Herman's Humpback: A Miscellany

My Lord! The month finds itself scrieving by as if on steroids. I confess to being caught up in the nets of neglect and remorsefully re-appear here with best wishes and good cheer.

First off, Melville celebrated his 188 birthday anniversary on the first of August: hail, Herman! I share a birthday with the publication of MOBY DICK (November 14, 1851; date of book's publication, not my d.o.b.). On August 11, there is a celebration of the man and his work down at Hudson River Park in Manhattan. Look up the info and pick up your harpoon...

On other fronts, poet Burt Kimmelman just gave a wonderful reading a few weeks ago at Morningside Bookstore up near Columbia; the new work was radiant...Samuel Menashe is reading here and there over the next few months, details to follow....Michael Heller is out in Colorado as a poet-in-residence to the mountains and visitors like Norman Finkelstein...Zach Barocas is about to update the cultural society. Chris Leo is moving to Florence...

The new slew of big-time lit mags are mediocre to the say the best....and, as I read WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS by David Markson (marvelous!) I realize that glibness need not be a trademark of experimental writing. A brilliant tome and greatly outshines the prolix palaver of David Foster Wallace and many of the other Polyanderthals...

Where are you, Reader? And what are you up to?

j. curley