Okay, David

This post's for you.

I've been ignoring this blog in favor of the personal blog - mainly because I'm trying to wean myself away from Century. It's really hard for me: I still read some college emails, still volunteer to go to meetings about a new college initiative I'm interested in (a "publishing center" at Century, which would be so cool and would be a good thing to have for our students). I get razzed by my pal Cullen, who sends me emails saying, "Why are you reading this email?! You shouldn't be reading your college emails, except those from me." I love Cullen.

And also, I've done almost nothing related to college work or my sabbatical work - just read for fun as I clean out my bookshelves. I figure I should read the books before throwing them in the Goodwill box. Last week, I started and then skimmed through Silence in October by a Danish writer named Jens Christian Grondahl. It was awful, despite the good review here, because the narrator was so mannered and full of himself. An entire novel inside the head of one man (or woman or girl or chicken) should be a novel inside an *interesting* head, say for example Mrs. Dalloway. But this Danish musing on lost love and the inability to really know other people was just really irritating.

Today I finished a great epic, depressing, invigorating 1992 novel called Was by Geoff Ryman. He calls it a fantasy/history, but I see a collage (or bricolage?) of voices, times, characters, facts, dreams that all circle around the Wizard of Oz: the play, the movie, the fans, the actors, the story. Frank Baum's a character in the novel, as is Judy Garland, Aunty Em and Uncle Henry, Dorothy and Toto. It's a brutal, beautiful work.

How's that, Dave? Why don't you post info on your Duluth conference?