syllabi and student assignments

"There’s something confusing about the consensus around [Cyrus Duffleman]. It has to do with the way [his] critics begin by asserting [his] goodness, [his] greatness, [his] majorness or [his] bestness, and then quickly adopt a defensive tone, instructing us in ways of seeing as virtues the many things about [his] writing that might be considered shortcomings. So [he] writes only [syllabi and student assignments], but [these] are [weirder] than most novels."

~~ from "Poor Rose" by Christian Lorentzen

Alice Munro

John Barth, Paul Auster, Alice Munro—who's next?

And who did we forget so soon?

alice munro

A facebook tip from the talented and kind Alexander Chee led me to read my first Alice Munro short story. "Dimension" offers craft and sadness and a breath or two of unexpected life at the end. I was happy to spend some time with it.

In another version of the writer's life, one that doesn't include a Nobel Prize, a "body of work," or even an expectation of being alive past 70, I took my daughter to a used bookstore to read her stories and stumbled upon two "near fine" first editions of Munro's books, no remainder mark or any significant blemish. So along with a sticker book and a few Berenstain Bears that we couldn't resist, I left with these two hardcovers in hopes of selling them to you.

A Day Later: Alas, in these trying times, it appears the Munro market is not quite what I'd hoped for, and that the books I purchased are selling in similar price range at many locations. Of course, because they most likely won't live up to my expectations as objects of speculation, I'm free to crack them open and read.

nobel exuberance

"Irrational exuberance" Robert J. Shiller winning the Nobel for Economics is a contrarian indicator that gets us to DOW 25,000 by the end of the current Presidential term, but because the correlation between rising stock prices and jobs growth is far from guaranteed in near-term America, this won't necessarily help most of us.

(This is not investment advice or a recommendation to lose money so as to indulge in freedom as an expression of "nothin' left to lose"; furthermore, it should not be read as a "tell" indicating a suicidal impulse on the part of the author or any recommendation to readers to commit such. You're welcome to go ask Alice and get back to me on all this.)