Accommodatingly

Dan Bouchard and Cathy Park Hong read their poems tomorrow in Cambridge, in Central Square. I’ll be there. Both are worth hearing. (Cathy Park Hong writes science fiction poetry. It’s not what you think.)

If you live in Minnesota don’t miss the Book Festival next Saturday. You never know who you might see. (Actually, you could just check the program.) I wish I could be there. Jessie will be there!

I, though, will be in Chicago next weekend, and in Long Beach/ Los Angeles the first weekend in November. Let me know if you want details.

Jessie keeps up with protests on behalf of Iraq and Burma.

I think about Sassy magazine in Rain Taxi’s online edition, and review Robert Hass’ new book tomorrow in a newspaper.

Also in Rain Taxi, Eric thinks about Jack Kirby.

Laura Kasischke’s new book, Lilies Without is amazing, though not a radical departure from her amazing last book, Gardening in the Dark. Ausable Press have been doing a great job as a poetry press lately, but they should perhaps put their fall list on their website.

Lyra is stubborn. And cute.

Nathan dropped a CD this morning and then said “Uh-oh what happened CD fall down Nathan!” Pretty soon we’ll be seeing multiply subordinated clauses from our little guy. Also in the language department: he has a set of rubber letters and numbers for his bath, and when he’s done with his bath he lets us know by saying goodbye, one by one, to all ten of the numbers (including zero), or to all the letters he can find. “Goodnight, eight! Goodnight, nine! Goodnight, J!” Every time he seems to have done the cutest thing imaginable, he does… something… cuter.

My current employer just won an award for the ways in which it assists families, and especially moms (the award comes from Working Mother magazine), in balancing professional and family commitments. Nice to know, though– like any employee of any employer anywhere– I regularly wish that my employer did more.

There’s nothing like reading weepy 1950s sf about the end of the world to make you briefly weepy, sentimental, confused and distractable.

On the other hand, there are few kinds of nonfiction prose more exhilarating, frustrating, consoling and thought-provoking– yes, all those qualities at once– than the essays and speculations of William Carlos Williams: in between waits for a bus and waits for the photocopier this morning I have been reading The Embodiment of Knowledge, and quite apart from the scholarly uses I expect to make of it this month, it’s got some remarkable bits of quotable prose, viz.:

“Science is a sham to him who sees his city destroyed by gunfire. Philosophy is a cheat to him who has lost that which he loves and knows no better than to weep. Poetry at such moments is terrible, an overwhelming summation of life and the world– never perhaps to be set down, the type of a peculiarly humane knowledge.” (Note how Williams seems about to make an unsustainable claim for actual poems’ ability to sustain and console us– and then tells us that no such poems exist, that the “poetry” which could do all these things is not the kind you can read.)

And: “our schools are based on the principle of a consued mass striving for the unseen summit of a topless cone– and that alone real.”

And: “”Afraid lest he be caught in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated– thrown aside– a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions.” (Not just a man: anyone? Any man?)

For more and better quotations (from novelists and science writers, mostly) just keep reading Jenny, to whom this post constitutes a sort of homage.

Do you live anywhere remotely near the Twin Cities? If so, do not under any circumstances miss Thursday’s comics-and-subcultures-and-graphic novels event, a public conversation involving Douglas Wolk and Austin Grossman.

Douglas is the author of Reading Comics, a forthcoming critical guide to the medium, which Douglas discussed in Salon. He also wrote a good book about James Brown and several thousand insightful reviews of records, comics, performances, equipment, Burning Man festivals, and some other stuff.

Austin is the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible, a novel about superheroes and supervillains that’s the most fun I’ve had in a while: it’s like a literary novel set in Astro City. (If you know Astro City, you know that’s high praise.) Austin also enjoys some reputation as a designer of video games, including what I’m told is the highly acclaimed System Shock.

The free event takes place at 7:30pm this Thursday June 28 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (click the link for directions). We’ll see you there!

Once you finish Douglas’ and Austin’s books you may be seeking summer reading: I recommend chasing your adorable toddler around the room until your eyes glaze over and you can’t read anything

Sara Ryan’s absolutely perfect second novel for young adults, set in Portland, Oregon…

Edward Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds, an informative book about online gaming aimed at non-online-gamers, now supplemented by his cool-looking Synthetic Worlds Initiative; and…

Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, a nearly-perfect work of Afro-Caribbean coming-of-age science fiction, which I’ll likely be teaching this December (note that this is not a general Nalo Hopkinson recommendation).

As for poetry… well, stay tuned.

Haven’t linked to poems in a while. Here are some neat and relatively new ones…

In the new Boston Review, Graham (”Guantanamo”) and Susan Stewart (”The Lost Colony”). Is it a doom-themed issue?

A whole e-chapbook from Laura McCullough at Mudlark.

Coolness from Shanna Compton: “Let’s strip this carcass gearless.”

And feel free to poke around in the all-online Best New Zealand Poems ‘06 and let me know what you like– I’m not done with it yet. (Thanks to Andrew, who has been keeping up with me as well.)

Currently putting together, for this fall, a course in contemporary poetry in English from outside the United States, and a course in science fiction. I have rough syllabi, assignments and such already made up, but I’m still open to suggestions: send them if you like.

Rain Taxi, my work home and a fantastic mag with which I’m sure many of you are familiar, is holding a benefit auction on eBay. Great items including books and comics autographed by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, many cool poetry broadsides and chapbooks, original art and photography, handmade items, and a book on the history of the bathroom. Find out more at www.raintaxi.com!

…online after the rest of the household goes to bed, especially when there’s no WNBA game televised:

Lisa Robertson scrutinizes the author of The Story of O: “Who consents to the dissolution of personhood inside a cult of authority?….In my own pornographic experience I accept the imperceptible harnesses.” I haven’t read The Story of O. I did read the new Chicago Review with its giant-size portfolio of works by and about Robertson.

Meghan O’Rourke defends Linda Hirshman. Meghan says: “Praising the man who comes home at 6, while worrying about a mother who has part-time job, is simple sexism…. Until those who care about equality recognize that it will take collective action to create further change, the kinds of policy amendments most women want to see won’t take place, and women will continue doing 70 percent of the housework—while men continue to do less housework after marriage than they did as bachelors.”

Jenny Davidson on everything.

Clay Kallam on basketball talent.

And Douglas, who can make anything interesting.

(And if you are someone who reads half of each week’s New Yorker, dig up last week’s and read the essay on dessert, which I imagine comes from Bill Buford’s new restaurant book. It’s for people who like Anthony Bourdain. I like him. Jessie interviewed him.)

Offline, I’m also reading– slowly– Villette, mostly because Laura Engel both recommended it to me, and edited it. It’s neither Jane Eyre nor Middlemarch but it’s smart, moving, and attention-retaining so far.

And if you are wondering how the father of a five-month old is managing to read anything while both getting academic work done and doing my share of the basic tasks of tending to the world’s cutest baby ever child care, you might ask yourself: what makes you think I’m getting much academic work done? (Or, more darkly: what makes you think I’m performing the basic tasks of child care? –Not that I can tell, but I think I’m at 35% now that school’s out. 45% would be great. Such things are hard to measure.)

Just a reminder to all you good folks in the Twin Cities: Rain Taxi’s 10th Anniversary Celebration is this afternoon, Saturday December 10th, at Rogue Buddha Gallery from 4-7pm. Suggested donation is $10. Why should you pay $10 to go to a party, you ask? Because Rain Taxi has been showing up for free in bookstores nationwide for 10 years, and should continue to do so for another 10 years. And because over the past decade Rain Taxi has sponsored some of the coolest readings in the Twin Cities, and has pulled together the Twin Cities Book Festival for the past five of those years.

And a reminder to all of you who can’t make it for reasons of geography or whatnot: the Rain Taxi Auction ends tomorrow night (well, most items end tomorrow night: a beautiful Laynie Brown chapbook that I accidentally listed early ends tonight, and a few late arrivals end Monday). There are many, many cool items, including several with bidding starting at $10. Among the insanely cool bigger ticket items: a gorgeous John Ashbery Selected from a ridiculously rare European printing, donated by Ashbery from his lot of 15 author copies; one of 26 signed and letter copies of Peter Gizzi’s Ledger Domain chapbook; and the very first issue of OINK!, the precursor to New American Writing, totally zine-tastic and copyright 1971. There are prose items as well, including signed copies of work by Paul Auster, Neil Gaiman, Siri Hustvedt, Charles Baxter, and David Foster Wallace.

Go, bid, support good writing.

From our good pals at Rain Taxi Review of Books

Tenth Anniversary Charity Auction
Dec. 5 through Dec. 11
Help support Rain Taxi by visiting our charity auction! We are offering books, broadsides, chapbooks, artwork and morefrom our favorite authors, including John Ashbery, Paul Auster, Charles Baxter, Stephen Dixon, Neil Gaiman, James Tate, Anne Waldman, C.D. Wright, and many, many others. Most items are signed by their authors, and many are quite rare.

There’s TONS of great stuff. Check it out and spread the word!

via Republic of Heaven

What fiction did you read as a teen/young adult that you have re-read as an adult (or would like to)? What pieces of fiction meant something to you? Put up your list, and pass it on to 2-3 people.

1. By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Read many times as a youngster, although my favorite was always Little House in the Big Woods (I loved the part where they went to a Christmas party and they put hot baked potatoes in their pockets to keep their hands warm). Re-read it on a weekend group trip with Steve’s college friends to a shoreline cabin in Maine. ALL of the women on the trip re-read it, as a matter of fact. All of the Little House books were so gentle and pure of heart, and the TV show was little short of an addiction. I identified very strongly with Laura, being a second kid and, I thought, a little different from everyone else.

2. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I must have read this book at least twenty times as a kid. I despise all movie versions, however, especially the Shirley Temple one, because none capture the quiet nobility of the book. Dear little Sarah Crewe and her struggles with the wicked Miss Minchin, and all Sarah did to help her friend Becky through the hard, long days and cold nights (pretending their attic room was the Bastille, naming and befriending the rats), was so inspirational to me. I wish I was more like her.

3. The Monster at the End of This Book starring lovable, furry old Grover (okay, more of a kids book, but it’s great, and I did read and re-read it as a teen to my niece, and will re and re-read it to my own kids as well).

4. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. I was very moved by this story of a young girl displaced and distrusted when I first read it at age 10. The story still holds up for adult reading, but it is a bit heavy-handed.

5. The Stranger by Albert Camus. Boy did I think I was the shit whenever I sat on the steps of school with this book in my hand. I’m no longer nearly as nihilistic, nor as pretentious, but the book is still undeniably great.

Who should I now tag? I think I’ll pick John and an easy target in Steve (my accommodatingly and life co-conspirator).

My mother loaned me The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Just finished reading it. Almost stayed up all night last night to finish it, but held off. I was unexcited by it initially, but the more I read, the more enthralled I was with the story and the simple beauty of Hosseini’s writing.

I liked it for many of the same reasons I liked Middlesex and Midnight’s Children; the sweeping arc of a (fictional but plausible) biography told with the tinge of regret and defensiveness, accompanied by the details of a life quite foreign from my own and set against an historical backdrop with which I am only slightly familiar.

Sam Mendes, director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, appears to be directing the screen version, although just because something is in production does not mean it will make it to the theaters.