Here lies an homage (hom·age, noun: 'ä-mij, 'hä 2. a: -expression of high regard) to my favorite blog, a blog that is like rolling around on a carpet sodden with culture, saturated by poetry, cultural event reviews, international news, sports, and personal essay. This blog-o'-glory is at http://jstheater.blogspot.com/ and is run by John Keene, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies and Director of the English Major in Writing at Northwestern University.While a graduate student at Northwestern, John taught two of my fiction workshop courses. In each class John referenced literary works and my notebook filled with references to authors whose names I couldn't pronounce: Michel Houellebecq, Nathalie Sarraute, Camilo José Cela, Guillaume Dustan, and so on. I was always humbled by his depth of knowledge, his energetic approach, his broad-minded worldview, the thoughtful connections he made between people, events, literature. His blog is no different. This past week, John reported on: the 2007 Rugby World Cup, a recent flare-up at the Poetry Society of America, literary and musical events in NY, commentary on the Myanmar and Jena Six protests, a list of some recent MacArthur Award recipients, the closing of a historic Spanish-language bookstore in NY, commentary on the disappearance of gay characters on network television, a call for supporters of Habeas Corpus to lobby their US Senator for its restoration, and so much more. All in a week's work!
What I admire most about John's blog is what I admire most about him as a person: his blog is entirely personal without a shred of self-importance. His entries yield a concern for humanity, a constant heart of art, and a citizen's activism that shuns the passive participant. John is the inspiration for my own blog.
Wikipedia Biography: John R. Keene Jr. (b. 1965) is a writer, translator and Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at Northwestern University, Illinois, United States. He has a B.A. from Harvard and an M.F.A. from New York University. He was a longtime member of the Dark Room Collective, an organization that from 1988 to 1998 celebrated and gave greater visibility to emerging and established writers of color. His first novel, Annotations, was published by New Directions in 1995. A new collection of poems entitled Seismosis was published by 1913 Press in 2006. [1]
5 comments:
Remember, no swearing.
Idea........
How about having your fellow bloggers write a book with you. You decide the type (murder mystery, sci-fi, romance, etc) and the number of chapters. The bloggers then contribute characters, diologue, sub-plots,etc. You then post completed Chapter One. You will probably get more input for Chapter Two. You post Chapter Two etc. I wouldn't be surprised, if by the middle of the book, that the number of readers waiting for the next chapter would be huge. The final chapter would list you and all the contributors as authors. If it gets published, you all share in the profits. Today Show here you come.
No swearing? How will I show disdain?
I like the blog-book idea. Been thinking about writing a mystery for a while now. You were a cop for over 30 years... got any juicy mysteries brewing?
On a cool and sunny fall morning,a women parks her car in the underground garage of her office building. She walks to the elevator and pushes the UP button. Just seconds later, the door opens and she sees three dead men, lying in a heap. All three are in business suits. All three have been shot mutiple times with a .22 calibre weapon. The night before, all three had attended a meeting in their office on the second floor. They were participants in aq pyramid scheme. Build from there.
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