Nabokov stuff!
Hi there! I'm neck-deep in dissertation stuff, so I'm using this blog as a quick, temporary repository for all sorts of Nabokov stuff (the stuff that would normally go into the site). The hope is that, since it's all small bites, I'll be less lazy about posting stuff.
So yes: less lazy, more frequent.
"The Lead Singer is Distracting Me" is Distracting Me
So a while back I wrote this thing for McSweeney's as a short, imagined monologue. It is now not so much imagined:
It's its own piece -- different from what I would have imagined (I was thinking more the quiet, choked outrage of a very shy person, and this is flashier, also mostly (and smartly) paraphrased) -- but it's still pretty neat that anyone bothered. I'm with commentator Garuntun in digging him keeping the WOOSH from the original; and it's neat seeing the buckets of views and positive comments a thing you're tangentially associated with is getting. I am chalking this up as a victory for rock-and-roll nerds everywhere. So yes. That was a little rock and roll. Here, as per Donny-and-Marie regulations, is a little country.
NYC!
So flying off tomorrow to New York for AWP (I'm presenting in panel S111 should you want to stop in and say hello). New York! New York! I love New York. I love how many of the wonderful things I read have the town's name on the inside, in the copyright page, or right on the title (as in Times or Review of Books or Er). And I love the giant space the city has occupied in fiction, movies, television, and music. There's just so many great NYC songs! I love New York songs! One of my favorites is Lou Reed's Romeo had Juliette, but the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's Fairytale of New York is up there too, though my all time favorite is TMBG's Everyone's Your Friend in New York City (terrific song, fuzzy clip: "Friend" starts at the 4:30-min. mark, and it's nearly impossible to make out, so here are the lyrics).
I love NYC! I love NYC nearly as much as this blond kid loves Andrew WK's "I Love NYC"! I love it almost as much as BJ Snowden loves being In Canada!
So flying off tomorrow to New York for AWP (I'm presenting in panel S111 should you want to stop in and say hello). New York! New York! I love New York. I love how many of the wonderful things I read have the town's name on the inside, in the copyright page, or right on the title (as in Times or Review of Books or Er). And I love the giant space the city has occupied in fiction, movies, television, and music. There's just so many great NYC songs! I love New York songs! One of my favorites is Lou Reed's Romeo had Juliette, but the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl's Fairytale of New York is up there too, though my all time favorite is TMBG's Everyone's Your Friend in New York City (terrific song, fuzzy clip: "Friend" starts at the 4:30-min. mark, and it's nearly impossible to make out, so here are the lyrics).
I love NYC! I love NYC nearly as much as this blond kid loves Andrew WK's "I Love NYC"! I love it almost as much as BJ Snowden loves being In Canada!
Señor Don Veneno
Over the winter break, while the networks covered the escaped San Francisco tiger mauling, we spent the better part of our news grazing for updates on the Colombian hostage release situation. It was confusing enough to begin with, then grew incredibly more confusing, with the families being flown to Venezuela, where Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez accused the Colombian government of bad faith. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe accused the FARC of not wanting to release the hostages because they didn't actually have one of the hostages they claimed to have. (Chavez responded by saying that Uribe was lying.) For a few days, in between shots of the prostrate tiger and of people leaving little stuffed tigers & flowers & drawings, we were all trying to sort out what the hell was going on. One hour you heard that a helicopter was on its way, and that the hostages were about to be set free. The next hour Chavez was yelling something and the Colombian spokesperson was responding, the spokesperson looking simultaneously angry and accusative and befuddled. And nothing anybody was saying made sense: because it sounded, almost, like Uribe was saying that the guerrillas were lying about who and how many hostages they had or could release.
It all eventually sorted itself out: Uribe was in fact right. The guerrillas had lost the youngest, a child born to one of the hostages, Clara Rojas, while in captivity. The kid, Emmanuel, had been left in the care of an abusive idiot, and when said idiot eventually took the kid to a hospital (broken arm) and came up with a not-terribly-persuasive story of how this kid happened to be in his possession, Colombia's child protective care services took over, cared for him, and found him a foster home. The government didn't know who the kid was at the time, but they were able to track him down when the abusive idiot came back around, a couple of years later, looking for the kid once more--because the FARC wanted him back. So they could, you know, release him. To his family.
The situation's grown a little less convoluted, and this article provides both a decent overview and a fair gloss over the weirder, soap operaish parts of the ordeal--which is not to make light of anything: the reason why Colombians were watching, why everybody was waiting for news, was because these people had been kept in captivity--chained and under the perpetual threat of death--for over five years. All the same, the insane logic, the mindboggling ineptitude of some of the principals--that's all telenovela, and that's the other Colombian thing I ended up tuning into: because mom got me hooked me on Madre Luna.
One of its major plot points is these bandidos de la Sierra--the Sierra bandits--who are never called guerilleros, though they kidnap, blackmail, intimidate, wear military uniforms, all the usual stuff. (Part of why they're not explicitly called guerilleros is that Madre Luna is one of these Mexico-Colombian production efforts where most of what may be too identifiably Colombian is written out of the scripts so they'll play better in Telemundo; part of it may just be that guerillas may be too heavy a thing for soap operas.) And the involutions of the plot are about as plausible as the Emmanuel case, where the bandits are running around behaving like total jackasses, chased out of a house by a ghost at one point, and with the major heavy, Veneno ("Poison") shacking up with a wealthy widow and running his criminal operation in hiding from the comfort of a pool with a gorgeous view of Girardot.
So yes: Colombia, where real awfulness and actual pain can be the result of situations too convoluted for even Colombia's own notoriously free-wheeling (and frequently awesome) telenovelas.
Over the winter break, while the networks covered the escaped San Francisco tiger mauling, we spent the better part of our news grazing for updates on the Colombian hostage release situation. It was confusing enough to begin with, then grew incredibly more confusing, with the families being flown to Venezuela, where Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez accused the Colombian government of bad faith. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe accused the FARC of not wanting to release the hostages because they didn't actually have one of the hostages they claimed to have. (Chavez responded by saying that Uribe was lying.) For a few days, in between shots of the prostrate tiger and of people leaving little stuffed tigers & flowers & drawings, we were all trying to sort out what the hell was going on. One hour you heard that a helicopter was on its way, and that the hostages were about to be set free. The next hour Chavez was yelling something and the Colombian spokesperson was responding, the spokesperson looking simultaneously angry and accusative and befuddled. And nothing anybody was saying made sense: because it sounded, almost, like Uribe was saying that the guerrillas were lying about who and how many hostages they had or could release.
It all eventually sorted itself out: Uribe was in fact right. The guerrillas had lost the youngest, a child born to one of the hostages, Clara Rojas, while in captivity. The kid, Emmanuel, had been left in the care of an abusive idiot, and when said idiot eventually took the kid to a hospital (broken arm) and came up with a not-terribly-persuasive story of how this kid happened to be in his possession, Colombia's child protective care services took over, cared for him, and found him a foster home. The government didn't know who the kid was at the time, but they were able to track him down when the abusive idiot came back around, a couple of years later, looking for the kid once more--because the FARC wanted him back. So they could, you know, release him. To his family.
The situation's grown a little less convoluted, and this article provides both a decent overview and a fair gloss over the weirder, soap operaish parts of the ordeal--which is not to make light of anything: the reason why Colombians were watching, why everybody was waiting for news, was because these people had been kept in captivity--chained and under the perpetual threat of death--for over five years. All the same, the insane logic, the mindboggling ineptitude of some of the principals--that's all telenovela, and that's the other Colombian thing I ended up tuning into: because mom got me hooked me on Madre Luna.
One of its major plot points is these bandidos de la Sierra--the Sierra bandits--who are never called guerilleros, though they kidnap, blackmail, intimidate, wear military uniforms, all the usual stuff. (Part of why they're not explicitly called guerilleros is that Madre Luna is one of these Mexico-Colombian production efforts where most of what may be too identifiably Colombian is written out of the scripts so they'll play better in Telemundo; part of it may just be that guerillas may be too heavy a thing for soap operas.) And the involutions of the plot are about as plausible as the Emmanuel case, where the bandits are running around behaving like total jackasses, chased out of a house by a ghost at one point, and with the major heavy, Veneno ("Poison") shacking up with a wealthy widow and running his criminal operation in hiding from the comfort of a pool with a gorgeous view of Girardot.
So yes: Colombia, where real awfulness and actual pain can be the result of situations too convoluted for even Colombia's own notoriously free-wheeling (and frequently awesome) telenovelas.
Thumbs Up
The semester's coming to a close and not a moment too soon. We are all aware of the dangers of obsessive study. Moreover, we are also aware that there's been far too much moping going on--and that fun as that is, it's the kind of thing that should perhaps be administered in way tiny doses. Doses tinier, at any rate, than the ones presented here.
So. Some additional complaints: (1) I wish I were a more efficient writer. I just cut fifty pages out of the novel. I'm not even counting the two discarded monster versions of the same thing that were abandoned at several stages--I think there might be stuff in there that might resurface as stand-alone material, but for now it's just sitting in various folders. (2) I'm loving the material I'm gathering for the dissertation, but I'm also keenly aware that I'm diving headfirst into this monster very soon--that if all goes according to plan, I'll be done with school and looking for jobs in schools very soon, this despite my knowing that the market is saturated, and that my areas of interest (the history of the novel, the 19th century novel, and contemporary American and British novels) are already likely flooded with other PhDs, and plus that academic life is apparently not terribly different from an academic novel.
And so. The opposite of complaints. I'm thrilled. Inexplicably so. There's a pile of clean laundry in the middle of my room, and as soon as I'm done with this post I'm getting to folding. (I am, unlike Achewood's Cornelius Bear, a fan of laundry.) I wrote a couple of pages in the newly trimmed novel and they are good.
Plus: just got the West Branch issues in which "Divers" appears and they're lovely. And Redivider has accepted "The Orlando Sonnet" and so it may show up sometime next year.
And I'll be presenting at AWP this year! Should you be attending too, you should say hi. I'll be presenting on Saturday at 9 am (it's panel number S111), on the relationship between academia and contemporary publishing.
The semester's coming to a close and not a moment too soon. We are all aware of the dangers of obsessive study. Moreover, we are also aware that there's been far too much moping going on--and that fun as that is, it's the kind of thing that should perhaps be administered in way tiny doses. Doses tinier, at any rate, than the ones presented here.
So. Some additional complaints: (1) I wish I were a more efficient writer. I just cut fifty pages out of the novel. I'm not even counting the two discarded monster versions of the same thing that were abandoned at several stages--I think there might be stuff in there that might resurface as stand-alone material, but for now it's just sitting in various folders. (2) I'm loving the material I'm gathering for the dissertation, but I'm also keenly aware that I'm diving headfirst into this monster very soon--that if all goes according to plan, I'll be done with school and looking for jobs in schools very soon, this despite my knowing that the market is saturated, and that my areas of interest (the history of the novel, the 19th century novel, and contemporary American and British novels) are already likely flooded with other PhDs, and plus that academic life is apparently not terribly different from an academic novel.
And so. The opposite of complaints. I'm thrilled. Inexplicably so. There's a pile of clean laundry in the middle of my room, and as soon as I'm done with this post I'm getting to folding. (I am, unlike Achewood's Cornelius Bear, a fan of laundry.) I wrote a couple of pages in the newly trimmed novel and they are good.
Plus: just got the West Branch issues in which "Divers" appears and they're lovely. And Redivider has accepted "The Orlando Sonnet" and so it may show up sometime next year.
And I'll be presenting at AWP this year! Should you be attending too, you should say hi. I'll be presenting on Saturday at 9 am (it's panel number S111), on the relationship between academia and contemporary publishing.
Arms Outstretched
I wrote this bit a few days ago:
Listen: all I want to do right now is listen to sad music. Or, failing that, all I want to do is listen to love songs and run an inventory of all my failures. Let's set up a little index, a little catalog, a little database.
Here's what I love, though: that the heart keeps running its course oblivious to all common sense, like some hamster in some bright-blue wire-mesh wheel. The heart, the body, the world--we all go on.
Listen: I miss my hamster. I miss Molly.
Or, because you're here, because you're reading this, I'd like to know where you've been, where you're going, whether you've felt this tiny yawning void too. Did I say hello? Did I tell you I was happy to see you?
It's late--I should have been asleep half-an-hour ago. It's late and I'm not sure what I wanted to tell you. I'm a bit happy, I'm a bit sad. But that's all of us. Somehow, for some reason, it seemed really important to find the words for it and now I can't remember why.
I wrote this bit a few days ago:
Somewhere, in some parallel universe, there's a dictionary of cumbersome words for cumbersome feelings. In this dictionary there's probably a word for the weeks where you're feeling slightly off all day, from morning to night, and where all the things that give you (I mean, by the way, me) comfort have been slightly tweaked, so that everything you love--exercise, reading, writing, company, solitude--is just slightly irritating, as are you. You, right now, are slightly irritated and in turn irritating. With yourself. With the world. With your face. With your vanity. With your monstrous self-regard. With your navel-gazing. And this irritation--which is very much a real irritation, a kind of minute physical void right below the sternum--Anyway. It goes on. You needn't hear the rest of it, since it's more of the same. And, at any rate, the irritation is gone. It's been replaced by an inexplainable loneliness--inexplainable because this week I've not gone a day without spending at least a bit of time with people, all sorts of people, people whose wonderfulness is undeniable and a boon and a source of amazement. As in: these are amazing people, these people I know.
Listen: all I want to do right now is listen to sad music. Or, failing that, all I want to do is listen to love songs and run an inventory of all my failures. Let's set up a little index, a little catalog, a little database.
Here's what I love, though: that the heart keeps running its course oblivious to all common sense, like some hamster in some bright-blue wire-mesh wheel. The heart, the body, the world--we all go on.
Listen: I miss my hamster. I miss Molly.
Or, because you're here, because you're reading this, I'd like to know where you've been, where you're going, whether you've felt this tiny yawning void too. Did I say hello? Did I tell you I was happy to see you?
It's late--I should have been asleep half-an-hour ago. It's late and I'm not sure what I wanted to tell you. I'm a bit happy, I'm a bit sad. But that's all of us. Somehow, for some reason, it seemed really important to find the words for it and now I can't remember why.
Less Abstruse! Less Commentary!
Many thanks to John Feith for his absolutely wonderful video/song, and for his offer to make "Waxwing," his song, the official song of Waxwing, the Vladimir Nabokov Appreciation Page. And so it is done. "Waxwing" is Waxwing's official song! See also Hailey Wojcik's terrific ukulele-based "Nabokov's Butterfly."
Those two will be added to NaboPop soonish--Friday at the latest--and there are three new Nabokovilia entries as well: Susan Hubbard, McSweeney's, and A Night at the Nabokov Hotel. So yes! Happy fourth!
And so yes: much less abstruse entry. And way less emo than the one immediately preceding it. Speaking of emo, though, I'd been wondering why such a seemingly inoffensive label/attitude/silly-lifestyle-choice was so easily ridiculed, and I'm guessing it's not just b/c it's so bathetic--though it is--and pathetic--though it is--and not just because it's so regimented--though it is--and maybe it's just that it's just so self-involved. And it'll pass if it hasn't already. Has it? Who knows? Anyway--back to the self-involvement: leave it to a grad student to take up like four paragraphs, two of them on songs, to say that break-ups are really sad. But--by the way? They are. Way sad. Doing way better, though. This is what I do: I run, I write, I work, I run again.
Many thanks to John Feith for his absolutely wonderful video/song, and for his offer to make "Waxwing," his song, the official song of Waxwing, the Vladimir Nabokov Appreciation Page. And so it is done. "Waxwing" is Waxwing's official song! See also Hailey Wojcik's terrific ukulele-based "Nabokov's Butterfly."
Those two will be added to NaboPop soonish--Friday at the latest--and there are three new Nabokovilia entries as well: Susan Hubbard, McSweeney's, and A Night at the Nabokov Hotel. So yes! Happy fourth!
And so yes: much less abstruse entry. And way less emo than the one immediately preceding it. Speaking of emo, though, I'd been wondering why such a seemingly inoffensive label/attitude/silly-lifestyle-choice was so easily ridiculed, and I'm guessing it's not just b/c it's so bathetic--though it is--and pathetic--though it is--and not just because it's so regimented--though it is--and maybe it's just that it's just so self-involved. And it'll pass if it hasn't already. Has it? Who knows? Anyway--back to the self-involvement: leave it to a grad student to take up like four paragraphs, two of them on songs, to say that break-ups are really sad. But--by the way? They are. Way sad. Doing way better, though. This is what I do: I run, I write, I work, I run again.
Bound by Symmetry
So yes: disaster averted. I photographed the first on my way to the Clark County Library. Then, when I came back (ten minutes later) it had been amended. So apparently lobsters are not coming.
So lately it's all been about sad. It's not a constant sadness, and it's not even the sort of sadness that's even close to unique. It's pretty much everyone's sadness, at one point or another, and so I'd rather not bore you with it--but so yes, after a third or fourth sad song, and after walking down late at night and realizing, halfway home, Oh, I'm tearing up. This is me crying. Again. And sort of enjoying it. And mostly not--mostly just reminding myself that it passes. And keeping busy: running, writing, prepping & teaching, going home, listening to sad music, enjoying the sadness and growing bored with it and mostly just completely befuddled by the human heart. Mine. Yours. Everyone's. What are we doing, carrying around this thing? And what would we do without it? What would we do with all the sad songs?
Which it occurred to me, right around this time, that mopey songs, the songs where people talk about lost love--these songs (and the feelings expressed therein) are little miracles of insularity: it's all about the moping and the bemoaning and the why-why-why. They're myopic little creatures. As are songs of newfound love. And one type of song cannot possibly even imagine the other type--they might as well be living in completely isolated universes, though of course they are not. One is the natural complement to the other: everyone's moving on, but someone gets a sad song, someone else gets At Last. Or whatever.
I've been reading Richard Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy for the past year--ten pages a day. I've skipped to Burton's Cure of Love-Melancholy wherein he suggests mostly what everyone's been suggesting, and what seems to actually be working, which is just keeping busy:
So yes: disaster averted. I photographed the first on my way to the Clark County Library. Then, when I came back (ten minutes later) it had been amended. So apparently lobsters are not coming.
So lately it's all been about sad. It's not a constant sadness, and it's not even the sort of sadness that's even close to unique. It's pretty much everyone's sadness, at one point or another, and so I'd rather not bore you with it--but so yes, after a third or fourth sad song, and after walking down late at night and realizing, halfway home, Oh, I'm tearing up. This is me crying. Again. And sort of enjoying it. And mostly not--mostly just reminding myself that it passes. And keeping busy: running, writing, prepping & teaching, going home, listening to sad music, enjoying the sadness and growing bored with it and mostly just completely befuddled by the human heart. Mine. Yours. Everyone's. What are we doing, carrying around this thing? And what would we do without it? What would we do with all the sad songs?
Which it occurred to me, right around this time, that mopey songs, the songs where people talk about lost love--these songs (and the feelings expressed therein) are little miracles of insularity: it's all about the moping and the bemoaning and the why-why-why. They're myopic little creatures. As are songs of newfound love. And one type of song cannot possibly even imagine the other type--they might as well be living in completely isolated universes, though of course they are not. One is the natural complement to the other: everyone's moving on, but someone gets a sad song, someone else gets At Last. Or whatever.
I've been reading Richard Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy for the past year--ten pages a day. I've skipped to Burton's Cure of Love-Melancholy wherein he suggests mostly what everyone's been suggesting, and what seems to actually be working, which is just keeping busy:
"The first rule to be observed in this stubborn and unbridled passion, is exercise and diet. It is an old and well-known, sentence, Sine Cerere et Saccho friget Venus (love grows cool without bread and wine). As an idle sedentary life, liberal feeding, are great causes of it, so the opposite, labour, slender and sparing diet, with continual business, are the best and most ordinary means to prevent it."
Also: Lunch is for Closers Only. And for Pool Ducks.
My phone has a camera, and so I am taking pictures and putting them up on Flickr. As are you. As is the world. Hi!
And hello, ducks! They've been at the apartment-complex pool for a few weeks: they are getting fat on everybody's bread, mine included. They're getting so they'll shun inferior bread, which is eaten by an entourage of blackbirds and pigeons.
So the Nabokov page has updates.
And there are a few new pieces of mine available online. Two for McSweeney's: The Spooky Japanese Girl is There for You and The Lead Singer is Distracting Me. One for Conjunctions: The Coca-Cola Executive in the Zapatoca Outhouse. Both are sites that I visit and read and admire, so this is a big big treat and an honor.
I'll be teaching World Lit 1 this summer--session 2. And I'll be flying to Honolulu soon for a conference.
Right now I should also be working on a paper due this Friday--it's nearly complete, and I may in fact cannibalize much of it for my presentation--as well as studying for a final. But it's a small break. And then it's back to the studying and the writing and--soon--the grading of papers and finals. But not yet.
...
Ok. Back to work.
My phone has a camera, and so I am taking pictures and putting them up on Flickr. As are you. As is the world. Hi!
And hello, ducks! They've been at the apartment-complex pool for a few weeks: they are getting fat on everybody's bread, mine included. They're getting so they'll shun inferior bread, which is eaten by an entourage of blackbirds and pigeons.
So the Nabokov page has updates.
And there are a few new pieces of mine available online. Two for McSweeney's: The Spooky Japanese Girl is There for You and The Lead Singer is Distracting Me. One for Conjunctions: The Coca-Cola Executive in the Zapatoca Outhouse. Both are sites that I visit and read and admire, so this is a big big treat and an honor.
I'll be teaching World Lit 1 this summer--session 2. And I'll be flying to Honolulu soon for a conference.
Right now I should also be working on a paper due this Friday--it's nearly complete, and I may in fact cannibalize much of it for my presentation--as well as studying for a final. But it's a small break. And then it's back to the studying and the writing and--soon--the grading of papers and finals. But not yet.
...
Ok. Back to work.
Quick Like a Bunny Post Before Rushing Off to See Spiderman 3
So some updates. In Nabokovilia, new entries for a math textbook, Claire Messud, Gary Shteyngart, and an updated entry for Dan Simmons. In Nabopop, new entries for Game Theory, Kicking and Screaming, and (coming soon) Lost.
So some updates. In Nabokovilia, new entries for a math textbook, Claire Messud, Gary Shteyngart, and an updated entry for Dan Simmons. In Nabopop, new entries for Game Theory, Kicking and Screaming, and (coming soon) Lost.
Sneak Preview
The Waxwing site went without updates for a whole freaking year. I was lazy. Och. But I've just added eleven entries to Nabokovilia: Isaac Adamson, MC Beaton, Lawrence Block, Christopher Bram, Richard Brautigan, Andrew Lewis Conn, Barbara Kingsolver, Arthur Phillips, Anne Rice, Katherine Weber, and Irvin Yalom.
Later this afternoon: three updates to NaboPop. Will update the What's New? page tomorrow, so there you go. Sneak preview. Today. Tomorrow, it'll be old news.
The Waxwing site went without updates for a whole freaking year. I was lazy. Och. But I've just added eleven entries to Nabokovilia: Isaac Adamson, MC Beaton, Lawrence Block, Christopher Bram, Richard Brautigan, Andrew Lewis Conn, Barbara Kingsolver, Arthur Phillips, Anne Rice, Katherine Weber, and Irvin Yalom.
Later this afternoon: three updates to NaboPop. Will update the What's New? page tomorrow, so there you go. Sneak preview. Today. Tomorrow, it'll be old news.
Disgruntled Vegans
Las Vegas is a place for the very angry, the very disgruntled, and those who choose to express themselves via all sorts of physical objects and writing utensils. (The first note was one of several stapled to a post--each handwritten with the exact same angry message. Whoever wrote it clearly preferred angry repetitive handwriting to the convenience of angry photocopying. And if you're against cops, gangs, or work--what better medium than the back of a bus stop? Even better, you get to correct those who came before you. It's like the Internet, but with less porn.)
Late night addenda: I said, in the paragraph above, that vegans clearly preferred angry repetitive handwriting to the convenience of angry photocopying. I may be wrong.
By extension, then, Las Vegas seems like a treasure trove of ephemera. Witness Eavesdrop--which I can't wait to see a show of (see also the Las Vegas City Life article for more information). A flyer for a recent show was hiding somewhere on the telephone post to which the first missive was found.
*
Las Vegas is a place for the very angry, the very disgruntled, and those who choose to express themselves via all sorts of physical objects and writing utensils. (The first note was one of several stapled to a post--each handwritten with the exact same angry message. Whoever wrote it clearly preferred angry repetitive handwriting to the convenience of angry photocopying. And if you're against cops, gangs, or work--what better medium than the back of a bus stop? Even better, you get to correct those who came before you. It's like the Internet, but with less porn.)
Late night addenda: I said, in the paragraph above, that vegans clearly preferred angry repetitive handwriting to the convenience of angry photocopying. I may be wrong.
By extension, then, Las Vegas seems like a treasure trove of ephemera. Witness Eavesdrop--which I can't wait to see a show of (see also the Las Vegas City Life article for more information). A flyer for a recent show was hiding somewhere on the telephone post to which the first missive was found.
The last message--posted months and months ago--was a self-absorbed little missive on my comings and goings, and why should this one be any different? Here is what's been going on. With me. Me me me me.
So:
Not-So-Disgruntled Me 1/4
Two of my pieces, "Your Significant Other's Kitten Poster" & "Liner Notes for Renegade, the Opening Sequence," can be found in the UNLV English department's Sceal, and Sceal can be found at
http://english.unlv.edu/scealissues/sceal1-2.pdf
Not Me 1/1
If you find yourself in the library and near the elevators on the first floor, you might want to take a look at the glass case to your right. The case displays the works of David Schmoeller, an assistant professor at UNLV's film department. Professor Schmoeller is also responsible for UNLV's wonderful, eclectic, short films program:
http://www.unlv.edu/programs/filmarchive/about/archive_director.html
More importantly, however, and of more interest to me, is that Schmoeller is also responsible for directing/writing/guiding Lorenzo Lamas through freaking Renegade:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103524/
Perhaps equally cool (or maybe even cooler) is that Schmoeller is responsible for writing the very first Puppet Master, the original w/ all the characters, the one that spawned five or so sequels:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098143/
This is just to say hello, I guess, but also to say that at one point or another it would be wonderful to sit down with the man who may well have written the following: He was a cop, and good at his job. But then he committed the ultimate sin and testified against other cops - gone bad. Cops who tried to kill him, but got the woman he loved instead. Framed for murder, now he prowls the badlands. An outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter - a RENEGADE!
And also, there's this--is there other faculty (outside the English department) who have done very odd, very cool things that we may not know about? If UNLV is home to creator of Renegade, who else are we home to?
Me, Not Disgruntled 2/4
I wrote a sonnet, and it's been set to music. A news bit is available here:
http://english.unlv.edu/newsitemsarchive/april06/martinez.htm
And information on the composer, Moya Henderson, can be found here:
http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=3400
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moya_Henderson
and an interview is available here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/music/mshow/s726689.htm
Information on the event is available here:
http://music.ucsd.edu/public/pubcal.php?cmd=cal_category_print&query_start_time=2006-04-%25
More Me 3/4
I was interviewed for my old English department's newsletter. The interview, along with a far more interesting profile--wittier, funnier, more interesting--of my thesis director, Susan Hubbard, can be found here:
http://www.english.ucf.edu/docs/newsltr/knightnotesspring2006.pdf
The interviewer was terrific, and sent buckets of questions but ended up using only a small fraction of the answers. In service of exactly absolutely no one, the full Q&A follows below.
All of Me 4/4
1. What is your full name?
Joan Manuel Martinez. (My dad was a big fan of Joan Manuel Serrat, a Catalan singer, but when we first moved to the States I changed it, since it got old way fast to explain that Joan was not a girl's name in a small Spanish province. But Serrat is a terrific singer, and a sharp writer--more a writer than a singer, really, like Lou Reed or some of Paul Simon's later work, or even the Fiery Furnaces. You may be able to find some of his songs on iTunes: I suggest "Tu Nombre Me Sabe a Yerba" and his adaptations of Machado poems.)
. Where were you born?
Bucaramanga, Colombia.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
Reading. Reading buckets and buckets. And running. I love the treadmill more than I should, but it's been a lifesaver: when you're done you feel new and scrubbed and ready for anything.
1. Why do you write? How did you know you were going to be a writer?
I write to eventually (hopefully) create a book that--had I forgotten its provenance--I would love to pick up and read.
I didn't know that I was going to be a writer. I still don't. If I had a decent singing voice and wasn't as shy as I am, I would have gone into a band. If I had the requisite talent and again, wasn't as shy, as excrutiatingly self-conscious, I'd love to go into film or television. My only claim to being a writer is that I do love to read--that reading is the one activity that I return to daily, compulsively, and which totally nourishes me and infuses me with unalloyed pleasure. Writing, on the other hand, feels like a series of small failures that I keep returning to, fixing, and hoping people will not hate too much.
1. What is your favorite book of all time?
Nabokov's Pale Fire--funny, sad, teeming with riffs on literature and love and death, and so beautifully constructed it can read like a thriller or a murder mystery or a meditation on the metafictive properties of life or like pure slapstick comedy. All at once.
My favorite novel published in the last few years has been Alice Sebold's _The Lovely Bones_.
1. Who has had the biggest influence in your life as a writer?
It changes, though George Saunders has been a pretty steady guiding light for the last few years--his stories seem to be doing all the things I wish I could do. Alice Munro is also terrific. And I've always felt that Garrison Keillor has been unjustly ignored as a stylist. His sentence structure is worth stealing, and _Love Me_, his last novel, is gorgeous. Vladimir Nabokov is my favorite writer of all time, but I have done my best (these last few years) to avoid doing anything that Nabokov already did--because he's inimitable.
1. Do you consider yourself a writer? Student? Teacher? All of the above?
I am primarily a student, and one of my biggest realizations of the past few years is that I'll always be lagging behind, that I have so much to learn that I'll never not be a student. But I do love teaching, and much as I hate to write I always sit down--every day, pretty much--and write. So (d) All of the above.
1. What was your major at UCF? When did you graduate?
I got my BA in creative writing with a minor in applied computer science in 2000.
1. Did you go to graduate school at UCF?
Yes!
1. If so, why did you choose to go to UCF for graduate school?
Laziness. I didn't want to move, I was an international student and so needed to be in school to stay in the States, and I had a pretty good job working as a computer lab manager. So it was, you know, well, why not? I'm here already. Which I know sounds awful but hold on, because what started as a way to keep my visa turned into a legitimate, life-transforming, wonderful experience.
1. What degrees did you earn at UCF?
An MA in creative writing.
1. What experiences enriched your life at UCF?
The writing center and the academic computing support labs were both terrific places to work at--you could not ask for better managers and co-workers.
My thesis director, Susan Hubbard, showed me that there were viable professions for committed writers--that if you kept at it and did so with a good deal of humor and understanding you could make small advances. Susan, Jeanne Leiby, Judith Hermschmeyer were terrific: supportive, engaging, and willing to show you what worked and what didn't. I really haven't answered the question, but it's hard to pin down the specific experience.
OK. So what did it was the shift from undergrad to grad, where you are in a room full of people whose commitment to writing is real and--maybe more importantly---a little more realistic. You realize that it's not like you're going to write this brilliant novel that's going to bring you instant fame and a movie adaptation. Instead, you dive into journals you had hardly ever heard of, you read them (and if you do a little digging, you realize that your not knowing these magazines has lots to do with your own massive ignorance and not with any flaw of the journals themselves; these are the places that discovered Flannery O'Connor and Tom Perrotta and anyone worth reading), you submit, you get rejected, you get rejected a couple more times, and you keep submitting.
The biggest, most revelatory experience at UCF was having these wonderful professors, these wonderful classmates, and slowly discovering the etiquette and rigor of the writing life. That it's work. That you can't really half-ass it.
1. How do you remember UCF ? how was your graduate experience here?
Fondly. I'm having a wonderful experience right now as well, and it's matching the MA, though the UCF individuals themselves are missed like nobody's business. What amazes me is the energy generated by the friends you make in the program--you end up writing for them. You are writing for an actual specific audience. And the trick is that, while you may write for them, your primary responsibility is to do so while keeping true to whatever blurry, half-understood impulses triggered the story in the first place: you want your story to be satisfying as a story. You're not writing for yourself while writing for yourself. You're doing both simultaneously: writing with an audience in mind while doing your own thing.
1. What were some of your favorite courses at UCF? The most memorable ones.
Dr. Omans' Shakespeare class as an undergrad. Professor Hermschmeyer's undergraduate poetry class, where we wrote sonnets and other forms and which infused me with a deep respect for a genre that is not my own--plus professor Thaxton's workshops, and professor Hubbard's.
The graduate courses were all fabulous, and to list the most memorable ones would pretty much just devolve into a listing of my transcript. So let me just repeat that the entire experience was a revelation. And that it provided me with a wide range of material--all those literature courses, all those workshops.
1. I know you taught a few course at UCF ? how was that experience?
Terrific. And to anyone who might be doing it, I recommend the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning's semester-long course, which is as good an introduction to the practice and theory of pedagogy as you'll find, everything from the basics on preparing a lesson plan to dealing with plagiarism to structuring things so that students don't fall asleep on you.
1.
2. How has graduating from the UCF English department helped you get where you are today?
It's helped a great deal in both making me aware of what to expect, how to submit, and why literary journals matter so much. What's most important, however, is that it's introduced me to all sorts of truly fantastic people. I'm terrible at connecting with people, so the investment made--the tuition and the time and the tradeoff (because you could make more money doing just about anything else)--is significantly repaid in not just knowledge but in finding a circle of similarly inclined colleagues.
1. Where are you working now? What are you doing there?
I'm a GTA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where I'm pursuing a PhD in literature and teaching a couple of introductory courses--last semester it was all composition and this semester it's world literature.
1. You are being published in the anthology Dr. Milan?s is editing, as well as in Glimmer Train ? where else have you been (or will be) published?
Right now the goal is to get at least a few critical essays published, and there are two under review, though one of the two needs a lot more work. I just presented a paper at Stetson for the Southern Conference for Foreign Languages and Literature. Some of my stuff has appeared in the online versions of McSweeney's, Pindeldyboz, and the Morning News. The Milanes story originally appeared in the Santa Monica Review, and I'm recycling it (for the third time) into a novel chapter.
1. The article we?re writing is about honoring you and letting others know how much of an exemplary alumnus you are? can you give us a timeline of your accomplishments since leaving UCF?
I've been away from UCF for nearly a year, and in that time I've managed to watch far too much reality tv. I have gone to Freemont street and consumed 50% of a deep-fried Twinkie. I have met a number of very accomplished magicians. I have gambled $2.35 and come out roughly even.
1. What factors have shaped your life and led you to where you are today?
My wonderful, supportive, understanding parents are at the heart of it all.
1. Where would you like to be in five years? Ten years?
This is the question that breaks your heart when you open a brittle copy of the newsletter thirty years from now, and you're a nightshift manager at a Denny's, and your apartment is all stacks of crap piled high. The problem with this question is that it's terrible to get it wrong--to see one's unspeakable ambitions unrealized, unmet, and unacknowledged--and it's equally terrible to find confirmation. (The 7Up documentaries offer plenty of both, though the biggest epiphany from these films is in knowing that we are all swimming in time, that the current's fast, and that it pulls us swiftly, so it's important to keep moving.) I'm hoping, all the same, for more of what's preceded this moment: bliss, tranquility, plus physical and mental rigor. And access to a well-stocked library.
1. Anything else you would like to add? Any advice for future graduates?
My advice is to read and read and read--to keep up with a couple of standard canonical book-review periodicals (the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, for starters), a couple of good literary sites ( MaudNewton.com and themorningnews.org), and to read a wide range of novels, articles, and short stories outside of whatever's assigned. And to set up a half-decent web site where you've linked your writing. It's good to have at least a CV somewhere, and it doesn't cost much.
Speaking of which: feel free to visit my web site, drop me a line, all of that. You can find me at http://www.fulmerford.com/
What else? There are no squirrels at the UNLV campus. The UCF squirrels are missed.
The Bear-Trap of a Warm Embrace
There is far too much to do & so forgive this incredibly cursory, likely mispelled post, but I figured if you're here & you're reading you are--God knows why--curious as to what's been going on. So what's been going on is this: I've been writing up a storm, and reading buckets, and doing all sorts of things to keep up with the PhD, which is both a thrill and a treat and a privilege.
UNLV is generous with travel funds, so I was able to attend my first conference, and present my first conference paper, at Stetson University's Conference on Foreign Languages and Literature early this month (March 2-4). I'll be presenting the same paper, "Translating an Affair: A Comparison of the Two Spanish Lolitas," for UNLV's Graduate and Professional Student Association's research forum tomorrow (March 24).
Also, "Roadblock," a short story I wrote, was published this month in the unequivocably terrific Glimmer Train. It appears in issue #58 (Spring 2006) and is available at your Barnes and Noble or Borders. So buy a copy.
I'm writing a number of things, and having a ball teaching world lit, and it's all a big happy glowing orb of goodness. I hope you're well. You're missed.
Also: the Nabokov site has not been updated in a while, but that will change soon. There are massive additions to Nabokovilia. And there's at least one or two for Nabopop. Yar.
There is far too much to do & so forgive this incredibly cursory, likely mispelled post, but I figured if you're here & you're reading you are--God knows why--curious as to what's been going on. So what's been going on is this: I've been writing up a storm, and reading buckets, and doing all sorts of things to keep up with the PhD, which is both a thrill and a treat and a privilege.
UNLV is generous with travel funds, so I was able to attend my first conference, and present my first conference paper, at Stetson University's Conference on Foreign Languages and Literature early this month (March 2-4). I'll be presenting the same paper, "Translating an Affair: A Comparison of the Two Spanish Lolitas," for UNLV's Graduate and Professional Student Association's research forum tomorrow (March 24).
Also, "Roadblock," a short story I wrote, was published this month in the unequivocably terrific Glimmer Train. It appears in issue #58 (Spring 2006) and is available at your Barnes and Noble or Borders. So buy a copy.
I'm writing a number of things, and having a ball teaching world lit, and it's all a big happy glowing orb of goodness. I hope you're well. You're missed.
Also: the Nabokov site has not been updated in a while, but that will change soon. There are massive additions to Nabokovilia. And there's at least one or two for Nabopop. Yar.
Dmitri Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov's son, has a blog. Your excitement over this event may be proportional to your Nabokov fixation, though clearly mine is pretty significant, so that any Nabokov- and Nabokov-family-related news is cause for celebration.
Why I Love the Gilmore Girls
Because the tambourine dude from Dig! just popped in for a cameo. And also for Lorelai and Rory. For inappropriate reasons. (Also some approriate ones.)
I'm flying to Orlando! To see the girlfriend! Tomorrow! The plane takes off from Las Vegas, lands in Chicago, and then I run run run to another plane that will eventually land in Orlando. Woo!
Because the tambourine dude from Dig! just popped in for a cameo. And also for Lorelai and Rory. For inappropriate reasons. (Also some approriate ones.)
I'm flying to Orlando! To see the girlfriend! Tomorrow! The plane takes off from Las Vegas, lands in Chicago, and then I run run run to another plane that will eventually land in Orlando. Woo!
On
Tod Goldberg on Las Vegas. (Also: 5 Rules. 5 Rules Redux.)
Gleaner on Las Vegas.
Paolini (in KNPR) on Las Vegas. (See also We All Live in Las Vegas, available via Amazon.)
Michael Dear on Las Vegas (11/9).
Michael Chabon on Las Vegas.
Fez in Las Vegas.
Tod Goldberg on Las Vegas. (Also: 5 Rules. 5 Rules Redux.)
Gleaner on Las Vegas.
Paolini (in KNPR) on Las Vegas. (See also We All Live in Las Vegas, available via Amazon.)
Michael Dear on Las Vegas (11/9).
Michael Chabon on Las Vegas.
Fez in Las Vegas.
