stay with me
FIU grad Sandy Rodriquez Barron has come out with her second novel. Well, she will on November 30.
fiu workshops, etc.
We're off to Grand Cayman this week for the FIU Books & Books International Writers Conference. A. Manette Ansay will be reading at FIU on Thursday the 28th at 8 in the bookstore. Two upcoming workshops will benefit Gulf Stream, FIU's Online Literary Magazine. On Saturday, October 30, from 9-noon, Lynne Barrett will offer a morning of writing about what keeps us up at night: "Haunted: Ghost Stories and the Use of the Uncanny." And then on November 13, same time, I'll be offering a workshop on Flash Fiction. Both workshops will be held in AC! Room 110 on the Biscayne Bay campus (151 St. and the Bay.) Cost is $20 for FIU students and $30 for the general writing public.
foreclosures
My nephew Evan has an illustration in the Times today.
corrie
There's a new Alice Munro story in the New Yorker. Not available online unless you subscribe. The Telegraph has a piece on Philip Larkin with a link to Larkin reading his poems. The New Statesman has printed a lost Ted Hughes poem on Sylvia Plath.
bahuvrihi
“The loss of experience is a major 20th-century theme. One makes love with The Joy of Sex hanging over one’s head, and so on. . . . Unmediated experience is hard to come by, is probably reserved, in our time, to as yet undiscovered tribes sweltering in the jungles of Bahuvrihi.”
– Donald Barthelme
A bahuvrihi is a compound word functioning as an adjective or a noun (although the American Heritage Dictionary insists it’s only an adjective). The last element in the compound is a noun. As in high-profile case. High-profile is the bahuvrihi, profile being a noun, and the compound modifying the noun case. Also, as a noun: bluebell, bonehead. The term comes from the Sanskrit bahuvrihih, having much rice.: bahu-, much + vrihih-, rice. Some bahuvrihis can have a plural form, but a singular meaning: lazybones, yellowlegs (the shorebird [another bahuvrihi]). Take a bahuvrihi modifier (low-life scumbag) and make it a substantive (He’s a lowlife) and something else odd happens. The plurals become regular. The plural of life is lives, but the plural of lowlife is lowlifes. Still life, still lifes. A lowlife is not a kind of life at all, so the usual irregular plural for life doesn’t apply, and the normal rule for making plurals does: add an s.
Sanskrit, like German, uses compounding frequently, and in Medieval Sanskrit, a compound might contain twenty or more elements and take up several lines of print. Besides bahuvrihi, there are these others. A dvandva (from the repeated noun dva, pair or couple) is a coordinating compound in which the elements are related to each other as if joined by and. Bittersweet means both bitter and sweet; roller-coaster means it rolls and it coasts. Some dvandva compounds, like those, are nouns. More often they are adjectives: father-daughter dance; North-South compromise.
And then there are the determinative compounds. Here the first word in the compound means a special kind of whatever the second word is. For example, a pickaxe is a kind of axe, a piano stool is a kind of piano. There are two kinds of determinative compounds:
In tatpurusha (from the compound tatpurus, his man [as in servant]) compounds the first element qualifies the second, while the second retains its grammatical independence as a noun, adjective, or participle. Doorstop, yearbook, heartworm. These are dependent determinatives. Tatpurusha, by the way, is one of the eleven names of Shiva Bhagawan and one of the five mantras that constitute Shiva’s body (Om tatpurusha namah).
Descriptive determinatives are called karmadharaya from karma, fate or action, and dharaya, holding. The first member of the compound describes the second. If the compound is a noun, then the first word is an adjective: blackbird (not any black bird), redbud (not a red bud, but a kind of tree). If the compound is an adjective, then the first word could be an adverb, well-known or a noun newly-appointed.
the crab shack
Today's short story waiting to be written: "I was coming back from the Dumpster and he invited me over," said Lackey, 53. "He said, 'Jeff, I've worked at Crab Shack for 10 years. I never got a raise or a Christmas bonus. I never even got a card.' " (thanks to Kat)
the lie, etc.
Some people saying nice things about The Lie That Tells a Truth.
predator in the classroom
Trouble in Loboland. Lisa D. Chavez, tenured prof at UNM posts S&M photos of her and her student on sex website. At most universities that sort of unethical behavior would result in censure at the very least. But not at UNM where, like administrators everywhere, the President, the Arts & Sciences Dean, and the English Chair were only interested in covering their asses. Chavez continues to teach. Joy Harjo resigned from the university in protest. Sharon Oard Warner resigned as chair of the Creative Writing Program. Be glad that you don't have to work with a sadmoasochistic sleaze or her administrative protectors and be happy that your children are not in a classroom being subjected to her venom. Chavez, like any good sociopath, blames the world: "Frankly, I’m a victim of other people imposing their morality on me." One of the country's foremost MFA programs is now circling the drain thanks to the suits who stand by and do nothing.
why you can't rely on spell-check
Sentences I have met at school:
“I dismissed my mental image of Lisabet and Aaron at the hospital, standing in the curtained-off cuticle . . .”
“Pinkie spent his evenings hub knobbing with the rest of the Mensa Society . . .”
“She works as an interrupter for the deaf.”
“And at night we would boil up crap legs and dip them in hot melted butter.”
“The mountain glowed purple over the dyke, and she felt a twinge of homesickness.”
“Sometimes crabs would crawl into her lawn and we would put on a pot of bowling water.”
“‘It doesn’t hurt,’ I lied, the aesthetic beginning to wear off.”
back from texas
Sam's
Had a fabulous time in Texas. Read at the American Book Review series at UH-Victoria on Thursday. Wonderful turnout and a chance to sit down with high school students from St. Joe's. Tom Williams took me for barbecue at Kreuz Market in Lockhart. No plates, no forks, no sauce. Fabulous brisket. Also managed to eat barbecue at Mumphord's Place in Victoria, Stubb's in Austin and my old favorite Sam's in Austin--best mutton on earth. Met Tom and Carmen's eight-month-old son Finn for the first time. Hung out with my friends Debra, Gary, and my goddaughter Marie.
basilmarceaux.com
Our favorite candidate Basil Marceaux is still in the running for the Governor of Tennessee. Here's a podcast of Basil weighing in on the issues: gays in the military, gun control, traffic stops, and Batman vs. Superman. And for you Democrats, here's a candidate for Mayor of Providence that you can be proud of. (Thanks to Jason at Clark U.)
debra monroe
Marie and Debra
Wonderful interview with Debra Stylesubstancesoul. Debra will be teaching at the Sanibel Island Writers Conference (and so will I) and will be a visiting writer at FIU next spring.
worcester, mass
"Worcester, Massachusetts, has a dome over it, and God isn't allowed in." That quote is the opening sentence in John Lurie's unpublished memoir as quoted by Tad Friend in a fascinating article in this week's New Yorker. You have to subscribe to get it online, but you might take a look at this video about the story. Lurie grew up in Worcester.
sister carolyn
Back from Rochester where we were watched over by Sister Carolyn and her boyfriend (pictured). While there we got to eat once again at Don's Original, Sea Breeze--best cheeseburgers I've ever had.
phoebe
My sidekick Phee on the ranch in Chama.
escape velocity
I have a very short story in Sliver of Stone. You'll find my friend Denise Duhamel in there too.
ranchos de taos
San Francisco de Asis Church