Essay About Love and Literature

While we're on the topic of love, this humorous essay from the New York Times is worth a chuckle or two. As it aptly points out, "Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast."

It’s Not You, It’s Your Books

Write me a "love" story!

I remember once, many, many years ago, there was a groop assignment to write a short story about sex. And I remember that MJ very deeply and very seriously did NOT want to write a story about sex, until we reminded her that it didn't have to be about GOOD sex...

Since then, I have wondered about the wisdom of having given that assignment, for as proud as we all were of MJ for taking on that challenge and running with it to wholly new and unexpected places, there is now, and forever, imprinted in my memory, an image of Chinese takeout being used for inappropriate purposes in the depths of a darkened movie theather.



So, in that spirit, or really, in any spirit, and in tribute to MJ, a new assignment:


StoryQuarterly
announces the SQ Love Story Contest

Open to fiction and nonfiction entries, the contest offers a
First Prize of $2,500, a Second Prize of $1,500, a Third Prize of $750,
and ten Finalists each will receive $100.
Deadline for entries: March 31, 2008.
For complete details, please click here.

Progressive Reading Series 3: Benefit to Save Rent Control

Those of you who live in the Bay Area might be interested in this event ...

"Maybe politics in this country would be in a better place if people drank more, read more, and had more of a good time. A simplistic argument, yes, but it was this philosophy that lifted the Progressive Reading Series off the ground. On Saturday, March 15, the literati are out in force for intellectual fun and a cause: saving rent control in California. The lineup includes local superstar Amy Tan, punk-rock poet and comedian Bucky Sinister, Lebanese writer Rabih Alameddine, and novelist Jerry Stahl — whose career-igniting memoir, Permanent Midnight (and its 1998 Ben Stiller-starring film adaptation), delves into the harsh yet hilarious realities of drug addiction and television writing." [From Flavorpill]

I'm a Stahl fan and Amy Tan's no slouch either, so I might go.