A couple of words of thanks first. To Katyfullin first and foremost, for sucking it up and taking care of Nyssa and Leila while I was away. She made it seem like it was no burden or challenge at all. All of the fun I had was a direct result of her easy going attitude. To Elizabeth, my sister, for putting me up and putting up with me. To my father for buying me dinner on Friday night, even though he didn't know it. To Amy and Joe for driving me to and fro. And to Steve Pett and Flyway, for not only paying for the conference for me, but more importantly registering me for the conference. I never would have done it by myself.
A word about Mr. Pett, if you please. He was my major professor while I undertook my MA, five years ago, and he has been nothing but my champion ever since I met him. He has offered me oppertunity after oppertunity, and I feel myself deeply in his debt. More importantly, he is a tireless embassedor for Iowa State, always available to his students, and a great teacher in the class room. And to top it off he is a great writer.
Here then is my Thursday:
My friends Joe and Amy Doolittle did me the favor of driving me to Chicago. Picking me up at Childserve, we left Ames at 7:30, thinking we’d still have plenty of time to get to Chicago and get good work done at the conference that day. I didn’t really care when we got there, but I definitely wanted to see a reading from Nelson Algren’s Man with the Golden Arm, at 3. That was no problem, we rolled down 88 to 290 and Congress Parkway with no problems and were at the Michigan Ave. Hilton by 1.
I talked up Nelson Algren to Joe and Amy, letting them know they would be lesser people if they did not join me at the reading. They are lesser people today. So is my sister Elizabeth who chose some half-baked pedagogical discussion rather than take my advice. Silly donkey, she left her panel after 5 minutes (This was a scene repeated two or three times during the weekend, I would say I am going here. She would head off to something called Lithuainian extrodinary: composing the new sentence in web based learning moduals. To which I would say. Don’t goto that. She would and I would and then I’d hear later that she walked out after 5 minutes. Was it my fault? Did I ruin it for her. Or was I just butt ass right?)
I wasn’t entirely right about Algren. Elizabeth probably wouldn’t have liked it, Amy wouldn’t have and Joe only might have. It got off to a slow start, 15 people in a room seating 400 staring at a blank panel. It turned out the delay was for a good reason, we were waiting for Art Shay, Algren’s long time friend and photo-documentarian.
The chance to see a longtime friend and contemporary of Algren was worth the wait. The Panel talked a lot about the Critical and political reception of Algren’s work, the FBI’s work to keep him from the mainstream media, and his blacklisting. The panel also spent a goodly amount of time talking about Simon de Beauvoir, the French philosopher/feminist, lover of Sarte and, in Chicago, Nelson Algren, who appears prominantely in her novel Mandarins. To the right is a photo Art Shay took of de Beauvoir, after Algren had brought her to Shay's place to bathe. Apparently, Algren said, "She never closes the door." So Shay had some warning. de Beauvoir might not have, about the next 5 photo's of de Beauvoir walking towards him, Shay said, "I have those in my estate, I don't want to have to deal with it while I am alive." So we have that to look forwards to. While the panel was interesting, and I think Joe should have been there, I did not really get a new sense of the man, except possibly as a leader of men whose spirit was broken, and who then floundered for the ability to speak. If you haven’t, you should definetly read Man With the Golden Arm in fact you should read it twice, and teach it (and Algren) in every class you teach.
That was all the conference work I did for the day. Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS and MAUS 2 was the keynote speaker and I should have gone to see him. By all accounts he was great, charming funny and insightful. And best of all, did not take questions. But I had the chance to see my highschool friend Sharon (Groh) Vocino and so I chose her, and her red VW Bug over my own literary pursuits. She picked me up right after the Algren panel, so I missed out on the chance of talking to Algren’s publisher, and owner of 7stories press, Dan Simon. Which is to bad, because 7 stories is an excellent small press. But off I went in Sharons little yellow bug for my first ever car ride where Sharon was the driver. The 10 minutes to her house outside of UIC was amazingly smooth. We hung out at her apartment drinking beer, listening to IZ and waiting for her husband Gianni to come home from work.
He did, and after he convinced me to call up and invite my sister, we left immediately for Carnival, the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to (the picture to the right does not do it justice.). The whole time we sat there I wanted to take pictures. The drinks where great, I had a sort of Maragrhita without Tequila and Agave nector, some lime juice and a splash of Cava to make it fizzy. Served in a martini glass with a orchid, it was pretty and ostentatious and really really easy to drink. The atmosphere was wonderful, and the four of us sat in the best seat in the house, a small balcony overlooking the main dinning room. It was a nice way for a poor Iowa boy to start his weekend. And it didn’t cost me a dime.
The Vocino’s dropped us off at our hotel, and Elizabeth and I went to sleep. Well I did, the combination of jetlag and my snoring kept Elizabeth up. Sucks to be her. I slept great, my finger pressing into my chin in an attempt to keep my mouth closed and my snoring down. See I do care.
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