PW Piece on the Vertigopedia

From a few weeks ago, this short article previews the book...somehow without mentioning the name of the guy who wrote it.

Sometimes I think PW has it in for me. All writers have that feeling, I guess, but they spelled my name wrong in their review of A Scattering of Jades (apparently some guy named Irving wrote it) and now this.

Any of you seen it yet? What did you think?

BangPop!

One week from today, I'll be at the Spectacular Events Center in Bangor, doing a little of this and a little of that at



You'll also run into Joe Hill, Kristen Britain, and a whole lot of other Maine-based writers and artists. I'm not sure yet about scheduling details, but will pass them on as I find out...

New Semester, New Book, New List

Started teaching yesterday...summer's over. And coincident with the beginning of the semester is the arrival of the Vertigopedia, which is In Stores Now!

Over at the Times Online, source of so many interesting and idiosyncratic literary lists, Philip Pullman initiates us into the mysteries of his personal canon.

If This Gets Out, I Won't Have a Job

The semester starts in ten days, and I'll be back in the classroom teaching Writing Fiction and a great-books-style class called Homer to the Renaissance. As always, the project of the creative writing class is a little curious to me, and here's Katharine Anne Porter, musing on one of the central problems:

“Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned, and learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself… The good artist is first a good workman…”

Maybe. I think what can be taught is how to read like a writer. In the end, maybe that's what the workshop is for.

(quote noticed over at Maud Newton's blog)

More Kafka

So a trove (maybe) of Kafka's papers are currently being held by the 74-year-old cat-lady daughter of Max Brod in Tel Aviv. She holds onto them while everyone argues about how Jewish Kafka was and how this affects where his papers should go. I mean, of course. Nothing related to Kafka's legacy can be normal, right? Hava Hoffe, give up the papers!

For Me, It's All About Lynda Carter

But there's also a comic, and Topless Robot has a loving, exasperated list of 10 Reasons No One Cares About Wonder Woman.



Me, I care.

A Question for the Technologically Savvy

Can anyone tell me why this blog looks so weird in IE and so normal in every other browser?

Not Your Grandfather's Kafka

Apparently the time has come for Franz Kafka to be posthumously reinvented as an erotically supercharged bon vivant instead of the monastic depressive we all assumed we knew. What with this Times piece about scholarly interest in his pornography collection, and this (very fine) Telegraph-by-way-of-NYRB essay by Zadie Smith about what really happens if you pay attention when you read Kafka, a new picture is emerging. I like this new guy better than the old one; it's nice to know that you don't have to be utterly oppressed and dysfunctional to be a great writer.

Winchester Journal Cover

I just got a cover treatment in the mail, and it looks mighty cool. Soon as it's final, I'll post it here. The book is going through a last round of revisions after comments from Eric and some of the show's writers, and then it's off to the printer. It's been a lot of fun to work on...and the illustrations are going to be great, too.

Vertigopedia Panel at Comic-Con

...is recapped at Comic Book Resources, in an article by David Moran. Read it here.