Monthly Archives: November 2018

Less!

I promised myself I could read Andrew Sean Greer’s Less as a reward for getting through New York Comic-Con, and it took me an extra month but I’ve finally gotten to it! It’s as funny as I hoped it would be, but it’s also not afraid to be tenderhearted, and Greer makes some life observations that are simply fantastic.

Here’s one of my favorite passages:

…he looks out at the city: the Empire State Building, twenty blocks down, is echoed, below, by an Empire Diner with a card stock sign: PASTRAMI. From the other window, near Central Park, he sees the sign for the Hotel New Yorker. They are not kidding, no sir. No more than the New England inns called the Minuteman and the Tricorner are kidding, with their colonial cupolas topped with wrought iron weather vanes, their cannonball pyramids out front, or the Maine lobster pounds called the Nor’easter, hung with traps and glass buoys, are kidding, or the moss-festooned restaurants in Savannah, or the Western Grizzly Dry Goods, or the Florida Gator This and Gator That, or even the Californian Surfboard Sandwiches and Cable Car Cafes and Fog City Inn, are kidding. Nobody is kidding. They are dead serious. People think of Americans as easygoing, but in fact they are all dead serious, especially about their local culture; they name their bars “saloons” and their shops “Ye Olde”; they wear the colors of the local high school team; they are Famous For Their Pies. Even in New York City.

It’s pretty rare for a comic novel to win a Pulitzer—there are comic elements in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I’d argue that both of them find the foundations of their stories in tragedy. The only other novel that I think could be called truly comic is A Confederacy of Dunces, which is also shot through with sadness, but it’s a smaller, human-scale sadness, not the genocide that shatters the lives of the de Leons and the Kavalieris.

I might be slightly invested in the reception of novels that aim for comedy, since Manifolds (if it works) is a skewed comic campus novel, and As-Yet-Untitled Novel #2 will probably be comic-picaresque-historical-theological-fiction.

Probably.

I got yer Winter Light right here

I promise I am also writing in between walks in the woods, but when the light is like this? It would be a moral failing not to go wandering.

These low stone walls criss-cross every hill, which is hilarious to me since I just reread the first few Earthsea books.

Following deer. Not finding any damn deer.

BLUE.

There is no describing the particular quiet of a pine forest.

Once again, BLUE.

Berries!

I mean, come on.

Come on.

In the studio!

Here at I-Park. My fellow residents are all fantastic—startlingly talented and genuine. Currently sitting in my studio listening to Sufjan, snow melt, and wind that occasionally kicks up into a whistle in the pines around me. Here are some pictures!

The pond:

 

A sound sculpture:

 

Tim Norris’ The Journey:

 

My studio sign:

 

Light in the dark!

 

Stove and books:

 

I’m not entirely sure I brought enough books?

 

My studio in the snow!

 

Snow on the skylight!

 

And inevitably, my desk:

Ganesha and coffee will remove all obstacles.

[Not pictured: imposter syndrome.]

[Pictured yet ineffable: Sufjan Stevens’ voice gently suggesting that perhaps I should be a better person.]

A Residency at I-Park!

I am so happy to say that I’ve been invited to be an artist-in-residence by the I-Park Foundation! As of today I will be in the woods, writing as hard as I can.

Here’s I-Park’s Mission:

Nurturing artists and the creative process – in the fine arts and in nature.

I-Park is both an open-air and a closed-studio laboratory for individual creative pursuits in the fields of music composition/sound art, the visual arts, architecture, moving image, creative writing and landscape/garden/ecological design. From insights developed in the laboratory setting, it also develops and sponsors specially-themed cross-disciplinary projects of cultural significance – and brings these discoveries to light in the public domain.

I-Park supports these individual and collaborative investigations through its international artists-in-residence program, the aesthetic engagement of its natural and built environments and with on-site exhibitions, performances and collegial exchanges.

Since its founding in 2001, I-Park has sponsored over 900 fully-funded artists’ residencies.

I will try to track my progress (or at least provide photos of all the fauna I encounter) but I think at this point it’s clear that I’m terrible at updating my own blog? I’ll do my best.