'm nibbling the exotic cheese a bit at a time.

I loved when Chad was enlightening all of us with his witty responses to New Yorker poetry. But again, there is more to the literary scene than the New Yorker. I had merely thought it would be a good touchstone, something we might all have in common, a starting point to launch conversations about what is working in good writing today and why. But I'm finding you can't make a blog do what you want. Instead, it stubbornly goes about its business as it pleases, occasionally shining with brilliance, often sleeping, sometimes shuffling around grumpy or confused or angry or indignant. It just is what it is, and stays that way. Like a friend.

I'll probably still post story reviews when I get excited about something, or angry or grumpy or confused or indignant about something. I'm eyeing the Ann Beattie story in this week's with hope and anticipation. And last week's was really good, in case you missed it. But now I have to go have a plantar's wart on my heel looked at.

End soliloquy.

(See? I would never had thought of that word without the recent Shakespeare infusion.)

The Dog Paddle

Mark after Swimming
Originally uploaded by S Rogers.

The Real Grendel and Luka were much more enthusiastic about the whole Dog Paddle than was Mark. Here's a photo of the young gentleman after I finally stopped torturing him and allowed him to take it all in from the safety beneath the lifeguard chair.

At present, he is being neutered. Godspeed, young Mark.

Dog Paddle

Reminder: Dogs belonging to Goats and Babies will be convening at 6pm tonight at the Dog Paddle.

Mark went last night since B. was going to be out of town tonight and wanted to witness the spectacle. It was hilarious! Mark wasn't too pleased to be in the water, but the whole event was hysterical - and it was fun to be in a large, crowded public area where everyone was happy.

I'm hoping that if I take Mark again tonight, he'll start to get used to the water. I'm also hoping to see George and Pogue jump off the diving board - and perhaps the Real Grendel could be trained to catch a Frisbee in mid-air just before he splashes into a swimming lane?

Aimee Bender reading tonight

Just a little reminder. Prairie Lights, 7 p.m.

The News from Houston

Talked to Mom and Pop yesterday -- between bursts of my father screaming "airborne!" in the background every time a helicopter came on the news, Mom said the situation in Houston was fairly stable -- they've got enough donations of food, water, and especially clothing, so if you're thinking of donating to someone, probably the Red Cross is the way to go.

Apparently, a bunch of the local churches are taking people in. Mom and Pop are working in our church's "soup kitchen" -- they're going to be making bag meals for people stuck in hotels and whatnot, and they'll also be having some spreads at the church. Considering my father was intrigued at my ability to melt cheese and peppers into chili con queso, I'm not quite sure how that will turn out. And I'm sure my Mom (who is a wonderful cook) will also be imparting her child-rearing wisdom to the evacuees, whether they want it or not ("See, you need to nag them until you break their spirit").

But, on a note that is probably making me feel way more optimistic than I should, my Mom said "Unless they run McCain, no one's going to vote Republican next time" -- which is similar to the Pope saying, "You know, Satan had a point."

Wow

Barbara Bush, who accompanied the former presidents on a tour of the Astrodome complex Monday, said the relocation to Houston is "working very well" for some of the poor people forced out of New Orleans.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said during a radio interview with the American Public Media program "Marketplace." "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Punchline, anyone?

Learning from history

Did anyone catch Michael Brown, director of FEMA, discussing the situation in New Orleans on this morning's news show circuit? "We had all of our rescue teams, the medical teams, pre-deployed, ready to go," he said. "The lawlessness, the crime that is occurring, did surprise us." It's something "I never thought I'd see."

And he's right. The feds are doing the best they can. I mean, in all fairness, who in Washington could have anticipated this kind of thing? OK, I'll grant that New Orleans is a large city with poorly-maintained infrastructure. Anyone who's ever been there can tell you that. And sure, it's teeming with poverty and years of pent-up desperation. No secret there either. But, in all seriousness, who can really think of an example in modern history of a city like that descending into an anarchy of pillaging, shooting and rape after being physically destroyed.

I mean, sure, there was the Baghdad thing. But that's different.

What did you read this summer?

It's time to trot out our reading accomplishments. I'll start.

Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
I adored this hilarious romp through the old west, narrated by a sort of 19th century Forrest Gump. A white man raised by the Cheyenne, he moves back and forth between the white man's world and the Indian's without a shred of sentimentality or misplaced malice. Highly recommended.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
Read this slim book in one day. Fairly impressive the way he inhabits the autistic narrator. Kind of a light read. Perfect in-flight book.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
What a frigging great adventure tale. Bigger than life, full of betrayals and vengeance, with a grand and massive plot that won't stop.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I reread it every few years, like The Great Gatsby. What struck me this time was just how annoying Tom Sawyer is. I really struggled with how Huck, despite his adventures and growth, did not challenge Tom in any of that little monster's cockamamie plans.

Lord of the Barnyard by Tristan Egolf
I'm about 100 pages into this one. Has anyone else read this? It's frightfully funny. I don't know that I've laughed so much at a book since A Confederacy of Dunces. I don't think the author, who killed himself not long ago, can keep up this level of quality, which starts out Impossibly High and has slid down to around Very Good by the point where I'm at now.

I leave you with an excerpt from the book's Prologue -- which reminded me for some reason of some of Vampiro's writing:

"... The Railway-Miscarriage/River-Rat Theory would have it that John was prematurely miscarried into a stainless-steel toilet bowl on a high-speed express train cutting through the woods due southwest of Baker, and that he ended up, battered and disoriented, though still alive, face-down on the Patokah railroad tracks with half a rail tie in his ass and two pounds of afterbirth scattered through the gravel for a mile to the south. His mother, reportedly a wealthy heiress from Chicago who was seven months into term, had gone to the lavatory after developing acute stomach pains. Ten minutes later a passing conductor heard a series of screams and a thrashing about in the commode. After trying the handle and finding it jammed, he kicked down the door. He found the lady in question in a bloody awful mess. She was straining and lurching with one leg hiked up on the sink and both fists wrapped around a pustulating umbilical cord leading from between her drawn legs downward into the bowl. The conductor flew into a panic. He squeezed through the doorway and grappled for a hold on the cord. He could make out the misshapen infant jammed in the chute and howling in a high-pitched wail on the other side of the drop flap, just over the tracks. The screams sounded out all over the passenger car. The mother finally lost her footing in the sauce and pitched over into the hallway. She lost consciousness, leaving the rest in the conductor's hands, literally. The conductor made one last effort at dislodging the maimed infant, but the cord soon snapped, and up came the broken end. It was a terrible scene. By the time the young mother came to her senses with a crowd of passengers standing over her, she wanted nothing more than to turn her back on the whole dreadful affair. Of course, no one thought for a second that the child might have actually survived..."

"The View from Castle Rock" by Alice Munro

New Yorker fiction -- August 29, 2005 issue


I read this a few days ago and refuse to reread it for this review, not just because it was fairly boring, nor just because I'm too lazy to turn off the Terri Gross Run-DMC/Chuck D interview that's currently blasting from the kitchen and I would have to do that to concentrate enough to read but not to write this, and not just because it's in slightly annoying present tense -- but mostly because as usual for an Alice Munro story it is loooooooooooooooong.

New Yorker stories, I have found, typically run in length from about 7 columns to 20. A NYer column contains 400-500 words (1.5 manuscript pages). This story is roughly 33 columns long. A full column is 59-60 lines, at somewhere around 7.5 words per line. 33x60x7.5 = 14,850 words (and we know they pay a dollar a word ... a nice chunk of change for Ms. Munro). At 300 words per page, this hefty piece would weigh in at 49.5 manuscript pages. Oh, the groans in the Dey House hallways when someone did that! It would easily qualify as a novella in Ethan's novella seminar.

Why are her stories so much longer than most people's? Are her plots more involved, does she bite off larger chunks of time and jump around in them more, does she include more character details or scene description than most writers, are her stories really micronovels? Maybe. Certainly it's working for her. She must be one of the top five most respected living short story writers. I won't spend time here praising her style, use of language, etc. -- her mastery of the form is well known.

But what I read the other day hasn't stuck with me much. I was glad it took place in 1818. That was refreshing. Scottish family on a ship, immigrating to Canada. Each character is given motivations and idiosyncracies and taken through various levels of development in the story. Then we flash forward to today and she describes their resting place, which is some graveyard in Canada by a highway. It's like she saw this family gravesite and made up a story about them. Why is this important enough to end the novella with? Search me.

I dare say I don't need a novella about these people. And I wonder whether this novella would be here at all, to not be needed by me, had it been sent to the magazine under the name, say, Jane Smith. I doubt it. For Munro completists only.

El Gordo de Amore, Interview III

Earth Goat: It's been a long time. I'm glad you've agreed to do another interview.

El Gordo De Amore: Well, last time was a little depressing

EG: Oh what rot! It was just a bit of the old tea and crumpet -- too sweet to be bad!

EA: Yes ... Er. Well.

EG: Has Old Miss Havisham got your tongue? I say, you are as close-lipped as Jaggers at a Sunday Church Meeting! Do you have nothing to say to your good friend Pip?

EA: Pip?

EG: Yes! I am interviewing you in the guise of a beloved literary scamp! It's the newest thing in clever criticism. Wot wot?

EA: I'm pretty sure Pip never said "Wot wot."

EG: Oh, you're as despicable as Old Provis! Tally ho!

EA: You sound nothing like Pip. I'm not putting up with this crap.

(unintelligible on tape -- noise that sounds like a duck. Loud bang.)

EG: Now, show me your scrivener's notes! What are you working on? What blood-thirsty rows and derring-dos have you scratched down for us poor gentlemen? We will read it as we row down the Thames, my beloved Estella in the bow!

EA: Err-- What's that in your hand?

EG: Why Miss Havisham's wedding dress and the chains that once bound my old benefactor! Wot wot! Here, hold fast!

EA: Dude, get the hell away from me.

EG: Wot wot!

(unintelligible noises -- loud banging)

EG: Lie back and think of England!

(unintelligible noises and a loud banging sound).

Eat the Burned Flesh of Lesser Creatures!!!

Bar-B-Q this Saturday at Jimmy Ruskell's house, 5 o'clock.

Just bring your sexy self.

If your unsexy self is available, he or she can come too.

Dance Dance Revolution Provided.

Found Photos

What a swell idea for a Web site. People find photos, these folks take 'em and scan 'em. Thousands of pictures, many of them excellent, many amateurishly charming, many bizarre. Compulsively did I scroll and scroll and scroll and wonder who all these people are. Great for getting ideas for characters. Behind every one of these is a story. Always the chance you'll see someone you know -- or see yourself in one.

Arab /Jew literary double-header

"The Disturbing Occurrences," by Naguib Mahfouz
Harper's fiction -- August 2005 issue


"The Disturbing Occurrences" was first published in 1979 and, apparently, only recently translated. A simple tale told in first-person, it's as easy to read as butter is to spread on hot toast. Beginning as a straightforward crime story narrated by the investigator, it kind of implodes or dissolves 2/3 the way through and ends up as a philosophical piece in the way that only translated foreign stories are allowed to do.

The investigator-narrator is looking into incidents in a certain Cairo district, ranging from bags of money given to paupers to mass poisonings and fires. He receives an anonymous tip that one Makram Abd al-Qayyum is behind these shenanigans and goes about interviewing everyone who has had contact with this esteemed rich gentleman. The reactions of those who live and work in the building he just vacated are all over the map, from very positive to very negative, which might seem to be par for the course if you ask a bunch of people about anybody, but for this increasingly obsessed detective the range of opinion just makes al-Qayyum all the more mysterious and frustrating and, therefore, suspicious. The detective goes so far as to have printed in the papers various allegations and sketches of the suspect. My favorite part is where al-Qayyum himself, just back from vacation in the Red Sea, turns up in the police office and asks, "What is the meaning of what you published in the papers?"

The suspect turns out to be clean, and the investigator leaves his post -- which he is clearly not fit for -- to practice law while still retaining a secret belief that al-Qayyum is guilty of the crimes. In a twist, al-Qayyum hires him to manage his business and legal affairs, which he agrees to, while still having an inner certainty that the man is guilty.

This is the kind of direct character study that Chekhov and Maupassant were so good at, and when compared to a typical contemporary story it seems simplistic, not much more than a sketch. Some of those Chekhov and Maupassant tales are hardly three or four pages long -- and yet they manage to distill and dramatize some aspect of human nature without any distracting adornment whatsoever. In other words, this is an old-fashioned tale whose moral and philosophical qualities are stripped clean and laid bare for all to see and ponder without anything else getting in the way. Call me a relic, call me what you will, but I still love and admire stuff like this.

"Thicker Than Water," by Gina Ochsner
New Yorker fiction -- August 22, 2005 issue


This tale of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in a Russian Jewish section of a Latvian town soon after the collapse of Soviet rule is narrated by Ada, a young girl whose provincial family is suspicious of foreigners and Jews, but who is herself fascinated by the differences she sees in them, which she romanticizes, especially the "brilliant" Jewish Ilmyen family on her street.

I loved to be at the Ilmyens' house, where everything seemed exotic and better than at home: their lace curtains were more elegant than the yellowed muslin hanging over our windows, and though I knew that the rain pelted our houses equally, it seemed to me that it fell more musically than from ours.

Her father is a drunk who maintains the local cemetary, and her mother has founded the All-Latvian Ladies' Temperance Society and appointed herself president, but when the only two people who join it are a Gypsy and a Jew (Mrs. Ilmyen), she has to change the name to the International Ladies' Temperance Society. And so on. There has never been any lack of material to be found in backwater nationalism and its suspicions of foreigners, and Ochsner mines it for all it's worth. You could replace the Latvians in this story with, say, rural Hoosiers or Nebraskans, and the Jews with, oh, Mexican immigrants or a family of doctors from Pakistan and have essentially the same story. I like that, the universality of this material.

The climax combining her visiting nationalistic drunk Uncle Maris and the chess tournament Ada is competing in thanks to the Ilmyen girl is well wrought. And the subtle, excruciating ironies and hypocricies and eventual failures of maintaining bigotry and discrimination in the face of the facts is satisfying. The treatment of Lutherans is hilarious. The ending, though I don't think it really works that well -- in fact, the whole story kind of hangs loosely together and could have used a tightening round of edits -- goes approximately where it should in terms of emotional resonance stemming from events as seen by a charming but young narrator. If it were me, I would have orchestrated a death in the end to bookend the series of deaths that begin the piece -- Jews dying in outlandish ways, having to be dealt with by the grumbling cemetary worker father -- but maybe that would be pat, and maybe that's why I don't have a story in the New Yorker while Ochsner does. Flawed though it may be, the story is worth a read for its wise treatment of provincial xenophobia.

Shameless plug

My old friend Steve Wilson has written a rip-snorting biography of none other than Paule Lynde. It was featured in today's Salon. For those of you in the Chicago area, I urge you to go to his reading this Monday, August 29, at Borders Books & Music, 2817 North Clark St., at 7:30 p.m. (That's the Lincoln Park store for those in the know.)

Also, he just adopted an adorable little boy named Wilson, so buy him a drink, already.

The bat situation

Last night, after we went to bed, The Real Grendel started crying, so I went downstairs and let him out. I opened the kitchen door and off to my right noticed something dark, a blob where a blob shouldn't be, fastened to the bottom of a picture. I had taken off my glasses and couldn't make out any details as I approached the thing to study it. It seemed to be some sort of gigantic insect cocoon or perhaps an alien pod. But I knew in my heart it was a bat.



I ran upstairs to get my glasses, but when I came back down and rounded the corner into the kitchen, it was no longer there. Instead it was flying around the kitchen. It was horrifying and fascinating -- really impressive the way it was completely silent, and the lighting made its wings sort of glow brown-orange against the ceiling and walls. Then I watched it fly upstairs.

"NNNnnnnno!" I grabbed a broom and chased it, but it was too fast for me. Four of the five upstairs rooms had their doors open, including the bedroom. I started there, flipping on the light and explaining to a curled-up Tracy why I was poking the curtains with a broom.

"No way."
"Yes!"
"A bat."
"A bat!"

I could not find the bat anywhere. I finally gave up and, uneasily, went to sleep.

This morning, The Real Grendel woke us up whining and apparently watching something fly around the room, though the light was too dim for me to make anything out. We all went back to sleep, and later I let him out again. When I returned upstairs, I saw the bat in our bedroom window:



It's hard to tell in this photo, but it somehow managed to squeeze itself into the half inch or so between the storm window and screen, still very much alive. Due to the configuration of the window, I cannot raise the screen to let it out and I cannot lower the upper window. I can only close off the whole thing by closing the window. The only escape seems to be back into the room. I don't want to call an exterminator because it seems a waste of money. Why should it cost me $40 or whatever to get a bat out of a window?

I am at a loss about how to capture the bat. I don't want to hurt it. Any ideas?

UPDATE: CRISIS RESOLVED, SITUATION NORMAL
After declining a $299 offer from a pest control company, I called Iowa City Animal Control. An officer showed up an hour later, a skinny, no-nonsense blonde woman in a uniform, who was holding a square tupperware container on which was written "BATS," in black magic marker. It had air holes poked in it.

I nearly chuckled at her naivete. Surely she should be wearing military armor and be wielding an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner? But whatever -- it was her life, and if she wanted to show up unprepared, nothing I could do about it. Besides, the service would be free. I was only worried that she'd be fiddling with the thing for hours, and I didn't have hours. We went upstairs.

She looked at the window and asked for a coat hanger, which I gave her. Then she opened the window about halfway. Then she dragged the bat down inside the window with the coat hanger while holding the "BATS" tupperware container underneath it with her other hand, until the bat fell into the container. Then she put the lid on the container.

"Wow," I said. "Thanks! You do a lot of this?"
"Oh, forty a week, maybe."
"Ever been bitten?"
"Not by a bat."
"What will you do with it?"
"Let it go, far away."

John Irving on Daily Show

In case you missed it, you can watch it on the Comedy Central site. Iowa mentioned, funny anecdote about Vonnegut. Thanks to Gwarbot for the alert.

Happy Birthday, PJKM!

...who turns a certain number today. We still love her anyway.

For a different take on it, please refer to Brando's post over at CJSD.

Quills Voting

I just voted online in the Quills Awards. I did so because I would like them not to suck in this inaugural year, though because it's a popularity contest I have my doubts.

However, what struck me the most was how many categories there are. Like voting for judges at election time, I did as much research as I could stand, but then went with my gut anyway for most of them. I mean, what the hell do I know about self-help books or romance novels?

Interestingly, the Quills will be broadcast live on NBC in October. I'm not convinced America is ready for the dork-fest that is the writerly community, but I would love to see Marilynne on national TV, pulling her hair back from her face and delivering a short speech in that musical voice of hers. THAT would be worth tuning in for, if only for the incongruity of it all.

The Ministry of Reshelving

is trying to relocate copies of George Orwell's 1984 from their present, incorrect place in bookstores (Fiction) to somewhere more appropriate (Current Events, U.S. Politics, or similar). If you do it, you're supposed to report it to the Ministry. Their goal: to reshelve 1,984 copies throughout the U.S.

It's this kind of thing that makes the Web the most valuable and important way to fritter away time in history.

Name Auctioning

This from Salon:

"Next month, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, Nora Roberts, Michael Chabon and 11 other best-selling writers will auction the right to name characters in their new novels. The profits will go to the First Amendment Project, whose lawyers have repeatedly gone to court to protect the free speech rights of activists, writers and artists.

'It feels a little scary for most writers because when you're writing, you're completely in charge -- you can say this book is all mine, it's my world,' said Chabon. 'Whether giving over some of that has any monetary value or not, we'll see.'

But bidders beware -- most of the authors are clearly retaining creative control to use the names as they see fit."

I don't really have an opinion on this. I guess it's a good cause. It got me thinking, though, about the best/most ridiculous/most inexplicable names for characters. My favorite has to be the protagonist from Tender is the Night. Indeed, I remember reading a heavily annotated edition that wondered if Fitzgerald realized Dick Diver was common parlance for fellatio at that time. Other favorites?

"Writer's Almanac" canceled, then uncanceled in Kentucky

A radio station has changed its mind about the decency of Garrison Keillor's radio spot. The public told the station that getting high and breasts are okay with them.

What is the deal with Iowablog?

Is it some sort of minimalist statement? A solemn commentary on the blank page that terrifies us all? Did they not pay their bill? Are they writing in invisible ink? Did Vu win all the posts in poker? Or is it just my machine that refuses to display the words?

Fall writerly stuff in Iowa City

Prairie Lights has its new list up, which runs through Halloween. Some highlights include Aimee Bender, Margot Livesay, Jane Smiley, Gregory Rabassa, Yiyun Li, Rick Moody, Philip Levine, Cole Swenson, Ted Kooser, and Joe Haldeman. Note that Prairie Lights readings have shifted up from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Add to those Baxter Black at the Englert Theater 29 September, C. D. Wright at Tippie Auditorium 27 September, sponsored by the Workshop alone, plus something called The New Yorker College Tour (any ideas what that is?) 17-19 October.

The fiction teaching lineup for the fall will be Ethan Canin, Margot Livesay, Kevin Brockmeier, and Chris Offutt. (Can someone confirm all those? Is Marilynne teaching this fall, too? Sam's coming in the spring.) Ms. Livesay, the Scottish novelist, will be teaching a seminar on The Investigation of the Long Story, and the class will be reading Chekhov, Gallant, Gass, Hempel, Randal Kenan, Alistair McLeod, Munro, Katherine Anne Porter, and Joan Silber.

Kevin Brockmeier will be teaching a Children's Fiction Workshop in which students will put up two pieces of fiction for children. They'll read Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater, The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsly, and the exhausting-sounding 24 Girls in 7 Days by Alex Bradley.

The tanned and rested Mr. Canin will be teaching his popular novella workshop. Chris Offutt will teach a seminar on event-driven and character-driven fiction, discussing the attributes and deficiencies of each. Readings will include short stories and short novels.

Any of us has-beens planning on taking a seminar?

Cole Swensen will be conducting a seminar on Serial and Long Poems, reading Pound, Spicer, Palmer, WC Williams, Karen Ah-hwei Lee, and Moxley. Mary Ruefle will be doing one on Idylls, Elegies, Odes, and Manifestos, with readings by Keats, Hopkins, and Stevens, plus the new anthology Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950. James Galvin will teach a Form of Poetry seminar using ye olde Norton, newest edition.

And that's all I found in those wire boxes in the Dey House -- which still has a beige, trailer-shaped parasite fastened to its south side.

Not even the Cliff's Notes?

I know you'll all be shocked (shocked!) to learn Mrs. Beckham has never read a book. What IS shocking is that she admitted same. (Thanks to Bookslut.)

Dear Ropes of Sand

I tried to comment on Artie Writewell's hilarious post re: those meddling crime-solving cheerleaders, but was denied! Then I recalled the earlier post about copying Earth Goat's posting policy, and I wonder if you didn't go a step too far. True, on EG only contributors can make an original post -- but anybody registered on Blogger can post a comment. What we did was disallow anonymous comments. I hope you'll hear my goat cries and make an adjustment. Of course, if you have come to a different policy decision, so be it. But note that it effectively locks the rest of us out.

I feel so used

In case you haven't seen this UI Foundation document about the Workshop, it's got some mouthwatering artists' conceptions of the Dey House renovation and the Glenn Shaeffer Library -- with some eye-popping dollar amounts (and fairly purple prose ... since when is the Iowa River "breathtaking"? When dead fish are rotting on its shores?). It also shows some pretty darned familiar faces in the "in-class" photos. I don't remember signing a release ... though I dimly recall a photographer setting up some stuff one day. (See the top of page 8 for a priceless shot of The Plunge stifling a yawn.)

"Gómez Palacio" by Roberto Bolaño

New Yorker fiction -- August 8 & 15, 2005 issue


There's been some sort of error. This story was supposed to be a poem, see. It wants to be a poem so bad that I actually feel sorry for it. It's like a kid squirming in a stiff, ill-fitting suit.

The speaker of the would-be poem has something in his past, some menacing trouble with the law, perhaps. He is vague and edgy. He can't sleep. That's all he'll tell us. He has problems connecting not just with the reader, but with the students in his poetry workshop: He can't even muster an answer to a student's question about why he writes poetry and how long he plans to write it.

Recapping where we are with the would-be poem: An emotionally dead narrator who doesn't communicate. And what else -- oh, he gets rides to work from the director of the workshop, who lets him drive even though he can't drive, and they listen to her best friend singing rancheras on the tape player, and after his last day as a teacher she takes him to some ridge in the desert where they watch distant car headlights make mysterious green lights. And then ... then he gets on a bus for Mexico City. The end.

We learn virtually nothing about the speaker of the would-be poem from his own thoughts, and virtually nothing about him through dialogue with the director, and virtually nothing about him through dramatic action. There is no build-up of tension, no crisis, no resolution of tension. No story. There's only one thing here: imagery. Which is fine -- in a poem.

Texas Writers Observed

Congrats to CEK, who appears in this article in the current issue of The Texas Observer!

Superconservative superhero comic

Apparently, Liberality For All, a conservative persecution sci-fi fantasy comic book, in which cyberbioengineered G. Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity, and Oliver North fight against an ultra-liberal Chelsea Clinton/UN-ruled America, is for real. But is it serious or tongue-in-cheek a la Team America? Click the "Next" link at the bottom to flip through the pages... Via DailyKos (scroll way down to "CyberHannity Saves the World"). There is a synopsis of the comic here. Also see Tom Tomorrow's take on it.

"CommComm" by George Saunders

New Yorker fiction -- August 1, 2005 issue


Following is a reconstructed version of the original post. Comments may reflect the fact that the post disappeared for a while. Many thanks to Antoine Wilson for dredging this up from Bloglines.

When I flipped to the contents page of this week's New Yorker and saw George Saunders's name, I literally rubbed my hands with glee. I may have even said, "Mwa-ha-ha." And he did not disappoint -- although I have to admit on first read I put it down for a while without finishing the first page, put off by his addiction to creating acronyms. We get three in the first paragraph and a half. But a few hours later, after two Advil, I forgave him and thoroughly enjoyed the piece.

Mr. Saunders has picked up the wild-assed comic surrealism mantle from Donald Barthelme. And both Barthelme and Saunders mastered the prevalent colloquial language to the point where you just have to admire the sheer flow of economic authenticity. They must be consummate eavesdroppers. Even a throwaway sentence like "Which I know is dumb, but still" in this story has to be admired. It seems effortless, but it must be the result of extreme dedication to listening.

Saunders's worlds are funky dystopian places about thirteen degrees to the left of ours. "CommComm" (Community Communications) presents a perfect Saunders canvas on which to paint his weird visions: A military PR unit. It's the narrator's job to explain military base happenings to the media and the public, through the never spelled out "PIDS" -- which I came to think of as Public Information/Disinformation Sessions.

A hallmark of his unique writing is that Saunders can't stop himself from creating outlandish and apparently irrelevant details, such as "frozen ministeaks called SmallCows."

You microwave them or pull out their ThermoTab. When you pull the ThermoTab, something chemical happens and the SmallCows heat up. I microwave. Unfortunately, the ThermoTab erupts and when I take the SmallCows out they're coated with a green, fibrous liquid. So I make ramen.

What is the tone of that? Comic, certainly, for the reader. And of course it's a comment on out-of-control consumerism. But how does the narrator feel about this? I guess he's just in it, reporting to the reader. It's a fine line Saunders walks with stuff like this, a kind of incidental deadpan trivial creativity that I wouldn't have the patience for with too many writers. He went crazy with this kind of thing back in March, in the "Brad Carrigan, American" story in Harper's. That story didn't work for me. Here, he keeps these to a minimum, to great effect. It's a spice, not a main course.

Another thing is if he's going to invent zany acronyms, I think he should stick with them, fill them out. In this story we get DST -- Designated Substitute Thoughtstream (alternative thought patterns one is supposed to invoke when confonted with "sadness-inducing events"). We are told this in column 2, but then it never comes back in the rest of the story, and not for lack of sadness-inducing events. Like I said, he walks a fine line, and this example is one of his few missteps here. In fairness, he does keep it up with the self-help tapes the narrator often consults.

But the story: the narrator has a home story and a work story going on that merge in the end. The home story is his parents and "the night of the Latvians." The work story involves the closing of the base, a dorky religious coworker named Giff, and a cynical guy named Rimney, whose wife has had a stroke. We spend more time on the work story, in which a foul smell is detected in the office, and it turns out Rimney has unearthed a couple of corpses and put them in the closet while he figures out what to do. If corpses are found, it would threaten the Dirksen Center for Terror, "the town's great hope," which is currently in the excavation stage. People on this base that is closing want to get jobs at Dirksen. And Rimney bribes the narrator to help him hide the bodies by promising a job at Dirksen.

I do an Actual Harm Analysis. Who would a reburial hurt? The mummy guys? They're past hurt. Who would it help? Rimney, Val Rimney, all future Dirksen employees. Me. Mom, Dad.

Of course, Giff catches on, and this fuels Rimneys rage. I don't want to give away the ending, in case you haven't read it yet, because there are a few elements of surprise in store that make the story more than worthwhile.

What is up with Saunders and old corpses? See "Brad Carrigan." And the paleofascination of "Pastoralia." There is an anthropological bent to his stuff, a pointing out of the Old Ways. I can only speculate that it is related to his devastating critique of current culture. Like he's saying, "We are way more ridiculous than you even fear we are, but we weren't always, and contrasting them serves my point."

Making fun of a religious loony is one of the easiest things to do in writing -- Saunders jujitsus his way out of that most admirably in the end. The ending in fact is superwacky. Too superwacky? I don't think so. Impossible as it seems with something so self-consciously soaking in irony and gallows humor, I was touched by the ending. It's unexpected, out there, and well executed, in this reviewer's opinion. A broad and triumphant redemption is about the last thing I was looking for amid all the hypercynicism. Makes for a nice combo.

The story is no "Jon," as Gillymonster pointed out on his and T-Bone's bitchin' porch this weekend, but it puts Saunders back on the odd pedestal I have reserved for him.

The IC August blues

Couches, bookshelves, and broken chairs litter half the yards in town. Moving trucks block alleys, back up beeping to front steps, go the wrong way on Jefferson and Market. And as often as not going out means saying goodbye to people. Soon Mrs. Bathurst and her sidekick Agent Cooper, Nate and Nikki, and Possum will join the ranks of the Workshop diaspora. Godspeed to them and the best of luck. Things just won't be the same here anymore.

A minor aspect of this process is that the scrappy, Goat-addled softball team, The Defenestrators, is losing players. We still have enough males, but we need to find one or two women interested in playing the next two games and then the playoffs. Games are on Sunday afternoons or evenings -- this Sunday's game is at 5pm at the Hawkeye softball complex. If any current or recently graduated female workshoppers or other female readers are interested in playing, please email me at earthgoat at gmail dot com! You don't have to be good -- just willing to block out an hour each of the next few Sundays and have fun. Plus we'd love to meet you.