Red Chuck

Kaye Gibbons

Katherine's interview with Kaye Gibbons is now online. In Rediscovering Ellen Foster, Katherine and Kaye talk about Dr. Phil, Diet Coke, and, oh yeah, Kaye's new novel, The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster.

New York Review of Books

Thank you secret gift giver. I am trilled with my new New York Review of Books subscription. The Michael Massing article I read last night was incredible. Check it out everyone. I love the polite way this guy eviscerates that sallow protuberance called American journalism. And I quote:

Today's political pressures too often breed in journalists a tendency toward self-censorship, toward shying away from the pursuit of truths that might prove unpopular, whether with official authorities or the public.

Oh yeah, the article on Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was also quite good. I really want to see the Sundial Bridge next time we go to sunny California.

Current Reading

This plugin allows you to fetch images from Amazon without the hassles of that other plugin.

Wait a sec... you don't care about any of this. Here ya go — music themes from Dutch television shows. Rock on.

Outbound

River City Publishing Announces 

OUTBOUND:The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston
  by Charlie Geer

When from the sheer weight of humanity and its assorted accouterments the Charleston Peninsula broke off from mainland South Carolina and began floating out to sea, among the last to notice were those persons trapped on board the unlikely vessel. . . .

So begins the tale of latter-day Charleston and its curious secession. The schism occurs when the Sportsman's Jamboree (including Hunters for Jesus), the Bravado Arts Festival, and the Tri-County Mini-Storage Convention converge on the city at once. Native Charlestonians (those "born right the first time") and an accumulation of tourists-or "cumyahs"-and carpetbaggers now find themselves unbound from the conventions of family, community, even geography. Following the course of the errant island and its inhabitants as they wrestle with the new reality of living a life adrift, Charlie Geer presents a masterful and hilarious send-up of the nuances of entrenched society and the foibles of the human condition.

Author Biography

A native of Charleston, Charlie Geer received a BA in English from the College of Charleston in 1994. Before earning an MFA from the University of Florida in 2001, he worked by turns as a circus roustabout, an orchard keeper, a commercial fisherman, a high-school teacher, and a carpenter. He now teaches at the College of Charleston, where he also serves as an assistant editor for the literary journal Crazyhorse. Recent summers have found him traveling throughout Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. He has received fellowships from the University of Florida and the South Carolina Academy of Authors and is a past winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and the Piccolo Fiction Open. His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, and Bloomsbury Magazine. This is his first novel.

Novel * ISBN 1-57966-062-2 * Hardcover * 6x9 * pp 272 * $24.95 * May 2005

Bruno Schulz

HERE IS the story of a certain spring, a spring which was more real, more brilliant and vivid than other springs; the spring that simply took its literal text seriously - that inspired manifesto written in the brightest holiday red, the red of a letter's seal and of the calendar, the red of a coloured pencil and the red of enthusiasm, an amaranth of happy telegrams from far away...

from Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass.

Every Spring I like to dip into this amazing book. Given Schulz's biography, it seemed appropriate to pick this up after finishing Everything is Illuminated.

Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm not a big fan of flash sites. Why? Because they are always loading . . . loading . . . loading . . . something that's usually disappointing. Not so here at Jonathan Safran Foer's Project Museum. Dig the Scorcese-ish subway rollover entrance mat. Dig the homing blackbird. This is Flash with some real class (ed. note—read with a Brooklyn accent).

Also, I'm equally pleased with Everything is Illuminated. Absolutely the most ingenious use of malapropisms in any book I've ever read. Imagine a novel narrated by Latka from Taxi and you start to get the idea.

And yes, we are going to the poetry reading Friday night even though it doesn't start until 10pm.

Poetry Reading

Friend and compatriot Kyran Pittman writes:

My friend and compatriot Dr. Stephanie McKenzie will be in town this weekend reading selections from her book of poems,  Cutting my Mother's Hair, which Salmon Press is bringing out this summer. Stephanie will be at Mediums Gallery on Friday, following her reading at the St. Louis Museum of Contempary Art on Thursday. Please come out and hear her (and bring friends). Wine sip at 8:30--I'm told the reading won't start until 10.

Cutting My Mother's Hair is described as "a loose re-telling/rendering of Dante's Inferno" on the St Louis Museum of Contempoary Art's calendar of events.

Which reminds me . . .

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent me to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how I matched up against all the levels:

Pepe's Easter Adventure

So the first part of Pepe's Easter Adventure by Chick A. Dee is online. Unfortunately, I used up my alotted monthly upload on Flikr, so check back in April to find out where Pepe finds a home.