April 22 (Teju Cole on KONY 2012)

Teju Cole's essay on KONY 2012, published online at (in?) The Atlantic, is one that caught my eye this week.

I certainly remember my own, perhaps similar, cynical thoughts surrounding my experience at Wesleyan University and all of the seemingly affluent students intent on changing the world (or resisting locally or whatever Teach for America, the Peace Corps, or grad school in social work was supposed to be called). It felt like they all had automobiles and car insurance paid by their parents, and I vividly remember the brand-new SUVs a few of them drove off in at the end of their glorious four-years of somewhat radical undergrad.

But I never met one who ever called himself a "saviour" or wouldn't have acknowledged and appreciated at least some of the nuances and complexities to all the different kinds of hegemonies circulating throughout and within. There was one friend who would describe it all in matter-of-fact terms: "X's parents have dough, so he can change the world, but Y's parents are poor, so he'll go to law school and aim for corporate work." It's never that simple, of course, but even among the financial-aid students there were not many genuinely poor "Y"s.

Anyway, Cole's tweets and essay made me more interested in reading his novel Open City, and it made for a nice complement to this week's teaching of Roberto Bolano's Liberian section from The Savage Detectives along with "Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva." Cole is working on a nonfiction book about Lagos, Nigeria, and that reminded me of this Uwem Akpan story and this George Packer essay that I unfortunately dropped from the syllabus to make room for the more local concerns of Ron Rash's Saints at the River.

And for leisure reading, finally, I'm getting immersed in Frances Lefkowitz's To Have Not about her poor, white childhood in San Francisco and her subsequent attendance at Brown University on heaping helpings of financial aid. It was my own Wesleyan experience that brought me to this memoir, and there is a decent chance I'll ask Lefkowitz for an interview when I'm done.

April 17 (The South Will Rise Again)

At the very least, the price of gas in the South will rise again. I enjoyed this article full of hyperlinking to all kinds of Southerners--scholars, writers, designers, musicians, and more--but don't follow the Bill Maher link if you want to believe in the strength of our union (the whole "one nation" biz). Maybe Maher should get fined for using the guy with no teeth?

My Aunt Nancy's tasty grits were a highlight of my first trip to the true deep South, a visit to the Florida panhandle on the hot, humid Gulf on Mexico. Not too far from Pensacola, I met my Southern cousins and watched MTV for the first time. One of the most memorable lines of my entire childhood was Cousin Billy's, "You mean you ain't never heard of Jimmy Buffet?" To the best of my knowledge, thirty years later, Bill is doing quite well as a resident of the great state of New Jersey, the same place his Mom and my Dad were so ready to escape from.

In addition to everything else I have to try to summon enough concentration to write, my visits and residence in various parts of the southeastern United States could at least make for a solid essay. And, yeah, as we all know, that's easier blogged upon than written. I think you know what I mean.

long weekend

Friday evening, Ron Rash burned bright at The Bengal Tiger's first reading in the spring series, and it went well enough that we will have at least three more readings (look for details soon), including my own on March 1 (a Tuesday, 7 p.m.). We then saw and heard Ron read again at City Lights in Sylva, NC the following Sunday, as in yesterday, a bright, beautiful day at that.

And so, I'm motivated and in the mood to read from Fight for Your Long Day. In front of an audience, no less. I'm fairly certain I'll have details soon for my spring reading plans. If you want to book me for an event (in a way that doesn't involve electrocution by wet kindle or slamming an unabridged dictionary over my head), please do not hesitate to e-mail, f-book, or t-weet although telepathy remains my e-best mode of communication of course. It looks like I'll be in the mid-Atlantic from March 20 to 27 and the Clemson region (within a couple hours of Asheville, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc.) for the rest of Feb through April.

And now I'm here, too, squatting on Old Man Bezos's land.

Slog Through Your Tuesday!

the world made straight

i'm reading my first ron rash, the world made straight. so far, i can see he is cursed with being able to make something difficult look easy. maybe polished fiction with great transitions is always like that?

this reminds me of ultimate teams with great throws and spacing on their cuts. all the spectator sees is one perfect 40 yard pass after another, with no sense of the endless practice that led to the live performance.

back to rash, he also knows a whole bunch of words--big ones, small ones, rural ones, etc.--that i've never used in my life. and some i've never seen.