polaroids from the after-party snapped with my digi-cam from the hotel room
PLUG FOR A FELLOW ALUMNUS
Jordan Tate attended Miami University’s Western College Program and earned a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2003. He is currently an M.F.A. candidate at Indiana University’s Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts. Some of his work is held in the permanent collection at the Kinsey Institute for Gender, Sex, and Reproduction.
I don’t really know Jordan, but I was impressed by his undergraduate photography show (2003…I would’ve been a sophomore at the time). This book not only seems like a real riot, but some of the pictures below (taken from the book’s Myspace page) are of people I went to school with. See how many of the euphemisms you can name:
The Contemporary Dictionary of Sexual Euphemisms is out from St. Martin’s Press on January 9th. I just pre-ordered mine.
MY LISTENING YEAR, 2006
Just me riffing on John Porcellino:
Special treat: an updated page of every Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show.
A WEDDING EQUALS PENURY, BUT MEAT IS A REWARD
Two bits for today. First is an excerpt from the highly-recommended ESQUIRE’S THINGS A MAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MARRIAGE (which actually manages to be witty and informative at the same time):
East Indian Hindu couples are married before a small fire, into which they toss flowers, water, seeds, and fruit, which are considered the four symbols of life.
Here in the West, we have replaced this poetic custom with a larger, metaphorical fire, into which we ritually hurl great piles of currency.
Amen to that! Goodbye savings account!
Second is a fun spin on meat-eating as a reward for creativity by Dan:
For the last few years I’ve tried to force myself to write at least one page every day, which doesn’t sound like much but it’s actually pretty hard to manage. Because I’m not allowed to do a make-up day. I can’t do two pages the next day. The punishment for not completing my page is that I have to eat a vegetarian meal the next day.
A vegetarian meal as punishment! That’s true dedication to craft, friends…
Probably won’t get much posted this week, as we’re working diligently on grad school applications, trying to get them all finished before Jesus’s birthday. We also tacked up our big Wedding To-Do list on the front door (like some desperate manifesto).
Wish us luck!
THE MUSES ARE TAKING A SMOKE BREAK (AND READING COMIC BOOKS)
The first two paragraphs of David Hajdu’s NYTimes review of Ivan Brunetti’s outstandingly awesome (Christmas gift of the year, hint hint…) ANTHOLOGY OF GRAPHIC FICTION, CARTOONS, AND TRUE STORIES:
Upholding its duty to officiate lay consecration in America, Time magazine recently assessed the latest candidates for anointment as the literary voice of the young generation, and the magazine found no writer worthy of the honor. “Every once in a while,??? the Time book critic Lev Grossman noted, there comes a novel that “feels as current as tomorrow’s e-mail, that gives readers the story of their own secret ineffable desperation with such immediacy??? that the work seems to encapsulate its era; it has the sound of its time. “Every once in a while,??? Grossman reiterated, “but not lately.???
Outlining some possible reasons for this plight, the Time piece cited the industrialization of creative writing through overabundant M.F.A. programs, literary brain drain to “better-paying media with bigger audiences??? like television, and the prospect that the muses are taking “a smoke break.??? All these are good theories. At the same time, Ivan Brunetti’s new “Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories??? suggests something else: that Time was simply looking in the wrong place. These days, the novel — at least the novel as we have always known it, as a long (or longish) work of prose — is scarcely the only kind of book being made by smart, imaginative young (or youngish) people. Some deeply gifted writers and artists are working to evoke not only the sound of our time, through writing, but the sights, through the union of words and drawings that Brunetti’s anthology refers to as graphic fiction and most people call comics (and sometimes spell as comix). If anyone really qualifies as the voice of the current literary generation, he or she could well be using the language of cartoons, captions and word balloons.
Could be. Could be.
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