Defy Gravitas

a hummingbirda mystery
a doubleganger lurking on the right edge

Cut Down

I walk by the National AIDS Memorial Grove all the time; it's along some of my routes to Ninth Avenue or the Ocean, but I haven't been down in its ravine for ages.

The other day I took a couple of pictures nearby in the Park, in the course of dropping off a VHS at Le Video and grabbing a wolverine and a strawberry ginger lemonade at Arizmendi.

Straggling Fence

Ironworker Antiterrorism
I thought of making an expedition down into the Grove, but got caught up in reading the signage—the chronologies, quotes, photos—at street level. I took one shot
Then, slowly, just as it does at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, all of it caught up with me and I began to sob.

Great Readers

I would have loved to have caught Dickens or Twain or Wilde on tour. Or heard Whitman on something other than a scratchy Edison roll.

Sandburg with his guitar. Vachel Lindsay booming, "Booth beat boldly with his big bass drum."

Ginsberg at the Six Gallery. (The young Anne Waldman rocked.)

I just missed the superstars of High Modernism, Eliot and Dylan Thomas and Cummings, in person, although like every other English major in the fifties I memorized their LP intonations. And Siobhan McKenna doing "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy."

I don't know anyone today who can compare. Maybe Sherman Alexie, who's a tremendous showman, although I don't think he can be mimicked.

I love to hear Bob Hass ad lib. Dorianne Laux knows her poems by heart. Adrienne Rich is a mensch.

It's reassuring to hear certain poets read, because they put so little voice on the page; hearing them makes them seem human, which is always good.

Spoken Word and Slams are fine, but are they poetry?

As to the most boring reader of all, it's hard to say: I have my favorite, I'm sure you have yours.

U & Me & Miranda July

Famous writers don't have children who become famous writers. (Dumas fils, give me a break.)

A few well-known late-20th-century American writers had kids who went into the family business: Bellow, Cheever, Updike...but my premise stands.

Miranda July's mom, Lindy Hough, is a poet & novelist & co-publisher, with Miranda's father, Richard Grossinger, of North Atlantic Books. When Richard and Lindy were at Amherst and Smith, respectively, they started an alternative college litmag, Io. Richard has written a couple dozen books; part of his memoir of growing up at his family's hotel in the Catskills appeared in ZYZZYVA Summer '87.

I remember going over to their house in Berkeley in the late eighties and being introduced to their kids. I remember admiring the fact that they'd given their daughter a wonderful name, Miranda. I was still feeling a bit queasy for having given our daughter the then unheard of, mermaidy name of Madison (born on the Fourth of July, the year of the bicentennial of the Constitution, whose primary author was James Madison).

I don't know if Miranda ever sent me any of her stories when she was starting out. I asked Richard a couple of weeks ago, and he reassured me that she hadn't, but maybe he didn't want me to feel badly. He did remember one alleged friend who had rejected her early stuff.

I love her movie, and her website. And her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, which has just won the Frank O'Connor Award, the world's richest prize for stories ($49,300).

Maybe she'll send me something now.

Courtney Thorne-Smith

Courtney Thorne-Smith, of the great jawline, is "preggers," she told us while flogging her first novel at Stacey's, an advertiser, on Market St. yesterday.

She had had some time off, she began writing an hour a day, she bought some Anne Lamott, she felt she had been "given permission."

A year later, there was a novel. (Outside In, Random House, $23.95; eat your hearts out, M.F.A. drones.)

Like Robert Hass and Sharon Olds, Courtney was born in San Francisco. She graduated from Tam High in Mill Valley and is trying to persuade her husband, whom she met on a plane last New Year's Day, to move back here.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Stacey's, Zoetrope: All-Story has a wonderful interview of Francis Ford Coppola by Francis Ford Coppola about Francis Ford Coppola's new film; in fact, half the issue is devoted to this film; the lit part, with copious advertising for Francis Ford Coppola's wine, has been turned upside down to avoid confusion with the "commemorative" part.

Nearby, ZYZZYVA is outside bottom shelf, double-wide face out.

So I didn't take the 38 when it came along, because I feared the driver was being overwhelmed by current events.

I.B. Singer

I was prompted by the Wall St. Journal's list of "five best books on Judaism" on Saturday (Yom Kippur) to go to the USF Library and get Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the dairyman, which I had never read, foolishly, because I'd seen the musical. It's wonderful. Incredibly modern.

I pulled down a nearby Isaac Bashevis Singer anthology as well.

Singer had totally escaped my mind, not as a name so much, but as a presence. I just haven't thought of him for ages.

And I used to love him. When I read his stories now, esp. the late ones, the Upper West Side cafeteria ones and the Miami Beach ones, I still love him.

How quickly our four immigrant Nobel Prize winners have faded from consciousness, it seems: Bellow, Singer, Milosz, Brodsky.

Do we have anybody in their league out and about?

Someone whose parents fled the violence in the Punjab? Or Nam? Or Guatemala? Someone who extended a student visa? Or married to get a green card? Or who was already distinguished and accepted a long-term teaching gig, like Wolcott and Heaney and...?

Any chance in hell that our next giant will be the product of a prestigious M.F.A program?

Give me an A

I've never met Clayton Banes, but I know where he works (Pegasus Books in Berkeley) and that he blogs and comments on Silliman's blog a lot. I have nothing against him or his mug shot, but I'm tired of him leading off my Friends roster on Facebook.

I'd like to displace him with someone from the A-List.

My college roomate, Alfred Alschuler, who, as graduate student took part in Leary's mind-blowing experiments at Harvard, would have been perfect, but he died last year.

I added Antonin Artaud, but he did not confirm, perhaps because he is also deceased.

That's not what put me off Theodor Adorno--he just doesn't do that much for me.

I had hopes for one of the Jane Austens, but, again, zip.

If only Sherman Alexie were on Facebook. At least I've published him two or three times. And we exchange Christmas cards. His kids are getting so big.

Really, if you know any nonbaseball A's, help me out here.

O, Goldsworthy, where art thou?

For Shame, Bulldogs

It is disgusting to see any flag, much less the banner of the Georgia Bulldogs, flying on the same staff as the American flag, and in the Presidio no less, on Nauman Road.

Life/Art

Life imitates art, but usually not very well.

For example: There's a marvelous print in the Legion of Honor's From Rembrandt to Thiebaud: A Decade of Collecting Works on Paper (hurry, it closes Oct. 7) by Daniel Stoopendaal, Fireworks for the Peace of Utrecht at the Hague (1713).

It shows the "dispersal through fireworks of the gunpowder that would have been used in combat if war had not been avoided."

It so happens that in his fascinating Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond, Pankaj Mishra describes:

"the still-mysterious fire in Ojhri [in 1988], halfway between Islamabad and Rawalpindi, in which the ten thousand tons of arms and ammunition supplied by the CIA to the ISI for the Afghan mujahideen exploded in a spectacularly violent fireworks visible in a twelve-mile radius that many people took to be the beginning of a war between India and Pakistan; the rain of rockets and missiles lasted a whole day, killing a hundred people and injuring thousand of others."

I hope that, some day soon, our nuclear arsenal can quietly dispersed, hammered unspectacularly into ploughshares.

Hello, Fall

We had a great time last night welcoming the Fall issue at Parea Wine Bar and Cafe, Valencia @19th. Proprietors Nicole and Telly.
First-time-in-printers Larry Evans and Pratima Raghava with managing editor Kristin Kearns and Raj Singh and his wife, board member Renata Anderson.

Also present: first-timer Kirsten Lee Soares, who will join Evans and Raghava and C.J. Singh, who opened his invitation too late, at a reading, 6:30, Oct. 11, at the Main Library.

Meanwhile, I did face-to-face for the first time with my Facebook Friend Kelly Luce, who is Kristin's BFF.

MSS Received

Since 1992, when we started tracking them, we've received 45,000 manuscripts, very consistently 3,000 a year.

We got 2,998 in 1992. The most was 3,449 in 1997.

Last year, we got 2,438, 18% below average.

Any decline is worrisome, but swings of this magnitude have happened before. Nonetheless, given the phenomenal increase in the number of writing programs, you might expect an equivalent increase in submissions.

On the other hand, there are so many more litmags available these days as outlets, both on paper and online.

And, of course, a lot of West Coast writers have already tried us...and moved on.

If you have something ready to go, fire it over; we still need to fill a few pages in the Winter issue.

Happy New Year

Looking east from the trail around Land's End: in the middle distance, China Beach, the best place to go swimming in the ocean, actually the
Bay, because there's no undertow and there are hot showers in the changing rooms; on the skyline, the Transamerica, BofA, and Temple Emanu-El (L'shanah Tovah).

An Invitation

Please join us at:

1) a Happy Hour celebration of the Fall issue at Parea Wine Bar and Cafe, 795 Valencia St. @ 19th St. , this Wednesday, Sept. 19, from 5-7.

2) a literary showcase with the Asian American Women Artists Association, this Saturday at 8 at KSW's space 180, 180 Capp St. @ 17th St., 3rd floor, which we are co-presenting; a member of our Board, Debbie Yee, will read.

photo: Mattie Bamman

Globa warming

It's not easy for the individual to make a differins in the fight against globa warming.

On the Road, Closer to Home

Bougainfilthea
Qualvegalanche

Friending

I know someone who has 719 Friends. On Facebook.

I know the ones from K-8, a few from high school, but of course none of the rest, except the three relatives we share. I like messaging my nephews & niece on FB, because it's easy, unlike texting, which I can't. Also I can follow their lives through the public messages they post, for example, "Andy B. is up, awake, and its gonna be a long ass day."

I'm one of the 98,347 people in San Francisco who are on FB (as of 7: 14 this morning); I'm Friends with six of them.

I've also signed up Barak Obama, altho I think he's really a junior college wit in southern New Jersey.

Jonathan Franzen and George Saunders are real Friends, whom I found because they were Friends of a Friend of mine.

I was astonished to find that the poetics blogking Ron Silliman has 223 friends, including, I think, his daughter, a college student, which is cool. Ron and I have nine Friends in common.

Graywolf Press, always a savvy marketer, having honed its skills pitching the exceedingly generous foundations in Minneapolis/St. Paul, has invited me to be its Friend; it's already signed up 427 (including a few they got from my list, which I know because they appeared in the same sequence in which I had just added them).

I'm reluctant to Friend a marketing scheme. I've asked it what its plans are; if I get an answer from a person with a name (and a face instead of a logo), maybe I'll confirm him or her as a Friend.

(In the event, the pointman on this marketing/promotional ploy did respond; he's enthusiastic about the interactivity with his customers. I "ignored" his Friend request.)

I checked out Dave Eggers, but "he" won't let you check out his Friends, and he won't let you Friend him (which you're usually allowed to do just by clicking).

I messaged him to see if he was the real deal. If he is, I wonder if he's just trying to be hip, spying on the trend, or whether he just wants a really exclusive set of Friends.

There is a "Michael Chabon," with six friends, two of whom work for the BBC. Whatever.

Meanwhile, I'm disappointed there's no Kim Bassinger, although there are a couple of Cameron Diaz's, and several lookalike Anderson Coopers, and one Ernest M. Hemingway.

Way beyond baroque

The double-columned entrance to Beyond Baroque, the 39-year-0ld writers' center in Venice, has been nobly led these past few years by Fred Dewey, the great-grandson of the great philospher/educator John Dewey.

Way beyond baroque is the latest civic adornment, given to the people of Venice by Robert Graham, who began his career making columns (click on Robert Graham, then on Works of Art) on top of which he then placed nudes.

The Venice de Milo is eccentrically placed at the edge of a roundabout directly inland, on Windward, from di Suvero's "Voxal 2000," shown in yesterday's post.
Meanwhile, Graham and his wife, Anjelica Huston, will soon move into this place closer to the beach on Windward, actually about halfway to the di Suvero.

Venice di Suvero

Mark di Suvero's "Pax Jerusalem" (1999), in front of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, is puny, reddish, and misplaced. Even the normally namby-pamby Kenneth Baker denounced it.

On the other hand, "Voxal 2000," on the beach in Venice, is big, dark, and dramatically sited.

d

Hiya from Venice

Hello from Hollywood

Cory Garfin, who works at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, led off our reading there last night with his first story in print (in the current issue). Also reading: Margaret Weatherford, Les Plesko, Janet Fitch, Eduardo Santiago, and Katherine Taylor.
In the audience, but not pictured: Bonna Newman Read (first time in print, Winter '04), Katherine Karlin (Spring '05), and Tracy DeBrincat, who will appear in the Winter issue.

At the Cafe Figaro next door before the reading, but not actually taking part in our koffee klatch: Geena Davis.

Sunday at Skylight Books

There'll be a ZYZZYVA reading at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon, with Janet Fitch, Cory Garvin, Les Plesko, Eduardo Santiago, Katherine Taylor, and Margaret Weatherford.

Fitch mentioned ZYZZYVA in her bestseller, White Oleander.

Garfin's first time in print is in the Fall issue; Weatherford's first time was in Fall '05.

You may find this event listed in Los Angeles City Beat, if you scroll down far enough.

A Lost Generation

Yesterday's link to images of and by Jill Krementz led to a portrait she had made of a writer whose last novel was reviewed in New York by Dale Peck; I call it to your attention, because it sums up an almost forgotten era.

Curiously enough, if you go to that link, you'll find on the far right, in a box of the "most e-mailed stories," a piece (No. 2—"The Inverse Power of Praising Kids") by Po Bronson, who has a memoir coming up in our Winter issue.

The Great Tradition

ZYZZYVA received this kind and generous notice from Luna Park on Monday.

To be mentioned in the same breath as The Dial and The Little Review makes me feel like Roger Federer when commentators lump him with Tilden and Laver.

As for looking like John Updike...on my insistence, Jill Krementz once took our picture together at a party; it's in the Corporate Autobiography, page 54. At the moment, however, we don't look much alike, because he has too much hair.

On the Road, Part One

When Kerouac first lit out for the West, he tried bumming his way out of the city, but that was a no-go and he had to turn back. Next time he took the bus.

He lost my respect with that namby-pamby bourgeois move, even though I took an epic bus ride myself last week, on the beautifully named 44 O'Shaughnessy, which runs south across the Park, through Laguna Honda, down into Glen Park, and on to Hunters Point.

I got off at Diamond and headed for Gialina. It was my first time, and I went with the signature Atomica, which turned out to be as good as pizza gets.

While it was baking, I hustled over to Bird & Beckett (as in Coltrane & Samuel). Luckily, owner Eric Whittington was behind the counter. He recommended Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England (wonderful).

He's about to move his his venerable bookstore around the corner, near the new Public Library, which I examined closely for Fascist influences, when I went back to sit in the window table of Gialina across the street.