Q. What is the title of the new Fort Saint Davids Event?
A. The title is Novels in Progress.
Q. Who will be reading from their novels in progress?
A. Erik Bader and Matthew Korfhage.
Q. What are the names of these novels in progress?
A. Erik Bader will be reading from The New American Novel. Matthew Korfhage will read from L’Atalante. Obviously, these being works in progress the titles are tentative. But they are confirmed as the titles that will be used for this reading.
Q. Date and time and location?
A. Sunday, August 30th 2009, 7:30pm, at Worksound PDX, 820 SE Alder.
Q. Refreshments?
A. Beer and wine.
Q. Music?
A. Only the best selection, selected by the readers.
Q. Intermission?
A. It is the Fort Saint Davids policy that all of our events include an intermission. Readings are long and no one is allowed to talk, that’s why you need a break to hear a few tunes, refill your glass, smoke a cig, say hi to your pals who arrived late, hug a stranger, and stretch your legs.
Q. After party?
A. Always. Except this time everyone gets invited. Most likely at a bar in the neighborhood. Unless you got a place nearby and you want a whole bunch of literary weirdos up in your piece. In which case: invite us, and we’ll bring the case.
Q. Literature for sale?
A. This time we’re hoping so. Maybe some lo-fi one-off Kinkos-budget copies of The Pilot and the Panda, perhaps True Jersey, Volume One. Maybe even the complete Twenty Stories About Twenty Towns in New Jersey, in a one-off limited edition. We’re running out of time, but we’re discussing.
Q. Is that it?
A. We’ll do another interview here on the Miltonian before the event occurs. We strive to be thorough.
Your Daily Poem of the Week
July 30, 2009
To Elsie
By William Carlos Williams
The pure products of America go crazy-- mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure-- and young slatterns, bathed in filth from Monday to Saturday to be tricked out that night with gauds from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character but flutter and flaunt sheer rags-succumbing without emotion save numbed terror under some hedge of choke-cherry or viburnum- which they cannot express-- Unless it be that marriage perhaps with a dash of Indian blood will throw up a girl so desolate so hemmed round with disease or murder that she'll be rescued by an agent-- reared by the state and sent out at fifteen to work in some hard-pressed house in the suburbs-- some doctor's family, some Elsie-- voluptuous water expressing with broken brain the truth about us-- her great ungainly hips and flopping breasts addressed to cheap jewelry and rich young men with fine eyes as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod in the stifling heat of September Somehow it seems to destroy us It is only in isolate flecks that something is given off No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car
Penultimate
July 25, 2009
Heading towards the final handful of chapters for Summer 2009, here’s a fresh batch of notes to ease you in.
NOTE: Your trusted author is not after all visiting the City of Brotherly Love and its environs at the end of Summer 2009. Your trusted author just got hired full time at his day job. Congrats, trusted author.
NOTE: Despite the limited amounts of time we’ve got here, we’re still living the way we wanna.
Catan, on Xbox 360: This one is 100% Mary. She’s loving it.
Curb Your Enthusiasm, on DVD: How did we never watch this show before? It’s like — too true.
Mt. Tabor: The following is from a recent email exchange:
Ryer and I grabbed set of four 32oz High Lifes at 7-11 and went up to the side of Mt. Tabor last night — but not before grippin a big a$$ bag of ICE and a few plastic bags. We got up there just around sunset and we poured the ice into the bags and jabbed the bottles in em. The first set of 32’s was good, real smooth and cool. But by the time we go to the second round by God that was maybe the coldest beer I done ever had. Even Ryer couldn’t believe it.
“Ryer,” I said. “This is one COLD motherfuckin beer.”
“Amen,” he said, and drank.
Livability by Jon Raymond: Looking for a book of quality short stories about 21st century Portland and the surrounding areas? Well here you go.
ITEM: Trumer Pils. Voted hands down as the Fort Saint Davids drink of Summer 2009. We messed around with some local gins, some homemade tonics, some nearby wines, some really expensive scotch. It was good, it was fine. But we’re settling down with the Trumer. It’s light, it’s refreshing, it won’t mess up your stomach or get you drunk too fast or burn a hole in your wallet. And best of all, it’s on TAP, at Valentine’s, our downtown spot. You just can’t beat it.
Can’t Decide
July 19, 2009
In the fateful winter of 96-96 I drove a car all over Medford Lakes, discovering music, having visions, and delivering pizzas. I made some of the most important decisions of my life that winter and subsequent spring. Everyone has a moment or two like that in their lives where it was A or B and like the road less taken, the choice made all the difference. You look back and you think: if I had chosen A, instead of B, I would have regretted it — I made the right choice! Or did you? It’s Friday and you want to leave the house but you’re panicking. So you force yourself to leave. And you meet the person of your dreams. But what about when you stay home and you’re laying on your bed and suddenly it came to you — the Great Idea. And you begin to write it down and next thing you know it’s the breakthrough — essay, poem, novel, whatever it is, it could only have happened here, when you were home. How do you decide? When you’re young you go with your gut. When you get a little older ou realize your gut is just an impulse and it’s better to listen to your heart. But soon your heart begins to betray you and you begin to think with your intellect. But once that’s no longer to be trusted, who do you turn to? Does anyone have the answers?
It’s Summer, or it’s what’s left of Summer. Your faithful narrator is on the verge of selling an older short story, “Cherry Hill.” It needs to be reworked from the bottom up. It needs a better ending. The mood of the story was conceived in 2006 and worked in 2007 and finalized in 2008. The summer of 2006 I had a number of epiphanies about the South Jersey I had lived in from 1993-1996. They were a very different place ten years later. I had written about the version I had known in the novel The Pilot and the Panda. If the old version was children who felt they were adults, the new one was adults who knew they were younger than they seemed. I imagined these adults living here, now, in the 21st century. Art Andrews and I went to a number of suburban comic book conventions, usual in small hotels in little known towns off the sides of minor highways. We’d bring checklists and help each other out with finds and compare our bounty over burgers and fries and Cokes at aging diners. A kind of Other World — distinct from the alcoholic hipster treadmill of Philadelphia — was opening itself up to me. It didn’t matter if the world wasn’t real. I could feel it.
This is all to say that I don’t know if I should spend my remaining free time of Summer 2009 in Oregon or the Delaware Valley. And more importantly I don’t know which would be better for the story. As my memory of the places and the feelings and the people and the ideas fades, which is more important? To cling to the memories or to go there and meet the reality? Or both if possible?
Hopefully this makes sense. I’m not sure what to do. I’d love to swim at the Jersey Shore this summer. I’d love to spend a weekend at the Oregon Coast this summer. I’d love to see my old friends. I do not like planes, at all. Especially long flights. I want to stay up late with the ones I love. However I don’t want to wake up to blinding humid summer light on a busted couch while a hangover smashes against my reality, as I brace myself for a long day of being stuck in Chestnut Street traffic and wiling away time at where — the Last Drop? — while I wait for peers to get out of work. So yeah, I guess I’ve been thinking about this a lot — probably too much. But don’t you hate it when people say “You think to much”? Isn’t that like, what’s wrong with this Place to begin with? Lest we overthink it…
More to follow. Comments as always are welcome.
The Miltonian At Rest
July 12, 2009
The Daily Miltonian is currently resting. Feel free to stay active in our community by posting comments in any of the articles of your choice, as it is your input that is the lifeblood of this online lifestyle/magazine. As always, it remains our deepest wish here in the summertime lull of Fort Saint Davids that your summer is making its way as mellow and enjoyably as ours is. Stay tuned, be good, drink lemonade, and we’ll be back in a few.
