Magnetic Woman Delayed

At Christmas time, friends and family reported that Magnetic Woman was unavailable from the publisher and Bookshop.org, and that Amazon had only five copies left. What was happening? Was the book already a massive success?

Alas, the answer proved much less pleasant. Two of my author copies arrived--not sure where the other ten mentioned on the shipping paperwork have gone--and within moments I had discovered that the index ended at Freud. More minutes, and I found that the color plates were in the wrong order. I contacted the press and learned that the entire print run was affected. The book has to be reprinted, which is why few copies have made their way into the world yet.

In these pandemic times, it is unclear how quickly the corrected printing will occur, but I hope it will happen right away.

If you are one of the few people who has managed to get hold of a copy already, it should be fine to read--I am not aware of anything wrong with most of the book--but you will probably want to exchange it for a perfect copy once those are available.

The Last Ghetto

Today seems like the right time to give a shout out to Anna Hájková's new book The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt. This book uses extensive sources, including victim testimonies, that were collected in 99 archives from ten countries on three continents and were written in nine languages. Reviews are already enthusiastic, and according to the publisher, it is the "first modern study of the Theresienstadt ghetto." You can read more about this book here and order your own copy.

The author, much of whose research has focused on women's experience in the Nazi concentration camps and on sexual economics within the camps, has been the target of some attempted censorship as a result of her investigation of lesbian relationships within the camps. You can read more about this at The New Fascism Syllabus, which also offers the opportunity to sign a petition supporting her (I am one of the many scholars to have signed).

The Fastest Game in the World

Bruce Berglund is best known to me as a historian of early Czechoslovakia--we met through Fulbright and both work on the interwar period. We have some other things in common too, like Minnesota origins. Bruce's latest book goes in a direction that gets to those northern roots--hockey and its history! In The Fastest Game in the World: Hockey and the Globalization of Sports, which is just out from University of California Press, Bruce looks at how hockey spread across the world and how games connect with politics, economics, and culture. You can read more about it here and order a copy in either hardback or paperback.

New Journal Founded: Art East/Central

Art East/Central is a new English-language, open access, peer-reviewed journal that will publish original articles on architecture, design and the visual arts in Central and East-Central Europe 1800 to the present. It will also feature book and exhibition reviews, reports, and occasional discussion forums. An international editorial board and a rigorous, double-blind peer review process are intended to ensure the high quality and originality of the contents.

"We welcome your submissions to be considered for future issues at journal@arteastcentral.eu. We are particularly interested in contributions that adopt a transnational approach, examining practices, ideas and traditions that cross the political, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural boundaries of the region. Interdisciplinary approaches, as well as reflection on the particular challenges this region raises for relevant academic practices, are also encouraged. Submissions from graduate students are welcome."
Published by CRAACE (CONTINUITY/RUPTURE: ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL EUROPE 1918-1939), the first issue is expected to be out in early 2021. Check here to find it.

For those of you who teach music, my friends Sam Dorf and Heather MacLachlan, with Julia Randel, have published a brand new anthology for Gateways to Understanding Music! Sam says, "It is designed to help make Rice and Wilson's textbook suitable for music majors and minors and allow them opportunity to work with a wide variety of musical scores from Western Art Music, Jazz, Popular, and Global music cultures." Use the link below and enter the discount code HSM20: https://bit.ly/2KuoEK2

The Tarot of Leonora Carrington

If you use tarot cards or are a fan of the British-Mexican surrealist Leonora Carrington, there is an exciting new book out of Carrington's tarot paintings! The Tarot of Leonora Carrington, published by Fulgur Press, has come out. A limited edition version (including the deck in facsimile) with an essay on tarot by expert Rachel Pollack, an introduction by the artist’s son, Gabriel Weisz Carrington, and essays by art historians Tere Arcq and Susan Aberth, priced up to $400, sold out within days. A limited edition of just the deck also went fast, but will be reissued and can be bought directly from the publisher in January or February. A more affordable trade edition of the book will be available in February for $50.

You can read more about Carrington and the tarot here.

Leonora Carrington, The Hierophant (ca. 1955). Private collection. © Estate of Leonora Carrington/ARS.

Haunted Bauhaus

I'm thrilled to report that my pal and mentor Elizabeth Otto's recent book Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics, has won the Northeast Popular & American Culture Association’s 2020 Peter C. Rollins Book Prize, awarded annually for innovative scholarship in the fields of American and popular culture by a writer living or working in New York or New England.

The author says, “Throughout Haunted Bauhaus, I sought to show how this art movement was bound up with pressing issues of its own time, that it was more of a movement to reform daily life that drew ideas from its surrounding cultural context than many knew. At the same time, I emphasize how many of the ideas being hashed out at the Bauhaus – on spirituality, gender, sex and politics – are close to ideas we are still grappling with.”

You can read more about the book, its author, and the prize here.

Marking Modern Movement

I've just learned that Susan Funkenstein's Marking Modern Movement: Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic is now available from University of Michigan Press! I can recommend this, as not only do I know Susan (I sat in on her Design History course when I was in grad school and we run into each other every now and then) but her PhD dissertation was useful to me in thinking about the importance of modern dance in Czech modernism and Czech feminism.

You can read more about it here, and you can get this book in any of three formats:

Paper | 6 x 9 | 342pp. 49 B&W Images, 28 Color Images, 1 Table.
ISBN 978-0-472-05461-9 | $39.95

Hardcover | 6 x 9 | 342pp. 49 B&W Images, 28 Color Images, 1 Table.
ISBN 978-0-472-07461-7 | $85.00

Also available in ebook.

Save 30% by using promotion code UMFUNKENSTEIN at press.umich.edu before 12/31/20.

Author Copies are on Their Way!

Word finally came today that my author copies of Magnetic Woman are ready to ship. Pretty exciting, if slightly delayed! Copies that people have pre-ordered should be shipping at the same time, I am guessing.

A good many people I know are also finally seeing their books in print, and so I'm going to post news of those in the coming days. I won't generally do a review--I haven't read most of these yet--but I do want to help spread the word. I'll try to start with newly published books and then also highlight some that have been out a bit longer.

Approaching Thanksgiving...

It's been an exciting time lately--or at least interesting--what with the drama of the US election, the rising fall coronavirus infections, and even some more normal things like scholarly conferences.

On the conference topic, I've just emerged from two weekends of the annual ASEEES conference (normally just one weekend, but on Zoom it was spread out to avoid complete Zoom fatigue) and one day of hosting our annual regional Riess undergraduate art history symposium. I enjoyed both, and am so proud of my four students who participated in Riess (two with papers from my American art class, two with Renaissance topics mentored by my colleague Dr. Caroline Hillard).

At ASEEES, I gave a paper myself on the Czech surrealists' struggles with other leftists during the 1930s (you can read more about this topic in Magnetic Woman) and presided over the annual membership meeting of the Czechoslovak Studies Association. The CSA has had a bit of a rough year along with everyone else, and we gave members a dues holiday for 2020, but we look forward to getting back to our normal level of activity (or better than that, we hope) and are instituting a new prize. Currently members can compete for a biannual book prize and a biannual article prize (alternating years), and now we will be offering an annual essay prize for undergraduate students writing on Czech/Czechoslovak topics. That includes topics involving Roma or Germans or Hungarians or Jews in the territory of the former Czechoslovakia. Or, for that matter, Vietnamese in the current Czech Republic. Geography defines our prizes, not ethnicity.

Magnetic Woman was to launch early this month at ASEEES, but with the conference being via Zoom, and physical copies not yet having arrived from the printer, this did not happen. Normally the press would have displayed cover art and maybe a printout, and taken orders if the copies had not arrived on time. Ah well... We currently expect copies near the end of the month.

But, of course, you can order your copy (or ask your library to order one) right now and it should arrive in the very near future!

I hope everyone has a pleasant, but most importantly a safe, Thanksgiving. (Well, that's in the US. Canada has an earlier Thanksgiving and the holiday is not to my knowledge held elsewhere except among expats.)

It's Pie Season!

Okay, okay, in truth every season is pie season, or should be. But I hadn't made any pie in a ridiculously long time.

My first pie of the season was a plum pie. I generally find that plums make wonderful pie, although now that I don't have a plum tree, I have to rely on the unpredictable selections at the grocery store. One year I discovered that pluots made a divine pie (they are some sort of cross between plums and apricots), but of course then they were nowhere to be seen again. This year I tried a variety of plum I had never before seen, with a mottled skin and somewhat mottled flesh, round in shape and freestone. They made a good pie (although I didn't need to add so much sugar) but I discovered that they are really great to eat fresh in slices! Unfortunately I threw away the label so I don't know what kind they were.

My second pie was an experiment, because it had occurred to me that I wasn't using the jalapenos from the garden quickly enough. This pie involved one bag of cranberries, one Granny Smith apple, and two jalapenos. I was going to use more jalapenos since most of mine have been very mild, but the second one I cut up was demonstrably hot, so I decided to stop there on my trial run. I was going to add walnuts as well, but forgot.

This pie, I would say, is a success but could be tweaked. I normally use tapioca as my thickener--the instructions on the Minute Tapioca box are my guide for fruit pies--but in this case I think cornstarch would be a better option because there is not enough juice for the tapioca to soak up and get a really good texture. Or, possibly, the tapioca could be soaked first. I used 1/4 cup tapioca and 3/4 cups sugar, which still made for a nice tart pie. I also sprinkled some cinnamon on top.

Re crusts, if I were to make my own dough I'd never end up making pie, alas. Marie Callender frozen pie crusts work very well. Not saying I've never made my own crusts or never will again, but generally I go with a frozen premade crust, in the interests of actually making the pie.

Book Reviewers Wanted!

Do you review books for a magazine, journal, blog, podcast, or newspaper? Or are you the book review editor for one of these? Maybe you commission book reviews for an H-Net list or another scholarly list.

Now is the perfect time to request a review copy of Magnetic Woman from University of Pittsburgh Press! What could be better than settling down with a beautifully designed book that combines art, surrealism, the Czech avant-garde, a reticent and gender-ambiguous creative figure, and the erotic? (Okay, some of you would rather curl up with your cat or dog and a cup of tea, and that's fine too. But if you do review books...)

University of Pittsburgh Press's publicity team wants to hear from you!

Counting Down to a November Launch!

Magnetic Woman is scheduled to launch in just a month! Don't forget, you can pre-order your copy now (or ask your library to order if you haven't yet done so).

Short Fiction at Unlikely Stories!

One of my stories has just come out in the online journal Unlikely Stories. It has the (possibly pretentious? you decide) title "Terpsichore, not by Michael Praetorius." That's because I'm one of those peculiar people who listens to a good deal of early music, not because it is actually about early music. Give it a read!

Search-and-Replace Amusements

It recently dawned on me that by some fluke I had given the same name--Eli--to minor but significant characters in two pretty different novels. I'm not sure what prompted this--I've only met, I think, one Eli in my whole life and I didn't know him well at all. We worked for the same organization decades ago. So I haven't been naming characters in his memory, or with any particular thoughts about him beyond that he was proof of living Americans possessing this name. But I kind of like the name, so it worked well for my character Sara's presumed father in my forthcoming novel In Search of the Magic Theater.

However, the Eli character in the novel I wrote last fall isn't intended to be the same person, so as the name Eli isn't exactly as common as, say, Dave or Ben or Michael, I felt I really had to change this character's name. Not that I would never name another character Eli, but if I do, I want him to be entirely distinct and obviously not the same Eli. After some fretting and briefly considering changing him to Eliott (and I've had at least two friends named some spelling of this name), I settled on Ira. We'll see if that sticks.

I then had to do the search-and-replace, which is always fraught with danger. It's best to be very cautious running search-and-replace. And so here's what I found in searching the full document rather than going to the end where the character Eli actually entered the story...

People in this novel, especially the protagonist, are constantly feeling things. Note that eli in feeling! While the two narrators in In Search of the Magic Theater also have significant feelings, I'd be surprised if the word comes up quite as often in that novel. Their feelings are largely emotional, whereas the protagonist of the other novel experiences quite a few physical sensations as well.

The words religion and religious also came up a lot in my search for Eli. This was quite a surprise as religion doesn't play a particularly large role in the story. But maybe it plays a larger role than I had thought.

Believe and belief were very frequent. Not generally in relation to religion, but my protagonist does have her share of beliefs, and also disbeliefs, and characters say things like "Can you believe it?"

Relief and relieved also crop up a certain amount.

Delightful appears, but much less often.

Elicit, traveling, peeling, reliably, relics, evangelical, candlelight, celibate/celibacy, eligible, likelier/likelihood, canceling, reliance, delivering, and Queen Elizabeth I of England were the other Eli-containing words that appeared, most of them only once except for traveling, celibate/celibacy, and elicit. And no, the novel is not about celibate clergy nor is it set in the English (or any other) Renaissance.

This was kind of fun and enlightening, and very unexpected. And worth giving a try to even in fiction that doesn't need to change an Eli to another name.

In Support of Independents: Beasley Books

In the spirit of supporting independent bookstores during a time of crisis, I offer you the Summer 2020 catalog for Beasley Books Chicago-based Beasley Books offers "more than 300 items in diverse fields: Modern First Editions, Mysteries, African American Literature, Radicalism (including titles on the Civil War in Spain,) Jazz & Blues and Art & Photography." Beasley Books also has a special interest in and connection to Surrealism.

Gendered Descriptions of Bodies in Fiction!

There's a very cool visual essay on The Physical Traits that Define Men and Women in Literature over at The Pudding. Erin Davis, with the help of illustrations by Liana Sposto, has run a computer analysis of 2,000 books published between 1008 and 2020 (the majority published after 1900; roughly 35% have at least one female author). Books were selected for cultural relevance and included "New York Times best sellers, Pulitzer Prize nominees and winners, Man Booker shortlisted books and winners, books frequently taught in American high schools and colleges, and books that frequently appear on Best Of lists."

Sad to say, the results show very stereotypical tendencies in terms of gender description. But go take a look, it's much more fun to see how Davis and Sposto have shown the results!

University of Akron Faculty Need Your Support

COVID-19 has caused a lot of trouble around the globe, but it did not cause the financial difficulties faced by University of Akron, where the board and administration have decided that COVID-19 qualifies as "force majeure" and therefore can be used as an excuse to cut faculty by 25%.

Show your support for higher education in Ohio (and nationwide!) by sending a letter to the board and others responsible, and by publicizing this campaign!

Remind Your Library...

Many libraries--especially college and university libraries--have just begun a new fiscal year and therefore are at the beginning of their annual budget. In other words, it's probably the perfect time to ask your librarian to order Magnetic Woman!

Although we are still in production, libraries (and you too) can pre-order direct from the press.

This is also a great time to request a review copy, should you happen to be a book review editor or a reviewer, and if you think you might be able to use the book in teaching, you can request an exam or desk copy.

Short Novels? Novellas? Unclassifiables?

One of the reasons I was lax about blogging during May and June was that--grades having been turned in at the start of May--I was busy writing a novella. At least, that's how I'm currently classifying it. The novel I wrote last summer-fall began as what I thought would be a novella but ended up as a shortish novel (66,000 words) but the spring project definitely stayed in what's generally considered to be novella range (27,000 words). It's set in the exact period I was living through--pandemic and protest--and I think it's at its correct length. It has now been submitted to a couple of novella contests and we'll see what happens (and if I find anywhere else appropriate to submit a piece of that length).

Meanwhile, I've discovered an interesting set of blog posts by Katherine Luck that consider what would constitute the shortest novel, versus constituting a novella or a short story or something else. She embarked on this topic as a result of having written what she supposes to be a novella, The Drowned Town, and her opening blog post is here, "What Is the Shortest Novel Ever Written?" She then considers the question in a more thematic way, focusing her posts on individual items that have been proposed to be very short novels.

She says:

In the interest of classifying The Drowned Town correctly and helping all of us find out, once and for all, the difference between a short story, a novella, and a novel, I’ve put together my own list of extremely short books that claim to be novels. I’m going to read ‘em and report back to you. Here are the top ten contenders for shortest novel of all time:

Wenjack by Joseph Boyden
Snoopy and “It was a Dark and Stormy Night” by Charles M. Schulz
The Comedian by Joseph O’Connor
Master of Miniatures by Jim Shepard
Scars on the Soul by Françoise Sagan
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion by V.S. Naipaul
The Circling Song by Nawal El Saadawi
I Lock my Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates
The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
A Small Place by Jamaica Kinkaid

In discussing Wenjack, she considers the role of length, and whether Wenjack is really a novel or actually a short story.

In looking at Snoopy and “It was a Dark and Stormy Night”, she tackles medium and whether graphic novels and other visual forms can really be called novels. Here, I have to say that if we're wondering whether graphic novels are truly novels, it doesn't help to use a collection of "Peanuts" cartoons as the example, but I guess the book was marketed as a novel (why?).

Her analysis of The Comedian considers whether the age or literacy level of the intended audience makes any difference in calling a book a novel. With this one, which she finds satisfyingly novel-complex yet very short, the question arises as to how we differentiate novel from novella (and in word count, The Comedian is shorter than what most people would say constitutes a novella, let alone a novel!).

Moving on to Master of Miniatures, Luck considers the role of marketing in determining how a book is perceived. Here, in addition to looking at how Master of Miniatures was blurbed by its small press, she puts forth two opposing options for marketing the Danish band Týr's song “Ragnars Kvæði,” based on a traditional Faroese ballad about a seventh-century king. (I've gotta say that I'm immediately interested in any rock band that works with "a traditional Faroese ballad about a seventh-century king" whereas I don't have the slightest desire to hear "hardcore music of magic runes, merciless plunder, and jacked-up warriors in furs," but that's me and I'm not the typical reader.)

With Scars on the Soul, Luck examines the question of complexity and whether works that include memoir and/or autobiography--especially memoir, as it is more concentrated than autobiography--can be seen as novels. We know, of course, that many novels (and novellas, and short stories) are autobiographical to some extent, whether or not the author admits it. But since Luck is contemplating what makes a novel a novel, she asks "Is Scars on the Soul a novel? A memoir within a novel? A short story with autobiographical annotations?" and "Is it a single complex narrative, or a composite of two simple texts?" From a technical standpoint, these are great questions to ask. And now I really want to read Scars on the Soul! I read Françoise Sagan's first and most famous book, Bonjour Tristesse, in my teens but can't say I recall that much about it.

In her next installment, Luck deviates from her original list and goes to Koula by Menis Koumandareas to contemplate genre and whether that matters. But--(is this a spoiler? I don't think so) she decides Koula is neither genre fiction nor a novel. On to...

Literary fiction and I Lock my Door Upon Myself. Yeah, she's skipped some books on the original lineup. Well, these things develop. Here she says "Literary fiction breaks many of the publishing industry’s rules of genre novel writing. But is length the one rule that can’t be broken?" I Lock my Door Upon Myself is 23,000 words and Luck judges it a novel, without explaining why it is not a novella.

Next up is Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. That post apparently hasn't appeared yet. Meanwhile, you can get a free copy of Luck's possible novella, The Drowned Town, at The Delve.

I don't feel any particular anxiety regarding whether my own novella is really a novella or a novel--it's definitely not a short story and I'm okay with using its length to define it--but I'm enjoying these moments of attempted categorization, probably because I kind of like reading Jan Mukařovský on structuralism and aesthetics. But don't let that scare you off reading what Luck has to say, just read her posts in order and they will be good fun.

A Finalist for the Raz-Shumaker Book Award

I mentioned earlier this year that a manuscript of mine was a finalist for a prize. I can now reveal that my story collection Heartwood was a finalist for Prairie Schooner's Raz-Shumaker Book Prize.

This is an annual prize with two winners, one for short fiction and one for poetry. Here's the scoop on the finalists and winners:

This year’s finalist manuscripts in fiction were “Are We Ever Even Our Own” by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, “Men Are Fools” by Obinna Udenwe, “Three Trips” by Sindya Bhanoo, “Almost Best” by Sharon Hashimoto, and “Heartwood” by Karla Huebner. This year’s poetry finalists were Alonso Llerena for “La Casa Roja,” L.A. Johnson for “Twenty-Seven Nights in the Wonder Valley,” Quincy Scott Jones for “How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children,” Jason B. Crawford for “The Year of the Unicorn Kidz,” Julia Thacker for “Dead Letter Office,” Greg Wrenn for “Origin,” and Devon Walker-Figueroa for “Lazarus Species.”

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction for 2020 goes to Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry for her manuscript What Isn’t Remembered, chosen by guest-judges Kaylie Jones and Timothy Schaffert with Editor-in-Chief Kwame Dawes. She will receive a $3,000 prize and publication from the University of Nebraska Press. A Russian-Armenian émigré, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry has published more than forty stories, some essays, and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Southern Review, the Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Flyway, Prairie Schooner, Slice, Nimrod, Arts & Letters, Confrontation, and elsewhere. Her short fiction was selected as a finalist for multiple awards, including six Pushcart nominations. Kristina is the winner of the 2013 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her debut novel, The Orchard, will be published by Ballantine/Random in 2022.

The winner of the 2020 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry is Susan Nguyen for her manuscript Dear Diaspora, chosen by guest-judges Matthew Dickman, Kate Daniels, and Hilda Raz with Editor-in-Chief Kwame Dawes. She will receive a $3,000 prize and publication from the University of Nebraska Press. Susan Nguyen hails from Virginia but currently lives and writes in Arizona. She received her MFA in poetry from Arizona State University. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the Aleida Rodriguez Memorial Prize. In 2018, PBS Newshour featured her as "one of three women poets to watch," and she was a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in Tin House, diagram, Nimrod, and elsewhere.

I am looking forward to reading the winning work once it comes out!

Course Revision, Ceaseless

It's that time of year when I begin to feel the upcoming school year breathing down my neck. I always find this rather sad, because when I was a student, July and August were lovely vacation months and then once school started (whether in September or in late August) I was always happy to go back.

But of course for those of us who teach, we work pretty much year-round whether or not we teach in the summer. And the latter part of the summer is when things need to be readied for fall.

Now, back when I was on the job market, I envisioned having about three years ahead of intensive course invention, after which I assumed I'd just do some tweaks to existing courses and occasionally create a whole new course on some exciting topic. And this is how it is for many professors. Once they've got their basic set, it's kind of up to them how much to change and when to create something new.

Alas, that's not exactly how my life has gone. While I'm grateful that I got a good job and have congenial colleagues and union faculty and so on, allow me to whine a little, because we all need to kvetch about something or other from time to time.

When I was teaching in grad school, we were on a semester schedule with 15 weeks of class. I created some courses.

I was hired (yay!) but for a quarter schedule. I was also, for the time being, the only person teaching western art, and most of our students took more than six years to graduate. I needed to change all my semester courses to quarter courses and create a lot of new courses.

However, we were also not going to stay on quarters--we were going to switch to a 14-week semester schedule. (Note that previously my semester had been 15 weeks!) After three years of creating quarter courses, I needed to turn them into semester courses. And also make everything taught in the fall go from twice a week to thrice a week, because by that time I wasn't the only person teaching western art and it wouldn't have been fair to make one person teach three times a week all year on the new schedule when the other person got to teach twice a week all year.

The thrice-a-week schedule did not work very well for us because all of the studio courses were twice-a-week (Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday), and students, not surprisingly, did not want to come to campus for a 50-minute class on Friday when they had no other reason to be there. So they'd sometimes take three art history courses per semester, which was hard for most of them to handle because the upper-level art history courses are all writing intensive.

We came up with a new plan, which was for both art historians to teach Tuesday-Thursday plus a once-a-week course on Monday or Wednesday. I'm happy with this, so long as I get to choose which course to put in that once-a-week slot. Because not everything works well taught like that. You really need to be able to break up the lecture-and-discussion with films and activities. And so, I've found that this works pretty well for Surrealism and for Modern Design, and tolerably for Women in Art, but it just is not great for Czech Modernism because there are really no films in English on that topic. And note that every time I've taught Czech Modernism I've had to revise the time blocks; Women in Art has also had its time blocks shifted frequently.

After we adopted the Tuesday-Thursday-plus-one schedule, I thought I would finally be able to focus my revisions on making actual improvements to the courses rather than on juggling the time slots, but of course this year we had a whole new problem: COVID-19.

Yep, in the spring I had basically three days to figure out how to take my courses "remote," and now I'm trying to figure out how to more effectively take another one remote for the whole semester plus create my own remote version of a gen-ed course that I've never previously had to teach. Plus, of course, we may need to teach remotely in the spring as well. Hell's bells, for all I know I may need to teach remotely for the rest of my career in higher ed! And I am one of those professors who has always said I would not teach online, because I would rather work face to face with my students.

You can see why I lament and complain. I'm grateful not to be a K-12 teacher who will probably have no choice at all about how to teach in the fall, but still. I'd much rather focus on making my courses better than on simply making sure they can happen at all.

Index Submitted!

Just over a month ago, the page proofs for Magnetic Woman arrived. It was time for me to do an initial proofread (had any errors crept in during copyediting, or not been caught by the copyeditor?) and decide whether to pay the press for indexing, hire an indexer, or do the index myself.

I decided to do the index myself.

Why? Well, several reasons. First of all, it would save me money, and art books cost the author money for images and copyright clearance. My copyright clearance fees will soon need to be paid--Toyen and some of the other artists reproduced in the book are still under copyright. But also, I know my book well and I appreciate a thorough index. I'm one of those researchers who expects every mention of an obscure historical figure to show up in the index of a book so that I can glean whatever tiny tidbit of information about that person that might be offered there. Not every index is equally thorough, just as not every copyedit is equally thorough. As a former copyeditor and proofreader, I know that a publisher can say "Do a light copyedit" or "Do a heavy copyedit" on a book, and while some books only need a light copyedit, other books get light not because the author was meticulous with the English language but because fixing the author's clunky prose would be expensive and the book's audience will put up with clunky prose because they need the information. Likewise, a really thorough index takes more time and costs more (if you are paying an indexer, that is).

I am capable of being obsessive about thoroughness and getting things right. Not as obsessive as another member of my family can be (this member of the family is thanked in the book), because at a certain point I do say "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and quit. I knew that this somewhat obsessive tendency, along with my experience as a proofreader, would enable me to do a pretty competent job of indexing despite never having previously indexed a book. But I knew it would not be a quick job.

And so here I am a month later, having finally turned in my index. I've always appreciated what indexers do, but now my appreciation is magnified! The amount the press would have charged me to pay someone else to do the job would have been not all that much above minimum wage had the indexer taken the same amount of time I did. Now, it is true that a professional indexer would have worked more quickly because, well, they are used to indexing and don't have to think twice about everything. But still, I'd say that the pay to index a scholarly book is not great, given that the task requires skill and concentration.

Am I sorry I did the index myself rather than shelling out the money for someone else to do it? No--it's summer, I was able to make time for the job, and with my particular personality type I kind of enjoyed the work so long as I didn't have to do it all day. I'd say I averaged about four hours a day; at a certain point each day I got brain-dead and couldn't concentrate. On a few days that happened after two hours and on a few days that happened after six hours.

Because indexing isn't just a matter of noting every page a name or idea is mentioned on. Note that idea. Ideas come in many forms, and there are a lot of choices to be made in terms of how to index them effectively. My book deals a lot with collage and photomontage, for instance. Naturally this topic has its own entry. But there was also the question of how thoroughly to include subentries for this under the entry for Toyen (and other artists whose collages were discussed), and under the entry for the Devětsil group, which made what they called picture poems. Index entries aren't supposed to be duplicative--but readers might only look in one place for what they want to find, and while good cross-references are necessary, you can't cross-reference constantly. So you have to decide where to be a bit duplicative and where to avoid it like the plague.

I'm glad I did my own index, I'm glad it's now turned in, and if this stage of production had occurred during the school year, I would have paid someone else to do the job because I would not have had the time to spare.

Page Proofs and Indexing, Oh Boy!

The page proofs for Magnetic Woman arrived a week or so ago, which means that for the month of June my life will be largely occupied with checking for errors and, in particular, creating the index.

Authors always get the chance to check for mistakes, and some people are better at that than others. As a former proofreader, I'm fairly good, but it's always dangerous to proofread your own work without someone else also taking a look. Still, I've already noticed a few things that will need fixing.

As for indexing, nonfiction usually ought to be indexed, and as University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly press, I did not have to make a case for why my book needs an index. However, there was the question of whether the press would hire an indexer (and charge me for it), whether I would hire an indexer (and hope it would cost less than the press's charge), or whether I would do the index myself.

I have never previously indexed a book, but--having been a writer for many years and also worked some in publishing--I had a good general idea of what was involved. I knew I was capable of the job, assuming I had enough time. But were there exciting new ways of accomplishing the task?

I asked around, and learned that there are indeed various software tools, some of them in my word processor. (I wrote the book in Nota Bene and submitted it in Word, but it is now in pdf.) But indexing remains largely something done in one's mind rather than with software, because while software can easily create a concordance, a good index deals heavily with ideas, many of which are not identified by name at every occurrence in the text. While, if I were a professional indexer, I might want to invest in special software to speed the task, the cost and learning curve didn't seem worth it to index this and the small number of other scholarly books I expect to publish.

It turned out that writers of my acquaintance on Facebook who responded to my inquiry did their indexing in pretty much the same way as the job has traditionally been done, except that not all of them used index cards, preferring to type the entries directly into a Word document, where the entries can easily be edited. Once I learned this, I decided that yes, I would do my own indexing and that simple methods are often easiest and best.

And so, at this point I have reached page 75, which means 95 pages indexed as the front matter takes up 20. I find that I can index pretty well for most of a morning (depending on how many interruptions and to what extent my neighbors are producing construction and lawn-care noise), but it's not quick work because each page has so many things to index. Luckily, my temperament seems well suited to doing this amount of indexing. I would hate to spend all day indexing, but I find that three or four hours of indexing per day (at least on my own book) is kind of enjoyable. The part I like least is trying to deal with topics that are huge throughout the book, like Toyen, surrealism, and the avant-garde. These have to be broken down into sub-entries (as do many other topics, of course), but that still can be complicated.

However, for the most part I'm just happily working away each morning and waiting to hear back from Artists Rights Society about copyright clearance. Because yeah, even dead artists' work isn't necessarily out of copyright, and Toyen's art will be under copyright for decades to come.

We Protest, in Dayton as Elsewhere, Police Brutality

It's been awhile since I've blogged as I've been largely focused on just writing and doing some gardening and course prep for fall, and there hasn't been any exciting news on my books to report. But with recent events shocking us out of our coronavirus isolations, it seems appropriate to comment.

Like people across the country and around the world, I was appalled to learn of the death of George Floyd, although not terribly surprised; what I found surprising was that even after years of video documentation of such crimes, and even after the outcry at the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging, police in the city of my birth felt free to mistreat and kill, on camera, a man who was no threat whatsoever to them. A man who at worst may have passed a counterfeit $20 bill and who was on the ground, subdued. How do I know--how do any of you know--that we have not at some point passed a counterfeit twenty? But George Floyd was black, and so one policeman felt free to kill him in front of horrified witnesses, unimpeded by his fellow officers.

It is no surprise, then, that despite our remaining in the throes of a pandemic, Americans have felt obliged to take to the streets in protest. Not just one day of protest, and not protest only by the black community, but days of protest by outraged human beings from many communities.

Here in Dayton, where the police have enjoyed almost a year of public adulation after their success at rapidly taking out our mass shooter last August, I would have thought we might be one of the cities where public and police came together to mourn George Floyd. But no. On Saturday evening, after a day focused on writing and chores rather than the news, I went out to gather dandelions and plantain for Felicia and Mikko's supper, and heard honking and chanting. Once the rabbits were fed, I hurried out and found a crowd of protesters facing a line of police across Keowee, a major street two blocks from my house. In the distance near the line of police, I could see clouds of something. At that point I didn't know whether something was on fire or what. I moved in to join the protesters. We chanted "Black lives matter!" and "Hands up, don't shoot!" We took a knee several times. The line of police just stood there, repeating announcements that we must disperse or run the risk of serious injury. The police lobbed something at us and we ran back. As the hours went by, we walked all over downtown Dayton, past groups of police from Dayton reinforced by police from all the suburbs--cars marked Fairborn, Beavercreek, Huber Heights, Centerville, etc. were parked all over. Over by Sinclair Community College, a line of police threw canisters of tear gas at us, so we had to run a retreat with wet cloth over our noses and mouths. I heard someone say that this was relatively quiet compared with earlier in the day, when there had been rubber bullets. I can't confirm the rubber bullets, but there was tear gas. We kept asking police we passed to join us, but they did not. Retreating from the tear gas, we passed a huge humvee painted in camouflage and marked Police. The Wikipedia entry on humvees shows photos of numerous versions of this type of vehicle; the one on Third Street towered over us and I wasn't sure passing it that it wouldn't lurch forward and run over us, or that someone safe inside wouldn't open fire. To my relief, neither of these things happened.

Eventually, though before the end of the evening, I peeled off and headed home, wanting to get there while I still could walk and before anything more violent occurred. At 9:30, an automated call came through announcing that a curfew would begin at 9:00. I'd gotten home around 8:30, but had I been less tired, I might well have been out after 9:00.

Was there property damage? Yes, some. I personally only saw two kids of approximately junior-high age using spray cans plus one young man kicking a dent into a police car. Some windows were broken too, but I didn't see that. On the whole, our protesters were peaceful and were met with aggression. Our police had the chance to keep the community's regard, but in my opinion they did not.

It is time for the police of this nation to serve and protect, not bully and kill. My thoughts are on my black family members in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and on our grieving and angry country as we attempt to right what is wrong.

Not Quite Ready to Reveal Yet... But...

I've received a bit of rather exciting news, but you'll have to wait to get the details. Not only is Magnetic Woman moving toward its November launch, and not only has In Search of the Magic Theater become one of the latest titles to grace the list of forthcoming books at Regal House, but I've received word that another project is a finalist for a prize!

No, I can't yet reveal which prize, and it'll probably be awhile before the list of finalists is made public. In the meantime, the same project, as well as two others, is under consideration for other prizes as well.

Prizes, in the literary world, are varied, and while some are awarded to books newly published, others are for manuscripts and publication is part of what you win. So if this particular manuscript wins--if--I'll have a third book forthcoming plus a nice check. That would do a lot to make 2020 a happier year for at least a few people!

And Ask Your Library to Buy It...

Let's not forget that, whether or not you personally want/need a copy of Magnetic Woman, this pre-order period before the book actually comes out is a great time to encourage your library to buy it. While public libraries may want to wait to see the first reviews, it can't hurt to let them know you think they should add it to their art section. And university libraries, although always struggling with tight budgets these days, tend to respond to requests from faculty.

Many libraries, especially university libraries, are nearing the end of their fiscal year, so I'll try to remember to do a reminder post closer to when they might be starting the new budget period. But put the book on their to-do list and send them the link to University of Pittsburgh Press.

You Can Pre-order Magnetic Woman

That's right, you don't have to wait until it's in the stores (which we hope will be open again by November!)--you can pre-order Magnetic Woman either directly from University of Pittsburgh Press or from my new "bookshop" at Bookshop.org, a new service where "every purchase you make supports independent, local bookstores." In addition to my own book, my shop features several lists of recommended books--I'll try to have a mix of old favorites, books by people I know, and interesting new titles I've discovered.

Laboring Behind the Scenes

With the semester over, a shelter-in-place order, cold and rainy weather, and two books on their way to print, I'm not exactly out hiking or biking as I might like (although even with our shelter-in-place, these are permitted if done with social distancing). I'm not short of things to do around the house, but the infamous cabin fever is finally setting in, later for me than for perhaps most people. And I just don't enjoy putting the house in order when it's terribly dim; laundry and loading the dishwasher are about the extent of it in this weather.

Usually--but not much lately--I'm writing or working on family history or reading. (OK, I'm still reading, but mainly the news, which I don't really count)

However, writers do have a lot of writing-related tasks beyond creating books, articles, and stories. These works need to be sent forth to prospective publishers (assuming one isn't self-publishing), which can take up a lot of time as one researches the different presses and their desires and open reading periods. And then, some of these also require submissions to be formatted in some special, nonstandard manner, which is annoying but a fact of life (I'm willing to do formatting once a piece is accepted, but less willing at the submission stage, although now and then I assent).

While in theory I could be sending out more work at the moment, I'm not in high gear for that, as along with the two books in the publication pipeline I've got two further novels submitted to five places, a story collection also submitted to five, and a proposal for an anthology out as well. (No, I did not write all of this overnight, this constitutes the work of more than one decade, so don't think I'm the world's overachiever.)

The tasks with which I'm presently distracting myself from stuck-in-the-house fretfulness are the kind of tasks that non-writers and beginning writers don't always realize need to be done once a book is accepted. Namely, preparing the manuscript for press and preparing what's often these days called author platform to make publicity and bookselling easier.

The copyedit stage is over for Magnetic Woman, I am glad to say, and the layout isn't yet done, so I don't currently have deadlines to meet for my publisher. For In Search of the Magic Theater, I don't have pressing deadlines either at the moment, but I do need to do some reformatting of the manuscript and check through it in a first-level author-copyedit stage so that when the publisher's copyeditor gets it, they don't have to pepper it with queries and corrections. Now, since I've worked as a copyeditor and proofreader, my own manuscripts go in pretty clean, but I always do miss stuff, as does everyone, and every press has slightly different requirements. They may want a specific font, or specific margins, or headers or no headers, or page numbering at the bottom or the top, etc. It saves copyedit time and expense if the manuscript already uses em-dashes rather than double hyphens. Likewise if the author consistently spells words the same way (grey or gray? while personally I envision these as two different shades, no publisher will agree with me).

So, I'm prepping Magic Theater in all those nitpicky ways, but also working on my online presence, creating my writerly Facebook page, my Amazon author page, my Goodreads author page, and updating LinkedIn. And some of this includes trying to fix stuff--for instance, Amazon keeps showing the wrong book cover for Magnetic Woman and so far they have not responded to my plea to correct it. Ah well! Behind-the-scenes work is never done, but rainy days during a pandemic are a good time to make a little progress.

A Novel Finds a Publisher!

I've been waiting awhile to announce this bit of good news--the contract needed to be negotiated and signed, that sort of thing--but now I can reveal that my novel In Search of the Magic Theater has been acquired by Regal House Publishing and is scheduled to launch in spring 2022. While it's too early for the book itself to have a page on their site, I do already have an author page there! I've also now got an author page at Facebook so head on over there and "like" it!

And what is this novel about? Well, if you've ever read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, imagine it set in 1999 with the genders switched for the main characters. Stay tuned for more as we get closer to publication.

Support the US Post Office and a Small Business!

For reasons somewhat beyond my understanding, President Trump is eager to defund the Post Office. Apparently he thinks this is the best way to attack Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon.com and the Washington Post--he doesn't like the Post's coverage of him so he wants to make it harder and more expensive for Amazon to send packages.

Yeah, right--destroying a public service that benefits every American, just because Bezos happens to own a newspaper that is usually critical of this president. I think that no matter what one's political leanings might be, we can probably all agree that this is just not smart, not a good idea. So, how to support the Post Office, which we all need?

Leaving aside the big structural changes that Congress should consider (although we can and should all make suggestions to our Congress-people), one thing we can all do is buy stamps, tell our postal workers we care, and send cards and letters to our friends and family members.

And I have a suggestion for you on where to get cards, if you don't have a stockpile of nice stationery at home (or even if you do)!

Archelaus Cards is a small business in Washington, DC, which sells cards wholesale to stores all over North America (and even to Australia)... and also, retail, to individuals. Since stationery stores and bookstores are not generally open for visits just now, buying direct from Archelaus gets you a nice supply of cards while supporting a small business that is currently seeing lower sales from its usual customers.

Here's a link to the newest designs, which include some particularly pandemic-suitable items. You might also want to stock up on get-well cards and (I hate to say this) sympathy cards. A Welcome Back card is also very suitable for returns from the hospital or practically anywhere else someone may have gone (even the supermarket)! Archelaus also offers many birthday options, as well as Mother's Day cards and cards for all manner of other occasions.

(You can see the card below more clearly here.)

My Bread Recipe

I never expected, when the pandemic began to take hold in the US, that bread-baking would become a major American pastime. Maybe this was short-sighted of me, because when people are spending more time at home, this potentially makes it easier to engage in baking projects. On the other hand, lots of people are simultaneously working from home and trying to home-school their kids, or are working stressful hours at essential jobs where they may be exposed to coronavirus, and so may not feel up to embarking on intensive baking.

Well, had I realized this frenzy of baking was about to occur, I would have bought yeast, because I'm one of those people who bakes bread even in normal times, and I was about due for a new jar of yeast!

Not that I bake lots and lots of bread--I'm not someone who eats bread every day. But I certainly average at least a loaf a month, and probably more than that--sometimes I make bread very regularly and sometimes I go for a month or two without baking any. I use an easy bread-machine recipe developed by my sibling, which produces a dense, compact loaf suitable for one or two people (or for more people to eat it up more quickly).

This recipe was developed for the Zojirushi Home Bakery Mini machine and takes about 15 minutes to put together, then three hours to bake.

Add the ingredients in the order listed (well, basically wet to dry, yeast must be last) in the bread machine's baking pan.

1 cup water (if substituting yogurt for dry milk, put 2 T yogurt in your cup measure first, then add enough water to bring it to 1 cup)
2 T oil (I normally use olive oil)
2 cups whole wheat flour (or add in some rye flour for rye bread)
2 T honey, molasses, or sugar
1/4 cup (4 T) other whole-grain flour(s) such as flax-seed meal, buckwheat, rye, spelt (I usually use one T of each of those); other options are teff, oatmeal, corn meal, amaranth; don't use 1/4 cup of potato flour--always try a new flour with just 1 T
2 T dry milk unless substituting yogurt
1 t salt
6 T nuts and seeds (whatever strikes your fancy)
Optional: 1 T herbs of your choice
1 t dry-active yeast
Optional: 1/4 cup of dried fruit (add when the first timer rings)

Once the ingredients are in place, plug in the bread machine and press the "Mode Select" button twice to choose the "Soft Course" option (3 hours). Then press the Start/Reset button. With this recipe, it is best to scrape down the sides of the baking pan when the first timer rings (or a little before).

When the second timer rings, the bread is finished. Press and hold the start/reset button until the machine beeps; then unplug the machine. Be very careful removing the bread from the baking pan--it's very hot and easy to burn yourself even with hot-pad holders in each hand! The wire handle in particular is hot! Let bread cool, ideally on a wire rack, for about 15 minutes before serving.

Boursin cheese pairs well with this bread!

Masks Received

Around the world, kind people are sewing and donating masks to health workers and the public. I've been using scarves and bandannas since I don't go out all that much, but in preparation for things opening up somewhat more in our state, I accepted a neighbor's offer of masks and picked up four, two for me and two for my housemate.

Once I get some more yeast (or maybe with my last teaspoon--I think I have that much left), I'll make her a loaf of bread!

NWU Webinars on Internet Archive and Our Books

There are still seats available for the National Writers Union's public educational webinars on, "What is the Internet Archive doing with our books?"

TODAY: Monday, April 27, 7 p.m. Eastern Time

Tuesday, May 5, 10 a.m. Eastern Time

These webinars are organized by the NWU, but all are welcome. Please let your friends know about these events.

More info and links to register:

https://nwu.org/what-is-the-internet-archive-doing-with-our-books/

I Begin a Pullover

For the most part, my life during the pandemic is not as different from my normal life as is the case for most people. My teaching suddenly got much more time-consuming (and lower quality, alas), and I no longer get to do any of my work in libraries or cafes. Like most people, I haven't had a haircut. And I've attended two online meetings, bought two take-out pizzas, and occasionally (less often than before) pick up coffee and a pastry to take home. I've also accomplished a little more gardening than is typical for me at this time of year, and have watched two or three genealogy presentations (thank you Legacy for offering free ones this month).

However, being in the house nearly all the time makes one want somewhat more variety in one's amusements!

First, I began a puzzle that was waiting to be given to my mother. She enjoys jigsaw puzzles; I enjoy them too, but rarely do them because I become obsessive once I start one, and spending all day staring at puzzle pieces is not quite my idea of well-spent time. (No criticism of anyone other than myself who does this is intended.) Anyhow, I've nearly completed my mother's puzzle and am suspicious that she may find it too hard. It involves photos of a gazillion different cameras on a white background. Still, if I had let myself get really obsessive with it, I could probably have completed it in two days rather than a week.

With the prospect of lots and lots of grading in my immediate future, the idea of something more tactile and definitely non-computer-related began to draw me. I used to knit a fair amount--when taking BART to work each day, I could get about two hours of knitting done just on public transit. And later I used to make easy scarves while listening to holiday conversation--I'd give them to people later. But it had been more than ten years since I knit anything. I realized that one of my favorite cotton sweaters is missing and another is falling apart (neither was made by me, although they could have been). Clearly I needed to make myself a new spring sweater!

And so, with the help of a colleague, I found a place where I could make an appointment to look at yarn and patterns. I didn't find exactly the kind of pattern I was hoping for (one with an interesting but easy knit-purl design), but I did find a pattern for a simple stockinette stitch pullover with easy knit lace trim. And so it's launched!

The pattern and my gauge swatch...

And a bit of the lace edging for the bottom.

It's World Book Day!

Today we celebrate the annual "World Book Day."

If you're a book author, please join the international campaign on social media to remind readers that #BehindEveryBook is an author.

Post a pair of selfies, one of you and one of you "behind your book". Tag them @paythewriter as well as #BehindEveryBook and #worldbookday2020.

I hope you'll join me in celebrating #WorldBookDay2020, whether as an author or as a reader!



Aren't I lucky that I had the pdf of the front cover available to print? Magnetic Woman will be out in November but you can pre-order now!

And We Have a Book Cover!

I've been waiting to post the cover of Magnetic Woman until I was sure it was final. Since it's now live on University of Pittsburgh Press's website, where you can pre-order (publication date is early November), and on Goodreads and Amazon.com (the latter currently displays the wrong book cover, though), I think it's time to post it! I've also created an author Facebook page where news about the book (and other writing) can go.

He's Not the Easter Bunny, but...

Mikko is extremely fond of dandelions and was quite pleased when a kind neighbor dropped off a sack of them along with an Easter card from her small child. I had hoped Felicia would emerge for the photo session, but while she enjoys dandelions too, she did not feel they merited interrupting her nap.

Will They Finish?

As we near the end of the semester--just a few weeks to go--the question looms: how many of my students just aren't going to be able to finish their courses?

I've repeatedly asked that students who are having difficulties, such as lack of internet access, should let me know, and a few have. I'm pretty sure most can get email on their phones, and early on they could still go to the library or a cafe to use public computers or wifi. But it seems probable that I haven't heard from everyone who will be unable, for one reason or another, to finish. Apparently one-sixth of households in the area do not have internet, often because they cannot afford it (the elderly also often lack internet, but while my students are of many ages, they don't tend to be elderly). Spectrum has offered 60 days of free internet to students, but how many have read the emails telling them that?

My largest class, the Renaissance to now survey, has a short paper due today. Originally this paper involved choosing from a list of artworks on view at our local museum, but that had to be changed to a list from those the museum displays online. There is also a small amount of required research using online databases. It will be interesting, and possibly depressing, to see how many students turn in the paper. One of my other classes had a paper due a week ago, which also involved looking at art in person (so an alternate form of the assignment had to be done for those who hadn't begun the paper before our gallery closed); despite the alternate instructions, only two-thirds of the class turned in a paper. (True, most of those people didn't turn in their first paper either, so coronavirus may not be implicated at all there!)

My third, smallest class has one big research paper rather than two shorter papers. Some of those students seem to have completely disappeared. There is not much I can do if people do not let me know they're struggling, but it's disturbing to know that, whether for lack of internet, lack of quiet time, illness, or other reasons, a significant percentage of my students may not be able to finish their courses this semester.

Masking Up

I've thought for the past month that it only made sense to cover our faces in public during the pandemic--that any kind of barrier would keep people safer than none. But there is that saying, "The perfect is the enemy of the good," and for weeks there a widespread official attitude that either you were a health professional who needed a medical-grade mask, or you were sick and needed some kind of mask (but why go out in public if sick?), or else you shouldn't consider covering your face.

This wasn't the case everywhere--for example, in the Czech Republic everyone's been wearing masks diligently--but you'd think the WHO, if not the CDC, would have grasped that even a cowboy-style (or anarchist-style) bandanna would be better than nothing in promoting public health.

Well, now we're encouraged to cover our faces. My sewing machine and fabric stash are buried deep in the housemate's room (formerly guestroom/sewing room), but there are plenty of non-sew options, and I have plenty of scarves and bandannas, plus do not go out in public much apart from walks where I'm not encountering anyone within six feet (often no one at all). So I don't currently need a large supply of protective gear, fortunately.

I will say, though, that if you're using those elastic ponytail items, you can't stretch them very far or they'll jump right off your ear.

Thoughts About Dialogue Tags

A cousin of mine recently, in an email exchange about writing, asserted "Remember: no adverbs in the retort. ‘Said,’ is good enough." To which I replied, "That's overdoing it. Nothing wrong with 'replied gleefully' now and then.

I was reminded of this when I happened to read the blog post What Your Choice of Dialogue Tags Says About You, by Christopher Hoffmann. Hoffmann tends in my cousin's direction, but with nuances, some of which are very entertainingly presented. First he points out that in our daily speech, we normally say that someone "said" something, not that they "remarked" or "answered" or "hollered" or whatnot. He also notes that people of a certain age use "like" for "said," as in "I'm like, 'Wow, you really mean that?'" Personally, I never interpreted this to mean that the person actually said whatever it was, but rather that that was how they felt about it, but I could be wrong about that. (Incidentally, I can assure Hoffmann that people born before 1970 have spoken in this manner, because it was common parlance when I was in college, back in prehistoric times.)

Hoffmann then tells us that people who want their writing to be considered literary scorn the use of anything more colorful than "said" because, as so many books on writing prescribe, one must "show, not tell." If you have to say that someone ranted, evidently you haven't made the actual speech rant-y (rantish?) enough for the reader to discern that the person was ranting rather than stating, musing, joking, or remarking superciliously. Well, I'll confess that in my youth (that is, around the age of twelve) I believed this hoopla about "show, don't tell" and it was deleterious to my writing because I assumed you had to show everything and tell nothing, which made for masses of laborious dreck. Fortunately I could not bear to keep up the effort to show and not tell, and in truth, the very best fiction is full of telling as well as showing. And, as Hoffmann admits later on, sometimes you really need to tell the reader that the character is ranting rather than merely blabbing on endlessly in a mild sort of way. But he suggests that it is only in commercial and genre fiction that one can get away with deviating from "said."

I agree with Hoffmann that it is generally preferable to use more colorful dialogue tags as spice, but I am curious whether the literary writing to which he makes reference is the stripped-down bare-bones Raymond Carver style that was so popular in the '80s, or if this is still prescribed in the MFA programs of today. While I do read recent literary fiction, the fact that I don't teach fiction writing frees me from feeling obliged to keep up with all the latest trends, just as the fact that I specialize in Czech modernism rather than American contemporary art frees me from being obsessively au courant about the New York gallery scene.

Porch Portraits

Neighborhoods like mine are doing a variety of low-contact things to keep up neighborhood spirit during the pandemic, such as putting teddy bears or rainbows in windows for kids to find during walks. Photographers are also doing sets of portraits of neighbors on porches. In my neighborhood, Briana Snyder of Knack Creative did a round of portraits on Sunday. The weather was cold and windy, so most of us didn't stay outside all that long (and I hadn't exactly spruced up my porch for summer yet!), but she got some nice results.

Underway: A Four-Color Cover!

The cover design for Magnetic Woman arrived today, and it's exciting! Four-color printing on the dust jacket, and a very lively layout that employs several different works by Toyen, both paintings and illustrations.

I'd post it here, but there's still a bit of tweaking to do on it.

Weddings, Pandemic-Style

At a difficult time in world history, a bit of happy news: weddings are still happening, in new and inventive ways.

My cousin Jared's wedding was originally going to be something of a destination wedding, and although I wanted to attend, I had a work conflict, so I sent my regrets. But that, of course, was before covid-19 took the stage. My department sadly postponed/cancelled our student colloquium (don't really know yet which), and I wasn't even sure what was happening with the wedding.

But my family is resourceful, and put out word that the wedding would now take place in a local park with live-streaming video via Facebook. Only ten people were allowed to gather, so the local guests parked their cars near the site and watched on their phones, while many more of us tuned in from afar. The day was sunny but windy there (versus rainy weather here), and so although wind noise was noticeable, the bride's simple, elegant gown and veil fluttered beautifully throughout the ceremony. (Jared's suit also fluttered, but we weren't focusing on that.)

It was a lovely event and I wish them and all the others marrying in this uncertain time a long, happy, and healthy life together.

My 17th Day of Social Distancing

By this time, much of the world is required to perform what's called "social distancing" or "physical distancing." My experience with this began a little earlier than many people's, because my university was among one of the earlier American schools to switch to remote instruction, and my state soon likewise became one of the leaders in shutting down sources of what is termed "community spread" (catching the virus without knowing how you got it, or only learning later that you probably got it at a game or at a party or at church).

The news is full of stories from all over the world about coronavirus and the covid-19 illness it causes. My experience isn't that strange or remarkable (yet), and I don't want to focus this blog on it, but here's how's it going for me at present.

First of all, I'm working from home, so I'm fortunate that I'm someone who can do that, versus being someone who's out of work at the local bar or clothing store or factory during the state's shelter-in-place. I'm in contact with my students daily via email and our online platform. How my students are doing personally or in their studies is not so clear. I do ask them to let me know if they're having difficulties, and some have reported lack of home internet, or that they have to move before getting back to their studies, but quite a few just aren't responding. Others are watching films on art, exploring museum websites, and writing about it for me. Two classes have short papers due soon, and the other class has a big research paper due near the end of the semester. We'll see. The university is allowing pass/fail grading for any undergraduate who requests it. The date with withdraw has also been extended. While the switch to remote learning hasn't improved the education we provide, at least we haven't fallen apart, and it seems that the administration is doing a decent job handling this particular challenge.

Although my state is sheltering in place, we're allowed to go outside so long as we don't get too close to other people. I regret to say that the weather has not been very conducive to spending much time outdoors, apart from a couple of days when it got both sunny and dry. I took advantage of that to dig up some weeds in what used to be my small lawn, and to sow white clover there. My housemate walked over to a historic cemetery and enjoyed reading and photographing there. He even got a short video of a white squirrel leaping over the tombstones.

I keep hoping that I will get some spring cleaning and writing done, but so far my days consist of teaching-related activities, checking the news, and reading books. Somehow the time passes with lightning speed even though we're not actually having fun!

Yesterday I learned of the first person of my acquaintance to be ill with covid-19 (although I'm sure there are others). A member of my extended family first felt unwell a week ago, was hospitalized on Monday, and was soon on a ventilator. Shortly after the word went out to all the cousins, there was some good news: from 90% oxygen from the ventilator, my relative went down to 60%. This morning the percentage was 50%, so very good news! The goal is to get to 30%. We're all sending best wishes and hopes for a full recovery. And hopes that no one in that immediate family gets ill like that.

What I've Been Reading Lately

As someone who reads a lot--both fiction and nonfiction, although a lot of what I read is in the form of journal articles and snippets of books rather than whole books--I'm viewing pandemic isolation as an opportunity to read more of what's around the house. I own a lot of books, from childhood favorites (mostly in boxes behind my chaise for lack of shelf space) to books inherited from my father (maybe I should reread Art Buchwald's "I Am Not a Crook" or finally embark on War and Peace) to library books to a haul of books recently acquired at the AWP conference.

Here's what I've finished in the past month or so, and maybe you'll see something you'd like to order.

Ms. Ming's Guide to Civilization, by Jan Alexander. Two young women, one an aspiring writer from a remote Chinese village and the other a New York grad student studying China, find themselves accomplices to the immortal Monkey King, who has a plan to make China (and later the world) kinder, more poetic, and less hyper-capitalist. I really enjoyed this novel.

A Strange Scottish Shore, by Juliana Gray. This is the second book in a series, which I didn't realize when I brought it home. But it's a wild and unexpected mixture of historical novel and time travel. While it would have helped to have read the first book first, I still quite enjoyed this.

The Book of Anna, by Carmen Boullosa. This is another novel full of unexpected turns. Here we've got the children and servants of Tolstoy's famous character Anna Karenina, alive in 1905, when Russia nearly had a revolution. Everyone knows which people were invented by Tolstoy versus which ones were not; no one mentions being invented by Boullosa, however! Bombs, shootings, paintings, and dresses all play important roles, as does a long fairy tale attributed to Anna herself.

Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly, by Adrian McKinty. This is a police procedural mystery (but hardly an average one) in a series set in Northern Ireland during the bloody 1980s. If you like mysteries, and don't require them to be cozy, this series is worth looking into.

Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice. By a First Nations Canadian writer, this is a post-apocalyptic tale about a small First Nations band in northern Ontario who have just begun to get used to having reliable electricity, cell phones, and video games when suddenly electricity is diesel-generator-only and contact with the outside world ceases except for the arrival of a few refugees from the city.

Strangers in Budapest, by Jessica Keener. Sorry, I didn't like this one, but you might. A youngish couple (not really all that young but they've just adopted a baby) move to Budapest in the 1990s with entrepreneurial ambitions. Hungarian friends from back home ask them to check up on an elderly American in Budapest. Things get kind of disturbing for Annie, the wife. The third-person narration keeps the reader trapped in Annie's naive and neurotic point of view except for brief excursions into the old guy's cynical and angry point of view. This really irritated me and also eliminated any real uncertainty about what would happen. I think the reader is supposed to like Annie and sympathize with her feelings, but the better I knew her, the more I despised her. And I don't usually mind reading about neurotic people.

Oh, and right now (among many other things) I'm rereading The Diary of Anne Frank. It just seemed like a good time for that.

How's Working at Home Working Out?

My state doesn't have an actual shelter-in-place order, but since my governor has been in the forefront of those closing down potential sites of contagion, we're fairly close to sheltering in place. Bars are closed unless they also offer take-out sales (food or containers of beer); restaurants and cafes are take-out and delivery only; theaters are closed; hair salons are closed (just before my appointment, rats!). Etc. A whole lot of us are working from home now.

As a writer and professor, I'm already pretty accustomed to working from home. Even my work for school is largely done from home, because my office at school is in a windowless concrete-block space and I use it for two main things: meeting with students and storing art books.

At home, I normally work on a laptop, although I do still have a desktop machine bought around 2005. The desktop still functions, but I got it shortly before CD drives also read DVDs, shortly before USB 2.0, and shortly before wifi became common. So it's not as practical as it might be. Besides, the laptop allows me to move around in the house as well as (when it was possible) working elsewhere.

Since I live in a part of the country where home ownership is possible for a) people who aren't all that highly paid and/or b) weren't in a position to buy back when housing prices were more affordable throughout the US, I currently live in a house with quite a range of potential work spaces. It's a Victorian in what was once a working-class neighborhood, and in recent decades the attic was turned into living space, so I have two floors plus an unfinished basement where the furnace lives. But what does this translate to in actual work-at-home practice?

Well, let me begin by saying I like my house a lot and enjoy being in it. But it's not ideally designed for working at home even though I can and do work in no fewer than eight different locations in it--I'm currently seated at the foot of the stairs beside a large window, where the bookcase to my left holds fiction A to G and the bookcase to my right holds pocket-size nonfiction and foreign language books. This current spot is good for light and the chair is comfortable, but sometimes the light is too bright, often the air is cold, and it's not a part of the house where rabbits are allowed.

Most of the spaces in my house where I work, like my bedroom, my so-called office, my front room, and my living room, get very little natural light. My upstairs rooms are extremely hot in the summer and one of them (the one with good daytime light) is cold in the winter. Since I teach (normally) in a darkened room and meet with students in a windowless room, I want natural light the rest of the day!

In other words, while my house is a pretty neat place with an interesting variety of spots where I can and do work, under normal circumstances I also do a lot of my work at cafes and libraries. There are two cafes in my own neighborhood, several more within walking distance, and the public library is also in walking distance, while the university library is a good place to work when I'm on campus and not holding class or office hours. Well, at present the libraries are closed and the cafes are take-out only, so while I do try to support them by getting the occasional take-out, I'm working solely at home.

So far, it's okay--and I'm in a much better situation than many, many other people--but I really do miss going to the cafes and libraries!