Rodwan Does Still Write

Although the long temporal gap between the last post and this one might suggest otherwise, the title of this site remains true. Here’s some evidence: two essays and a short story.

• “The Fighting Life: Boxing and Identity in Novels by Philip Roth and Norman Mailer,” Philip Roth Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2011, pp. 83-96.
• “The Great Migration,” The American Interest, Vol. VII, No. 1, September/October 2011, pp. 95-99.
• “The Punch Not Thrown,” Spot Literary Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 2011, pp. 38-39.

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Spot Lit

“Little magazines are the pollinators of works of art: literary movements and eventually literature itself could not exist without them.” Cyril Connolly wasn’t thinking of Spot Literary Magazine when he said that – he was writing about 43 years before Susan Hansell started editing the journal – but he might as well have been.

After years of association with the journal, I was finally able to meet some of the artists whose work it fosters when issue 4.2 was released on November 21. A reading was held at a Borders bookstore in Long Beach with participants including Laurel Ann Bogen, Luisa Peña, Joan Jobe Smith, Bill Mohr, Eric Morago, Fred Voss, Jeffrey C. Alfier, John F. Buckley, Tobi Cogswell and me. Publisher Gerald Uyeno estimated that more than 100 people attended the standing-room-only event, which I enjoyed immensely.

Some of the contributors to Spot Literary Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 2

In an additional act of literature pollination, the SLM team arranged another reading the night before featuring Cogswell, who read from Poste Restante, and Voss, who read from Hammers and Hearts of the Gods. I read from Fighters & Writers, and Smith acted as emcee. (One of the essays in Fighters & Writers first appeared in SLM.) Essayist don’t usually read with poets; I did it on two consecutive evenings.

With Gerald Uyeno and Susan Hansell

SLM is something special, and I’m honored to be a part of it.

Reading in Long Beach, November 21, 2010

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Out and about

Writers necessarily spend much time occupied with the contents of their own heads. But the work involves more than sitting in solitary trying to put the right words in the right order. Sometimes we get away from our desks and actually talk with other people. I’ll be doing that at least a few more times in the last months of 2010.

As mentioned previously, I’ll be taking part in back-to-back readings in Long Beach, California, on November 20^th and 21^st. At the first, I’ll read from Fighters & Writers and poets from the area will read from their new books; at the second, I’ll join other contributors to the forthcoming issue of Spot Literary Magazine.

I’ve also been invited to participate in a festival of the arts on December 4 at the University of Colorado in Boulder organized by Palimpsest, a journal that’s publishing an essay of mine called “Second-Generation Punks” about the enduring relevance of bands like Crass, the Dead Kennedys and Discharge. (More details to come.)

I look forward to being amongst fellow readers and scribblers.

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Southern California Readings

For this fall, the good people at Spot Literary Magazine, a literary journal that has published several of my essays, arranged back-to-back readings in Long Beach, California, and I’ll be participating in both.

On Saturday, November 20, at 7 pm, I’ll be reading from Fighters & Writers (Mongrel Empire Press). I’ll be joined by a trio of poets who’ll be reading from their new books:

Tobi Cogswell is a Pushcart Prize nominee and co-recipient of the first annual Lois and Marine Robert Warden Poetry Award from Bellowing Ark Press. Her work can be read in SLM, Penumbra, Spoon River Poetry Review, Decanto, Illya’s Honey, Slab, Rhino and Blue Earth Review among others. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review. She will be reading from Poste Restante (Bellowing Ark Press).

Fred Voss has been a machinist for thirty years and a poet for twenty-two years. He has twice been the subject of feature programs on BBC Radio 4, and he has done six reading tours of Great Britain. He will read from Hammers and Hearts of the Gods (Bloodaxe Books; U.S. distribution by Dufour Editions).

Joan Jobe Smith, founding editor of Pearl magazine and the Bukowski Review, has published seventeen books of poetry and two cookbooks. She’s a Pushcart Prize recipient and her PowWow Café was a Forward Prize finalist. Ambit has published chapters from her memoir Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl, a James Jones First Novel Fellowship finalist. She will read from Joan’s Own Good-4-You Cook Book (Pearl Books).

On Saturday, November 21, at 7 pm, SLM contributors will read from Volume 4, Number 2.

Both events are slated to occur at the same site:

Borders Books

2110 N. Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90815 (between Sterns & the 405 fwy)

Mongrel Empire Press has posted details about these events as well as Wordstock, where I’ll be reading in October, on its events page.

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Kundera Stumbles

Convincing people that there’s something to mourn in a “post-art” era, and that what has been lost can be recovered with a renewed commitment to art, will take more than exclamation-point laden proclamations about art’s importance. Reviving interest in neglected artists requires more than italicized insistence on their meritorious achievements. Yet these sorts of inadequate maneuvers too often characterize Encounter, Milan Kundera’s latest tribute to the novel and other art forms. (I offer a more detailed discussion of the book in the September 2010 Open Letters Monthly.) I wish I could have mustered the enthusiasm for Encounter that John Simon does in the New York Times, but I simply couldn’t.

As it happens, I often agree with what Kundera says, but I know that asserting something and effectively making an argument aren’t the same things, which he seems to forget. The writer of some glorious novels and some superior nonfiction could have displayed a bit more care for the art of the essay this time around, in my opinion. (I say more about Kundera, as well as Albert Camus, whom I also discuss in connection with Encounter, in an essay in the forthcoming fall 2010 issue of Spot Literary Magazine.)

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