Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Sighting: Nicholson Baker on Steve Jobs

Nicholson Baker nods at Nabokov in his Steve Jobs eulogy for the New Yorker:

We’ve lost our techno-impresario and digital dream granter. Vladimir Nabokov once wrote, in a letter, that when he’d finished a novel he felt like a house after the movers had carried out the grand piano. That’s what it feels like to lose this world-historical personage. The grand piano is gone.
Read the rest of the piece at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/10/17/111017ta_talk_baker#ixzz1bF6x4se6
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Nabokov in Glenn Kenny's Review of The Big Year

...Which is, as one of its characters takes pains to tell another, more ignorant character, quite a bit of a different thing than "bird-watching." (One is reminded of the American editor who thought the last line of Vladimir Nabokov's "Bend Sinister" was "A good night for nothing," rather than the author's extremely correct "A good night for mothing.")
(The rest of the review over is here.)


(Not, incidentally, Mr. Kenny's first or last Nabokov reference. He penned a very Kinbotian preface to Tom Bissell's Speak, Commentary.)
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Hand Puppet!

The Pio, Whitman College's student newspaper, did a super nice write-up of the reading. I talk about how I think Wal-Mart is awesome for longer than maybe I should. The photo is lifted straight off the newspaper. I look as though I am holding a little hand puppet up to the mike, but actually I am gesturing for dramatic emphasis.

Also: Selected Shorts aired Corddry's reading of "Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote" this weekend. You can listen to the MP3 here.

On October 12 (this Wednesday) is the other Selected Shorts performance! If you are in New York please go and let me know how it went!
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

The view from the couch.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

!!!

"This season, all of our stage performances at Symphony Space will feature a commissioned short story. For BASS 2011, we commissioned a story from Juan Martinez and it will be performed by Cristin Milioti. You may remember Cristin from last season on 30 Rock where she played comedian Abby Flynn, Liz Lemon’s foil."
I'm psyched beyond the telling! (Also, and by the way, the short thing that I wrote is titled "Best Worst American.") Read the rest of the Selected Shorts news piece here.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Nabokovilia: Sam Savage's Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

From the opening to Sam Savage's Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife:
I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov's "Lolita, light of my fire, fire of my loins"; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." People remember those words even when they have forgotten everything else about the books.

Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Walla Walla back alley!
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Boyd on Nabokov the Psychologist

From the 2011 Autumn issue of the American Scholar -- Boyd on Nabokov as a psychologist:
Vladimir Nabokov once dismissed as “preposterous” the French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet’s assertions that his novels eliminated psychology: “The shifts of levels, the interpenetration of successive impressions and so forth belong of course to psychology,” Nabokov said, “—psychology at its best.” Later asked, “Are you a psychological novelist?” Nabokov replied: “All novelists of any worth are psychological novelists.” 
(The rest here.)
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Fall 2011 Courses at Whitman

I'll be teaching three courses at Whitman College this semester. Here are the syllabi!
I'm also creating a page of supplementary reading material for all three courses, which will be accessible here.

ENG178A: Introduction to Fiction
ENG 150: Introduction to Creative Writing
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Getty Event Write-Ups

Two nice write-ups of the Getty event: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/selected-shorts-celebrates-the-written-and-spoken-word/ and http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/03/selected-shorts-at-the-getty-starring-tim-curry.html


Nate Corddry did an awesome job reading the piece, which was written years ago as a lark in the dead hours when I managed a computer lab. Had I known, back then, that someone was going to have to perform the thing, I may have removed the bit about singing portions of Don Quixote in Spanish or maybe even the thing about talking in a fake foreign accent, which is pretty much the whole piece. Corddry totally sang, though! And he did so beautifully. And he was way funny. So maybe it's just as well I didn't know.
Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

I Tell Your Feet What to Live In

In this month's Desert Companion, I tell you what sneakers to wear. Please note: This is a hiking issue! Do not miss the hikes, but wear hiking shoes. Do not wear the things I'm telling you to wear if you are planning on actually going around the Nevada wilderness (particularly the Nike Woodside, which though beautiful is from all accounts almost comically nonfunctional). The story is here and also embedded below and in the actual print issue found in all sorts of places. Read! Hike! Wear good-looking shoes! But don't do all three at the same time!


Read More
Juan Martinez Juan Martinez

Our Engagement Photos

Sarah and I got our engagement photos done via the kind work of three Canadians: our friend Leah Bailly and the two Vancouver-based photographers who flew to Vegas for a wedding-photography convention and wanted to do an editorial shoot in the desert and were looking for people about to get married.

Here are the photos! And here are more photos!

Thank you so much, Tegan and Bethany and Leah.
Read More