Reading Camus and Looking for a Job

STANFORD PODCAST

There is a great pod cast from Stanford that I am addicted to
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/fren-ital/opinions/

This Professor Robt Harrison does a radio show and everyone is fascinating and stimulating and I recently listened (While on the treadmill) to a wonderful show on Albert Camus.

I have always been a Camus fan. He is by the far the greatest French essayist of the 20th Century and I don't want any guff about Sartre who is in my mind despicable and is one step away from a Fascist (Heidegger and Sartre are morally equivalent).

So as part of my descent into unemployment I am immersed in Camus. I am going to read the entire corpus and see what new wisdom I can ascertain. I am in love with Camus' idea of the north versus the south so lets see what he does to me.... ?

AWP-Readings

I am starting to get email invitations to readings at AWP. One of my pet peeves is the reading situation at events like AWP. Poets (and it is always poets) from cities outside of the host town (the Italian word Stranieri comes to mind) organize their own readings so they can replicate their poetry scene in the city they are visiting. When I read in Austin, TX during AWP a few years ago that was the case.

So on Feb 13th which is a Friday I am reading at the Chicago Poetry Center reading (630 Art Institute Ballroom on Michigan avenue with Chicago poets Simone Muench, Chris Glomski, Kevin Coval et al) and the Mandorla Translation reading at the Chicago Cultural Center at 830 PM. But there are another 5 or 6 readings going on at the same time.

New Yorkers are To Blame for Everything

I tend to blame the New Yorkers for this- they are so provincial and they get out of sorts so far from the garbage dumps of the Meadowlands and the stench of the East River. They have to bring their own scene with them so that they can remain hermetically sealed in irony. The Californians are much more palatable- as always with sun people versus darkness people.

Cracked Slab at AWP

Cracked Slab Books the press I run with Bill Allegrezza is going to have a table at the bookfair. Any of my blog readers come by and I will sell you an autographed copy of Immediate Empire my book for $10.00 (A savings of $5.00). And if you say nice things about it I will buy you a beer and if you write a good review dinner is on me....

Happy Great Recession Everybody it is 38 degrees below Zero windchill today in Chicago the kind of weather that makes me want to tear my eyes out one at a time....