Emails from ‘The Littlest Literary Hoax’
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently posted an article about a few years old DFW/Delillo-related prank authored by a Jay Murray Siskind and published in Volume 11, Issue 4 of Modernism/Modernity, a scholarly literary critical quarterly review. According to the Chronicle, Mark Sample, an assistant professor of English at George Mason University, discovered the article, a review of Oblivion, in 2005 when one of his graduate students cited it in an essay. He forgot about it, time passed, then he got curious and dug some more to discover a good bit of humor behind the whole thing. I won’t go on to summarize all of the details, as plenty of information is out there already and many other blogs have covered it – see the following links:
Mark Sample’s original post regarding the ‘hoax.’
The Chronicle of Higher Education article, written by Peter Monaghan.
However, I do have this to add. I’ve got the email exchange between the graduate student, who asked to remain anonymous, and Sample, who kindly gave me permission to share it with you here. It’s a great little exchange, pretty funny. Enjoy after the break.
Favorite First Sentences
Alright. All this Lish talk has me thinking about first sentences: the pleasure derived from them, the importance, the world-containing, etc.
My favorite first sentence is from Blood Meridian, which is weird to me because I’ve tried to read the book three times and have put it down halfway each time, but it is still a powerful book, maybe too powerful for me at the moment. Anyway, its first sentence:
See the child.
That, to me, is awesome; a plain evocation, and commandment, biblical as all hell which is what Cormac does so wonderfully.
And my other favorite opener, from The Stranger:
Maman died today.
Detached, even with the endearing colloquialism. Prescient, full of doom.
Alright, now you go.
Mary Jo Bang’s favorite book covers
Over at Best American Poetry Blog, they’ve apparently been running a thing where poets choose some of their favorite poetry book-covers. I’m a little late to the party, as there are already entries from Major Jackson, Jesse Ball, David Lehman, and several others. But I’m a big fan of Mary Jo’s, and so it was exciting to enter the series via her entry, which by the way, includes the cover of Mark Bibbins’s forthcoming The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon), perhaps the most eagerly-anticipated follow-up collection of 2009. So why don’t you head over to the blog, read Mary Jo’s piece, then check out some of the others.
My Favorite Author Signature
Aside from the signatures that a few of my writer-friends have written to me in their own books, my favorite author signature is the above greeting from Christine Schutt in her collection Nightwork.
I had admired Schutt’s writing for a while, and then had the neat opportunity to take a workshop from her at Sewanee. Her way of talking about language (about which Justin has already posted) and how she applied her careful sensibilities to a few of my own stories really helped me become aware of my own sentences in new ways. Simply to be able to speak and work with her after having read and reread Nightwork and A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer was incredible.
As a result, hers is the signature that means the most to me.
What about you? Feel free to email a pic if you have one, so I can add it to the post. Or share in the comments. Also, Jacket Copy has a similar post on author signatures and a gallery of photos. Send them pics too? You can also click over to this page of scanned author signatures if you’d like to get some ideas.
Here’s another signature, this one sent in by Blake: Gordon Lish.
The Original of Laura
Knopf is publishing the book in an intriguing form: Nabokov’s handwritten index cards are reproduced with a transcription below of each card’s contents, generally less than a paragraph. The scanned index cards (perforated so they can be removed from the book) are what make this book an amazing document; they reveal Nabokov’s neat handwriting (a mix of cursive and print) and his own edits to the text: some lines are blacked out with scribbles, others simply crossed out. Words are inserted, typesetting notes (“no quotes”) and copyedit symbols pepper the writing, and the reverse of many cards bears a wobbly X. Depending on the reader’s eye, the final card in the book is either haunting or the great writer’s final sly wink: it’s a list of synonyms for “efface”—expunge, erase, delete, rub out, wipe out and, finally, obliterate. (Nov.)
Surfin’ the Casbah with Jesse Aizenstat
I met Jesse while I was in Israel earlier this summer. He was traveling with a surf board, and had plans to go from Israel into Beirut and then attempt to surf across the border. He actually attempted this, and his adventures were published in something called Ma’an News.
His regular web presence is Blogging the Casbah, which I highly recommend you check out. Yesterday’s post logged his visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in South Beiruit.
I think a big reason for this is that the international community has traditionally viewed the Palestinian problem as a West Bank and Gaza kind of issue. They forget that the Palestinian camps of the Levant are like tightly guarded prisons that have been subject to enormous campaigns from local governments to keep displaced Palestinians from being granted the rites of citizenship.
question about toilet paper
What is the correct way to hang a roll of toilet paper? I have seen it both ways. What do you prefer and why? Edited to add: Are there more creative ways of hanging toilet paper?
Field Report from the Hong Kong Book Fair: A photo-essay
The 20th annual Hong Kong International Book Fair was held July 22-28, at the Hong Kong convention center on the Victoria Harbour waterfront, which I believe is the round building in the lower right corner of this photograph, which was shot at the top of the IFC tower. The book fair attracted massive crowds–you’ll see the line to get in just below–and was open daily from morning till midnight. Midnight! Admission cost $25HK, which is about three dollars US. After the jump, you get a dozen and change photos I took to document my brief foray into the exciting world of literature I can’t read.