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TOP 10 reasons to date outside the literary disciplines
by: Vince Bergado
10. Other people might find your Shakespearean pickup lines interesting.
9. You won’t be exposed in a workshop for that drunken one night stand.
8. You might find someone who prefers talking to you over reading a book.
7. They will forgive you for liking Dan Brown and Harry Potter.
6. Your habit of reading books (any books) will be considered interesting and quaint.
5. Differing opinions on Post-modernism can be a deal-breaker.
4. You can teach them proper use of object case pronouns, and they can teach you the proper application of the information found in Cosmo and Maxim.
3. It’s not like you have to worry about gold diggers.
2. They won’t wonder why you have not published yet.
1. Nowhere to go but up – make your mom proud!
[archived top 10 lists]
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FEB. 29, 2009
An Interview with Sandra Gilbert
by: Josh Cembellin & Samantha Lê
We sat down one afternoon to speak with Sandra M. Gilbert about her semester as Lurie Distinguished Visiting Writer at San Jose State University. Professor Gilbert was very warm. She invited us into her office, where we noticed that her only personal belongings were a few books resting on a large wooden shelf. Despite the lack of embellishments, Professor Gilbert decorated the room with her enthusiasm, optimism... and a Diet Coke.
Josh Cembellin: What was your motivation for accepting the Lurie Position?
Sandra Gilbert: That’s easy! I retired from teaching at Davis three or four years ago, and what I miss the most is teaching verse writing workshops, both undergraduate and graduate ones. Especially graduate ones where you get people who really care about their writing and are devoted to learning more about their craft and trying a range of experiments.
Samantha Lê: Are the classes usually the same, or are they always different for you every time?
SG: Every class is different. The dynamics of every group are different. It depends on the individuals in the group, and I can’t predict from year to year and group to group. That’s what makes it interesting, too. And it’s very interesting for me because when I give people, what I see a number of you call prompts—I guess that’s a word that’s in a lot of use now, but I used to call exercises or poetry ideas—I often do some of that stuff myself.
JC: What are you most looking forward to during your time at SJSU?
SG: Well, I would have to say all my classes. My other class, Topics in Women’s Literary History, surprisingly, because it is a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, struck me as very interesting and fun. So I’m very excited about that because I get to teach several books that I co-edited with Susan Gubar; but I’ve never actually taught the theory book, so I’m interested in that. However, I would be less than honest if I didn’t say that I’m most excited about the poets.
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Climbing Upward and Looking Back
into California’s Mountaineering History
An interview with Dan Arnold
by: Vincent Bergado
Dan Arnold, a Spring 08 graduate of the SJSU MFA, will soon have his nonfiction book, Early Days in the Range of Light, published by Counterpoint Press. Although he published fiction in ZYZZYVA as a student, he changed his primary track to follow his passion for the great peaks of the Sierra and the mountaineering heritage of California. Slated for release this fall, the book chronicles the historical climbs of fifteen awe-inspiring summits in the state’s largest range, and the author’s effort to retrace those ascents. The result is incisive prose and a historical perspective that explores the the mountain adventurer spirit.
VB: What got you started on the path to writing Early Days in the Range of Light?
DA: It was a long, gradual process. As I spent an increasing amount of time in the Sierra, I heard more and more about the stories of the first mountaineers. These stories were amazing, but they were always fragmentary—a few sentences here, a footnote there. It surprised me that no one had written a full account of the mountaineering history of this era. As I started to think about writing that kind of book myself, it became clear to me that I did not want to just sit on the sidelines and tell strictly third-person history. Right from the beginning, I wanted to be more involved and see for myself what climbing at that time would have been like.
VB: What was the most difficult stage in the genesis of the book?
DA: From a craft perspective, the most difficult decision was always how present I—as a first person narrator—should be in the book. Striking the right balance was hard. Even though I wanted to be involved, I didn’t want to get in the way of the men and women I was following. I wanted their stories to be the primary focus. At the same time, it seemed to me that my perspective and the stories from my own adventures doing the old climbs would provide the entryway into the era for a modern reader. I suppose I wanted to be a guide, to use an obvious climbing metaphor. I wanted the essential relationship to be between the reader, the mountains and the old climbers, with me there to offer perspective, tell stories and help the journey make narrative sense.
VB: How long was the entire research and writing process?
DA: Start-to-finish, Early Days took me four years, though if you include the time I spent in Yosemite and the Sierra before I started to think about the book, the research time would stretch back much longer. I have an enormous box of notes from all the time I spent in manuscript libraries reading letters and journals and old notebooks. Only a fraction of that material actually appears in the book, though all of it was relevant in terms of shaping my ideas about the place and time. I think most nonfiction books are probably like that—a colossal background of research with only a small amount showing through in the text itself.
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