making waves Newsletter for the Department of English University of Southern California Chair: Bruce R. Smith Graduate Studies: Anthony Kemp Undergraduate Studies: Viet Nguyen Literature and Creative Writing Ph.D.: Susan McCabe Admissions: John Carlos Rowe Placement: Rebecca Lemon
ISSUE 4 , NUMBER 2 SUMMER 2007
Making the Transition: NINE GRADUATES ACCEPT JOB OFFERS, POSTDOCS USC graduate students have once again been doing the de- band, 2002 USC PhD Arnab Chakladar, who will be assum- partment proud in their job placements. Rebecca Lemon, ing a tenure-track assistant professorship Placement Director, reports that 12 students had a total of 70 in Carleton’s Department of English. interviews at MLA or elsewhere. These interviews resulted in 25 campus visits, five tenure-track offers, four post-doctoral Molly Engelhardt, who has been a fellowship offers, and five non-tenure-track offers. Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A & M, Corpus Christi, for three years, American Studies graduate Jenny has successfully competed for a newly Stoever, who wrote her disserta- opened tenure-track line in TAMCC’s tion, “The Contours of the Sonic English Department, where she will Color-Line: Slavery, Segregation, now be full-time Assistant Professor in and the Cultural Politics of Listen- Victorian studies, feminism, and post- ing,” under the direction of former English Professor Carla Kaplan, is very excited to be moving to continued on pg. 2 New York where she’ll assume a tenure-track job at SUNY, Bing- hamton. Faced with an enviable panoply of options, including two JOHNSON JOINS ENGLISH tenure-track offers and two postdoctoral fellowships, William Taper Hall is not altogether unfamiliar territory to Dana “Memo” Arce is taking a two-year post- Johnson, who will be joining English as an Assistant doctoral fellowship at Bowdoin College Professor of Creative Writing in the fall. Dana, a na- in Maine (Nathanial Hawthorne’s alma tive of Los Angeles, holds a BA in journalism from USC. mater). He will hold a dual appointment After working as a journalist in LA, she entered the MFA pro- in English and Latin American Studies, gram at Indiana U, where she quickly made the transition from and be premiering a course on the Mid- student to faculty member. From there she migrated to Cre- dle East wars in Kuwait, Afghanistan ative Writing at UC Riverside. In the meantime, she wrote a and Iraq as reflected in U.S. literature, collection of short fiction, Break Any Woman Down, published an offshoot of his dissertation, directed in 2001 by U Georgia P and winner of the 2000 Flannery by Teresa McKenna, on the construc- O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The book was also a finalist tion of nationhood in Latino/Chicano for the first Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award war literature. and for the Patterson Fiction Prize. Dana’s reading from her more recent work during her campus vis- A specialist in drama, performance, it in February wowed the crowd in the Ide and Asian-American studies trained by Room and sent a few listeners straight David Román, Sun Hee Lee received to the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas. both a tenure-track position at U Colo- rado Boulder and a two-year postdoc- A call for applicants whose writing focus- toral fellowship with the possibility of a es on ethnic experience brought in a huge third year of teaching in English at Car- number of applications. Aimee Bender leton College in Minnesota (Carleton is chaired a hard-working Search Com- currently the nation’s top-ranked private mittee. Dana emerged as first choice of college). She has opted for the latter, four finalists, making her acceptance an where she will be joined by her hus- occasion for rejoicing.
MAKING THE TRANSITION NEW SEMINAR AT THE continued from pg. 1 HUNTINGTON LIBRARY
colonial literatures. At USC, Molly Assistant Professor Emily Anderson, along with Felicity worked under the direction of Jim Nussbaum of UCLA, has created an interdisciplinary program Kincaid and Joseph Boone. at the Huntington Library devoted to fostering discussion and community for eighteenth-century scholars. James Penner has been appointed to a two-year Visiting Assistant Pro- “The Long Eighteenth-Century Seminar at the Huntington” fessor position at Dickinson College features work and speakers from all aspects of the period. in Pennsylvania, where he’s excited Funded by the Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI), it is a to be in charge of designing five collaborative effort among the Huntington, UCLA, and USC. new courses in drama. He wrote his The Seminar hosts three speakers each year, generally featur- dissertation on “Pinks, Pansies, and ing local scholars and scholars visiting the Huntington Library. Punks” and the rhetoric of masculin- ity under Leo Braudy’s direction. The first guest of the series, Joseph Roach, the Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theater & English at Yale Meanwhile, first-time job seekers University, presented work from his new book It, a study of Bridget Hoida and Marci McMahon celebrity culture and star power throughout history. The next are taking non-tenure track positions speaker is UCLA professor of musicology Olivia Bloechl, at UC, Irvine and Scripps College, re- whose most recent book, Native American Song at the Fron- spectively. A creative writer in fiction tiers of Early Modern Music (Cambridge, 2007), traces the and scholar of the “California novel,” influence of European colonial representation of Amerindian Bridget will music on Europe’s own music cultures. be teaching in Irvine’s Anderson extends her thanks to Prof. Nussbaum, as well Humanities as to Prof. Peter Mancall (director of the EMSI), Roy Ritchie Core De- (Director of the Huntington Library), and the Huntington staff, p a r t m e n t ; and also extends an invitation to all to join in the fun and attend she’s currently shopping her novel the interdisciplinary talks. The Beauty Guide to Save Yourself from Drowning. As a Visiting Lec- turer in the Hispanic Studies De- ENGLISH INSTITUTE partment at Scripps, Marci will be teaching Chicana/o Literature, Cul- FEATURES BRUCE SMITH tural Studies, and Theatre. Marci’s dissertation on domesticity and Latina culture was directed by Every fall the Harvard English Institute, a consortium of univer- Teresa McKenna; Bridget’s directors were Bill Handley and sities, invites a handful of literary and cultural criticism’s most Percival Everett. distinguished professors to gather in Cambridge, MA, to pres- ent papers on a selected topic at a three-day symposium. The latest news comes from Kevin Pinkham, who—lucky guy—has This past October, the author was Shakespeare (specifically managed to skip the entire job market the sonnets), the genre was “forms of address,” and the topic process and be appointed Instruc- was “pronouns,” and Bruce Smith, continuing interim depart- tor at Nyack College in New York, a ment chair, was one of nine authorities invited to present his position that will be converted to a work. Entitled “The Pro- in Shakespeare’s Pronouns,” Profes- tenure-track assistant professorship sor Smith’s multidimensional talk incorporated a video of Chris upon completion of his PhD on al- Garcia, an American Sign Language specialist from Los Ange- coholism, prohibition, and American les. Garcia signed Shakespeare’s sonnet 29 and explained literature, directed by Carla Kaplan. to Smith how he had turned Shakespeare’s words into ges- Kevin’s wife Michele has just been tures. In particular, Garcia focused on how he had managed made Dean of Students at Nyack, to insinuate the pronouns “I,” “he,” “they,” and “you” into his which is Kevin and Michele’s alma interpretation. The focus of Smith’s presentation, on the be- mater, and their jobs come with a lovely house with views of ginnings of communication in bodily gestures rather than in the Hudson and additional teaching opportunities for Kevin on words, builds on the work he has been doing on materiality, the Manhattan campus. poetry, and sound over the last several years.
English extends its heartfelt congratulations to these students USC English’s last participant in the Institute was Jim Kincaid. for making a successful transition from student to professori- Nancy Vickers, a formerly familiar face at USC and president ate status and wishes them well in the future! of Bryn Mawr College, sits on the the English Institute’s board of directors.
2 ENGLISH DEPARTMENT ALUMNI FILL THE BOOKSHELVES WITH NEW PUBLICATIONS Despite the notorious difficulty of making inroads into the in- Lowther Memorial Award. Naomi has recently received grants creasingly strapped academic publishing industry, worthy dis- from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Constance sertation projects do occasionally make the transition into suc- Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts as well as an Artist’s Fel- cessful scholarly publications, we are happy to note, as several lowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. recent USC Ph.D. graduates have demonstrated. Paul Hansom, Ph.D. 1999, has Katie Mills, a 2000 Ph.D. who teach- turned his talents into editing impor- es at Occidental College, has had tant volumes, including Literary Mod- her book, The Road Story and the ernism and Photography (Praeger Rebel: Moving Through Film, Fic- Press, December 2002), Twentieth- tion, and Television, recently issued Century European Cultural Theorists: by Southern Illinois UP (2006). Filled First Series (Thompson Gale 2001) with dozens of illustrations, it traces and Second Series (Thompson Gale an ambitious arc from the Beats and 2004), and 20th Century American “Route 66” through 1970s New Hol- Cultural Theorists (Thompson Gale lywood films like “Play It As It Lays” 2002). A visiting professor of Ameri- and “Easy Rider” to gender rebellion can literature at Ithaca College in up in contemporary road stories like “Thelma and Louise” and State New York, Paul also serves as new intermediated “avenues” of transit in digital formats. theatre critic for the Ithaca Times, which just won the New York Press Award for best arts coverage and has recently finished A 2001 Ph.D. in Comparative Litera- a historical novel based on his dissertation on modernism and ture who worked closely with English photography. professors, Christine Coffman, a specialist in feminist and queer theory 1999 Ph.D. Des Harding, an assistant and a tenure-track assistant profes- professor at Central Michigan U who sor at U Alaska, Fairbanks, saw her specializes in transatlantic modern- book, Insane Passions: Lesbianism ism, published Writing the City: Urban and Psychosis Visions And Literary Modernism with in Literature Routledge in 2003, and has recently and Film, into seen articles on trauma in Joyce’s print in “The Dead” and Shaw’s “Heartbreak D e c e m b e r House” into print. 2006 with Wesleyan UP. Examining Lacan’s Brad Monsma, who received his de- early writings, French surrealism, Dju- gree in 1995, and is Professor of Eng- na Barnes’ Nightwood, Genet’s “The lish at CSUCI, is author of a work of Maids” (along with the historic incident creative non-fiction and ecocriticism, that informed it), and H.D.’s homoerotic The Sespe Wild: Southern California’s fiction in light of feminist and queer the- Last Free River (Nebraska 2004), ory, this fascinating study argues that which has just been released in paper- the psychotic woman who fascinates back. “A beautiful blend between Tho- modernist writers returns with a mur- reau-esque nature writing and straight, derous vengeance in a number of late twentieth-century films- accurate environmental journalism,” -including “Basic Instinct,” “Sister My Sister,” “Single White writes one reviewer of Monsma’s “bril- Female,” and “Murderous Maids.” liant ponderings.”
A tenured professor of English and Kent Baxter, an assistant professor Creative Writing at Hamilton College of English at CSU Northridge, has just in NYC, Naomi Guttman, USC Ph.D. learned that his book, The Modern Age: 1999, is delighted to announce the Twentieth-Century American Culture spring 2007 publication of her col- and the Invention of Adolescence, will lection, Wet Apples, White Blood, by be published in 2008 by U Alabama the McGill-Queen University Press’s P. Drawing examples from fiction and Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series. This theory, it argues that the common con- is Naomi’s second volume of poetry; struction of the impulsive, conflicted, her first won the A.M. Klein Award and rebellious adolescent found its for Poetry and was short listed for origin and most vigorous articulation The League of Canadian Poets’ Pat in America in the early decades of the twentieth century. The continued on pg. 4
EVERETT HONORED
This February Percival Everett was appointed a Distinguished Professor by USC President Sample. Only seventeen profes- sors in the University hold this title, and only five other profes- sors in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences – including Everett’s fellow novelist in the English Department, T.C. Boyle. The honor reflects the fact that Everett has brought particular renown to the University.
Professor Everett is used to receiving accolades, having won the PEN USA Literary Award for his most recent novel, Wound- ed (2006), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Erasure (2001), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature for his story collection Big Picture (1996), and a New American Writing Award for Zulus (1990).
BENDER PROMOTED! Everett has taught at USC since 1998, having previously lent his teaching acumen to the University of Kentucky, Notre In early April Aimee Bender received a phone call from Dean Dame and the University of California, Riverside. He can often Wayne Raskind informing her it was time to have some new be found leading fiction workshops for undergraduate students business cards printed up. Why? She had just been promoted as well as for the students in the Ph.D. program in Creative to tenured Associate Professor of English. Writing. His many talents also find him painting (see his ab- stract in the Ide Commons Room), tending his 9 month old Given Bender’s status as a novelist and short story writer with son, Henry Lakota Everett, and repairing his fishing gear. The an international following, her colleagues were not exactly sur- department congratulates Professor Everett on becoming a prised, but felt joy and relief–emotions shared by Bender, who Distinguished Professor! remembers feeling moved and happy. Bender began teaching creative writing at USC in 2001. Her books include The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (Doubleday 1998), An Invisible Sign of My Own (Doubleday 2000), and Willful Creatures (Doubleday 2006), and she is currently working on what she suspects is a FILLING THE BOOKSHELVES novel and busily collaborating on a libretto for a one-act opera continued from pg. 3 with John B. Hedges and on words for a musical piece by Harold Meltzer titled “Seven Abstemious Sins.” Her stories invention of adolescence was largely motivated by the need to have won two Pushcart Prizes and been nominated for mul- define a new and quickly expanding segment of the popula- tiple other Pushcarts. This summer Bender plans to relax, tion, but also became a vehicle for expressing the broader cul- write, read, and travel–without the pressure of tenure hanging tural anxieties that characterized American society undergoing over her! the processes of modernity. UNDERGRADUATES Undergraduates have been leaving their mark on the publishing world, too. OFF TO GRAD SCHOOL Professor T.C. Boyle informs us that two of his former writing students have Several faculty members have passed along good news about just had their first novels published in students or former students. Professor Mark Irwin reports that May 2007: Antoine Wilson’s The Paul Legault has accepted an offer to begin graduate work at Interloper and Katherine Taylor’s the University of Virginia, and Claire Kinnane has done the Rules for Saying Goodbye. He also same at American University. recommends the forthcoming (Aug. 2007) collection of stories, Dead Boys, Professor Aimee Bender is pleased to pass along the news by USC film school alumnus Richard that Anne-Marie Jeter is thriving at Cal Arts, and tells us that Lange. Tye Pemberton is not only doing well at Columbia but also his first short story will be published in a journal from Amsterdam. Contact us or visit our web site: Kate Findley will begin Otis’s MFA program in fiction after her PhD in Literature, [email protected] May graduation. PhD in Literature and Creative Writing, [email protected] Melanie Spierer will be picking a law school from several http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/english/ acceptances this spring, and Steve Ramirez was just admitted (213) 740-2808; Fax (213) 741-0377 into the Iowa Writers Program in Fiction. Zach Braun is Newsletter Editors: finishing up at the University of California, Irvine with a thesis Joseph A. Boone, Nellie Ayala-Reyes, Kathryn Strong of story/essays.
An Interview with Kathy Strong CHANNELING CAROL MUSKE-DUKES
Holly Mattox, the central character in Professor Carol Muske- child. It’s either stealing a Twinkie or “Murder One.” Dukes’s latest novel, Channeling Mark Twain, is a poet fresh out of graduate school and ready to take on 1970s New York. In writing about the criminal justice system, you raise the issue Holly finds herself teaching a poetry workshop in the Women’s of justice itself. How do you see the themes of writing poetry House of Detention on Riker’s Island, and the experience leads and the law as related? to greater revelations than she could possibly have expected. Perhaps the answer preceding this one covers that. Poetry has A novel about justice, gender, and, above all, writing, Chan- to do with anarchy, not justice -- the imagination without any neling Mark Twain probes the power and the responsibilities obligation to any historical, societal or ideological concept. involved in the acts of writing and teaching. The novel, avail- able through Amazom. Your novel’s title makes reference to a character that claims com or through Muske- to channel the voice of Mark Twain. How does the concept of Dukes’s website, www. “channeling” in this sense relate to the way in which an author carolmuskedukes.com, appropriates voices for her narration and characters? was released this July. The accolades have I have no idea how to answer this question. I don’t believe that already started com- an author “appropriates” voices. An author imagines what it is like to be another living being, another consciousness and soul ing in, with Frank Mc- -- that’s not appropriation, it’s empathy -- and all effective writ- Court commenting that ers, I believe, must learn empathy. Along with humility. Muske-Dukes has “writ- ten the bravest of novels How does your writing process differ when you’re writing nov- … Read this book. It els as opposed to when you’re writing poetry? will lift your heart,” and Toni Morrison praising It doesn’t. I see writing prose as writing many, many poems, the “effortlessness” with one right after the other. which “the narrator’s story here becomes In an interview, you once said, “To be a writer, you need to one with the stories of know everything.” How do you go about the process of “know- the women in prison.” ing everything?” By believing that you know nothing and thus being porous, With her fourth novel open to any possibility. James said that a writer is someone on coming out, she is (as you would imagine) busy. But she kindly whom nothing is “lost.” I believe that that’s true. took the time to talk to me about Channeling Mark Twain, about the importance of empathy, and about the tendency for writers to be careful observers. Answering questions with grace and good humor, Muske-Dukes helps to delineate the complexity of the issues she raises in her latest novel: Channeling Mark Twain is a novel that centers upon a protago- nist who is a poet. How do you feel that the genres of poetry and the novel relate?
I don’t believe that they “relate” -- I think that the distinctions we make about genres are often artificial. Virginia Woolf aptly called To the Lighthouse an elegy, and it is indeed a poem. You’ve worked with imprisoned women before, teaching po- etry to them. Why is this a population that attracts you, both in your own past as well as in your latest novel? I think that the true measure of how civilized a society is is how it treats and cares for those most powerless, economically and politically. I also have long been interested in women and the law -- how women, in order to survive, are often at odds with the law. It was true when I first taught poetry in the pris- ons and I believe still is -- that women tend to be convicted of so-called “victimless” crimes -- drugs, prostitution, shop-lifting. There is no middle crime, or rarely -- no breaking and entering, no grand larceny, armed robbery. But women’s crime, despite having little “middle” ground, goes from victimless crime to ho- micide -- killing the pimp, the boyfriend, the husband, even the
RECENT FACULTY PUBLICATIONS
Aimee Bender, “Interval” (short story). Conjunctions ______, Rev. of “Vito Acconci: Conceptual Poetry: Old and (forthcoming). New” (followed by German translation), in Parkett 78 (Dec. 2006): 168-76. ,The Women. A Novel. (Forthcoming 2008). T.C. Boyle ______, “Torch Song: Edward Timms, Karl Kraus, Leo Braudy, “Eastwood’s WWII Diptych.” Film Quarterly (forth- Apocalyptic Satirist: The Post War Crisis.” coming Summer 2007). Bookforum 13.2 (Jun.-Sept. 2006): 20-21. ______, “War Literature.” International Encyclopedia of Men ______, Rev. of The Oxford Book of American Poetry, David and Masculinities, vol. 1 M. Flood, J.K. Gardiner, B. Lehman, ed., in TLS (1 Sept. 2006): 10-11. Pease, and K. Pringle, eds. London: Routledge 2007. ______, Interview with Alcir Pecora:, “Chronopios.” Revista ______, “Film Fanatic: The Professor,” Cherwell 24 (Oxford, di Litteratura (Mar 2005). England), October 20, 2006. ______, Interview with David Clippinger, The Argotist online. 2005. Bill Handley, paper edition of True West: Authenticity and the American West. (co-editor), U of Nebraska P. 2007. John Carlos Rowe, “Our Invisible Man: The Aesthetic ______, “The Vanishing American.” America First: Naming the Genealogy of U.S. Diversity,” A Companion to the Nation in U.S. Film. Mandy Merck, ed. Routledge, American Novel. Alfred Bendixen, ed. Oxford: 2007: 44-64. Blackwell (in press). ______, “European Lessons in Imperialism: A Letter to Mark Irwin, Two poems in American Poetry Review. America,” Transatlantic Studies (UK), special issue. ______, Two poems in Denver Quarterly. Charles Gannon, ed. (forthcoming 2007). ______, Two poems in American Letters and Commentary. ______, “Interpellation, Urbanization, and Globalization in ‘John Heather James, “Ovid in English Renaissance Literature Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer.” Toward a New Metro- (excluding Shakespeare).” Blackwell Companion to politanism: Reconstituting Public Culture, Urban Citi- Ovid. Peter E. Knox, ed. (forthcoming 2007). zenship, and the Multicultural Imaginary in New York ______, Chapter 11: “Shakespeare and Classicism.” The Cam- and Berlin. Günter H. Lenz, Friedrich Ulfers, and Antje bridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry. Patrick Dallmann, eds. Heidelberg Universitätsverlag 2006: Cheney, ed. Cambridge UP, 2007: 202-220. 349-358. ______, “Politics, Sentiment, and Literature in Nineteenth-Cen- Susan McCabe, “Platonic Oxygen: Brenda Hillman’s Pieces of tury America.” Blackwell’s Companion to American Lit- Epic in the Air,” Denver Quarterly 41.2 (2006): 65-71. erature. Paul Lauter, ed. New York: Blackwell’s ______, “Whither Sexuality and Gender? ‘What That Sign (forthcoming). Signifies’,” Pacific Coast Philology 41 (Fall 2006): ______,“Space, the Final Frontier: Poe’s Eureka as Imperial 26-31. Fantasy.” Poe Studies/ Dark Romanticism, special ______, “‘To Become Something Broken’: Jorie Graham’s issue in honor of G. R. Thompson. Steven Frye and Overlord,” Kenyon Review (Fall 2006): 186-95. Eric Link, eds. (forthcoming). ______, Poem “Sybil,” Iowa Review (Fall 2006). ______, “Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho.” American ______, Poem “Descartes’ Nightmare,” American Poetry Quarterly (forthcoming June 2007). Review (January 2006): 7. ______, Poem “Rimbaud at the Railway Station,” American Karen Tongson, “The Light that Never Goes Out: Butch Poetry Review (January 2006): 8. Intimacies in Lesser Los Angeles” in The Blackwell ______, Poem “Nightmare under Red White and Blue,” Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans- American Poetry Review (January 2006): 7. gender Studies, George Haggerty and Molly ______, Poem “Code Orange,” American Poetry Review McGarry, eds. Blackwell (forthcoming Spring 2007). (January 2006): 7. ______, Review of Elana Levine’s Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television (Duke UP, Viet Thanh Nguyen,“Speak of the Dead, Speak of Viet Nam: 2007). International Journal of Communication. The Ethics and Aesthetics of Minority Discourse.” The
Alice Bardan, “‘Enter Freely, and of Your Own Will:’ Cinemat- Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660-1789 (Cambridge ic Representations of Post-Socialist Transnational UP 2006), in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journeys,” Transnational Feminism in Film and Journal (forthcoming). Media. Katarzyna Marciniak, Aniko Imre, and Aine O’Healy, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. David Tomkins, Rev. essay on Jonathan Ellis’s Art and Memory in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop (Ashgate Ruth Blandón, “Jayne Cortez,” Encyclopedia of African 2006), Brian M. Reed’s Hart Crane After His Lights American Women Writers (2 Vols.) Yolanda (Alabama UP 2006), and Lytle Shaw’s Frank O’Hara: Williams Page, ed. Greenwood P, 2007. 121-26. The Poetics of Coterie (Iowa UP 2006), in American ______, Bibliography, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Carla Literature (forthcoming 2007). Kaplan, ed. W.W. Norton, 2006. ______, Rev. of Mark Wollaeger’s Modernism, Media, ______, Featured roundtable contributor, Jessica Hoffman’s and Propaganda: British Narrative From 1900 to “Who’s That Wavin’ That Flag? On the Signs, 1945 (Princeton UP 2006), in The European Legacy: Stories, and Strategies of the Current Immigrant Toward New Paradigms (Journal of the International Rights Movement,” Nobody Passes Rejecting the Society for the Study of European Ideas) Rules of Gender and Conformity. Mattilda a.k.a (forthcoming 2007). Matt Bernstein Sycamore, ed. Seal Press, 2006. ______, “Introduction: John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samar- 49-63. ra.” The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel. Abby H.P. Werlock, ed. New York: Facts Amaranth Borsuk, Natural Frequencies, a chapbook of on File, 2006. poems, in The Drunken Boat www.thedrunkenboat. ______,“Introduction: Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, An com (Winter 2006). gel.” The Facts on File Companion to the American ______,Poems in Lumina (2006); Hotel Amerika (Fall 2006); Novel. Abby H.P. Werlock. New York: Facts on File, Denver Quarterly (forthcoming); Columbia: A 2006. Journal of Literature and Art (forthcoming); CRATE (forthcoming); and POOL (forthcoming). Annalisa Zox-Weaver, “At Home With Hitler: Janet Flanner’s ‘Führer’ Profiles forThe New Yorker.” New German Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, book Paper Pavilion. White Pine Critique (forthcoming). Press (forthcoming October 2007). ______, “Libretto.” Contemporary Voices from the Eastern Alice Marie White, “The Austen Family and William Chute’s World. W.W. Norton (forthcoming 2008). 1806 Hampshire Election.” The Jane Austen Society ______, Poems “Kisaeng” and “Filibuster.” MiPOesias Report for 2007 (forthcoming in June/July 2007). (Spring 2007).
Yetta Howard, Rev. of Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenol- ogy: Orientation, Objects, Others (Duke UP, 2006), in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal VIRGINIA TUFTE: (forthcoming). ______, Rev. of Christine E. Coffman’s Insane Passions: SUBSTANCE AND STYLE Lesbianism and Psychosis in Literature and Film (Wesleyan UP, 2006), in Women’s Studies: Some styles never go out of fashion, and An Interdisciplinary Journal (forthcoming). substantive yet beautiful writing is one of them. So Virginia Tufte, one of Eng- , Poem “At Pico and Arlington,” Clackamas Brett Myhren lish’s most distinguished emeritus profes- Literary Review (forthcoming). sors, has recently demonstrated in Artful ______,Essay “Crashing Los Angeles,” Speechless Sentences: Syntax as Style (Graphics Magazine (forthcoming). 2006). “I cannot put this book down,” one Laura Long Scheurer, Rev. of Susan S. Williams’ reviewer writes. “It is beautifully bound Reclaiming Authorship: Literary Women in America, and published. [Tufte’s] insight into sen- 1850–1900 (U of Pennsylvania P, 2006), in tence structure and style expose the sheer Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal beauty of the English language. She talks (forthcoming). of participles, prepositions, nouns, verbs, phrases, all as if they are musical notes in the great sym- Kathryn Strong, “Pamela’s Visible Virtue.” The Commercial phony of the sentence, the orchestration of the paragraph.” Gaze in the Long Eighteenth Century. Mariah Adin and Tara Czechowski, eds. New York: AMS P USC Department of Art History’s Eunice Howe explains that (forthcoming). she’s “given this book to friends who have given it to theirs. It’s ______, Rev. of Katharine Kittredge, ed., Lewd & Notori- a book that sits on my library table instead of my bookshelf. ous: Female Transgression in the 18th Century (U I like to pick it up, and flip through the pages until I settle on of Michigan P, 2003), in The 18th Century: A Current an appealing passage” of Tufte’s “spare and elegant” prose. Bibliography. Philadelphia: American Society for A specialist in Milton and 17th Century English Literature, Tufte 18th Century Studies. Vol. 29 (forthcoming). was a professor of English at USC from 1964 to her retirement ______, Rev. of Susan Staves’s A Literary History of in 1989. STUDENTS WIN FACULTY AND STUDENTS DISSERTATION AWARDS RECEIVE RECOGNITION Grad student Alice Barden received a partial fellowship to participate in a two-week graduate course “Media Globaliza- Arce, William, “A Nation in Uniform: The Construction of tion and Post-Communist European Identities” at Central Nation in Latino/Chicano War Literature, 1951- European Summer U in Budapest (July 2007). 1976.” Final Summer College Dissertation Fellowship (2007) Novelist T.C. Boyle’s short story “Balto” (Paris Review) was selected for 2007 Best American Stories. He also received “As She Fled: Women, Space and Movement Amy Braden, the 2007 Evil Companions Literary Award—prior recipients in- in Early English Literature.” English Department clude Richard Ford, Annie Proulx, Sandra Cisneros and Tom Dissertation Fellowship. McGuane – from the Denver Public Library, for Talk Talk. Brooke Carlson, “Printing Pleasing Profit: The Crafting of Professor Leo Braudy was tapped by the American Film In- Capital Selves and Sales in the English Early Mod- stitute to serve as Juror for their “Ten Best Films of 2006” and ern.” English Department Dissertation Fellowship. “100 Best American Films of All Times” lists. Jennifer Conary, “Beautiful Lost Causes: Quixotic Reform ABD Brook Carlson was a Participant in the Huntington and the Victorian Novel.” Feuchtwanger Fellowship. Library’s English Renaissance Paleography Seminar 2007.
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, “Paper Pavilion” (White Pine Press It’s been a good run for graduate student Jennifer Dobbs of 2007) and “Articulate Absences: Transnational late, whose book Paper Pavilion was wininer of the White Pine Adoptee Routes.” Final Year Fellowship Press Poetry Prize, as well as finalist for the New Issues Press Prize in Poetry. Dobbs received a scholarship from the Sum- Nora Gilbert, “Obscene Gestures: Circumventing Moral mer Literary Seminars, was a finalist for the Inkwell Magazine Censorship in the Victorian Novel and Classic Poetry Prize, and won the Phi Kappa Phi Student Recognition Hollywood Film.” The Graduate School / Beaumont Award. Fellowship. Recipient of a summer grant from the Institute on CA and the Yetta Howard, “Is She a Dyke or Is She Just Ugly?: Pejora- West at the Huntington, Tanya Heflin lauds the program’s tive Identities and the Anti-Aesthetics of Lesbian mentorship and strongly urges more English graduate stu- ism.” English Department Dissertation Fellowship. dents working on California, the West, and Native American Jennifer Lynn Malia, “Assassins, Anarchists & Revolutionar- studies to apply for the Institute. ies: Gothic Terror and Terrorism in Literature.” A competitive semester of paid faculty leave from El Camino Feuchtwanger Fellowship. College was awarded to frequent visiting professor William L. Marci R. McMahon, “Contested Geographies: Chicana James to research “whiteness” as linguistic term of delimita- Domesticity as a Critical Discourse in U.S. Literature tion and boundary. and Culture.” Final Summer College Dissertation Recent PhD Samuel Park’s screenplay adaptation of his novel, Fellowship. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, received an Oufest 2006 Screenwrit- ing Lab fellowship; it was also a Nicholl Fellowship quarter-fi- Laura Long Scheurer, “Hazardous Engagements: Intermar- nalist, a One in Ten competition finalist, and was workshopped riage in Late Nineteenth/ Early Twentieth Century in the Film Independent Screenwriting and Directing Labs. The American Literary and Visual Texts.” English Depart- screenplay has been adapted into a short and has played nu- ment Dissertation Fellowship. merous festivals, including San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, and Hande Tekdemir, “Collective Memory: Istanbul at the Cross Southwest International Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals and is roads of History, Space, and Memory.” English currently available on DVD in “Boys’ Briefs 3,” an anthology of Department Dissertation Fellowship. gay shorts released by Picture This! Entertainment
Alison Tymoczko, “Writing under the Auspices of Eros: Prof. Susan McCabe’s poem, “Sybil” (Fall 2006), received the Female Encounters with Cupid from Ovid to distinction of “runner-up” in the Iowa Review Contest. Spenser.” Huntington Library Dissertation Fellow- Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen has been honored on both aca- ship. demic and creative fronts. The ASA and the Japanese Assoc. for American Studies awarded him a grant for a lecture tour in Japan (June 2007). His story, “The Professor’s Library,” won the 2007 Fiction Prize at Gulf Coast Magazine. Viet has just University of Southern California learned he’s received a month-long residency at the Djerassi College of Letters, Arts & Sciences artists program in Woodside, CA, near Santa Cruz, for sum- Department of English mer 2008. Taper Hall of Humanities, 404 3501 Trousdale Parkway As MLA President presiding over the 2006 Convention, distin- University Park guished Scholar in Residence and Lecturer Marjorie Perloff Los Angeles, CA 90089-0354 served as Chair of Programs, and organized the Forum, “The Sound of Poetry, the Poetry of Sound” and related workshops continued on pg. 9 FACULTY & STUDENTS RECOGNITION RITES OF PASSAGE: continued from pg. 8 RECENT PHD DEFENSES and programs in Philadelphia this December. Jeffrey Bohn, “Wonder Boys: Tales of the Extraordinarily Adjunct creative writing instructor Cecilia Woloch served as Queer Adolescent.” Faculty at the Foothill Writers Conference, CA (July 2007) and Chair: Tania Modleski (December 2005) Director of the Summer Poetry session in Idyllwild, CA (July 2007). She also received an grant for Innovative Undergradu- Ava Chin, Critical Essay: “Writing the ‘Incomprehensible’: ate Teaching for “The Writer in the Community,” in collabora- Representations of 9/11 In Contemporary Litera- tion with Aimee Bender and JEP, Center for Excellence in ture”; Creative Dissertation: “Daughter” Teaching, USC (Summer 2007). Chair: David St. John (July 2006) Recently appointed an associate editor of Women’s Studies: Jeffrey Chisum, Critical Essay: “A Million Miles From God, An Interdisciplinary Journal, PhD Annalisa Zox-Weaver is Three Feet From Hell: Aesthetics And The Literature serving as Organizer for MSA 9, the Modern Studies Associa- Of Nevada: Creative: “Lahontan: A Novel” tion convention being held at Long Beach this November (un- Chair: Bill Handley, T.C. Boyle (April 2007) der the auspices of MSA President .) Susan McCabe Carol Bunch Davis, “Troubling the Boundaries: Alice Marie White has received a Jane Austen Society (UK) ‘Blacknesses’, Performance and the African Travel Bursery to spend a month in England completing re- American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s” search for her dissertation this summer. Alice was also inter- Chair: David Román (June 2007) viewed by Gayle Macdonald of the “Toronto Globe and Mail” Bridget Hoida, Critical Essay: “Plotting the Geographic for an article on “Jane’s Addiction” (17 March 2007). Imaginary: Nostalgic Impulse in the California Four English faculty received prestigious university-wide Novel”; Creative: “So L.A.” (Novel). grants under the auspices of the “Provost’s Award for Advanc- Chair: Bill Handley, Percival Everett (June 2007) ing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences”: Emily Laura Johnson, Critical Essay: “Against Aesthetic Profit: the Anderson, for her book project, “Staging the Passions” in 18th Self as Other in Larry Levis’s Elegy”; Creative: century women’s drama and fiction; Judith Jackson Fossett “Mural of the Vanishing People” for a Center for New World Slavery and Americans; Rebecca Chair: David St. John (April-June 2006) Lemon, for her new project on “Addiction” in the Early Modern period; Heather James for her manuscript on Ovid in Renais- Kevin Laam, “Borrowed Heaven: Early Modern Devotion and sance politics and poetry. the Art of Happiness” Chair: Heather James (March 2006) Four graduate students were awarded summer research grants from English’s Collier-MacKellar-Giles endowed ac- Michael Miklos, “Undermining Common Sense: Racial counts: Amaranth Borsuk, Alice Bardan, Kathryn Strong, Legislation, Comedy, and the Family.” and Jessica Bremmer. Chair: Jim Kincaid (May 2007) Samuel Park, “The Performance of Race in Asian American MAGILL FELLOW Drama” Chair: Leo Braudy (February 2006). Jenny Stoever, “The Contours of the Sonic Color-Line: JORIE GRAHAM Slavery, Segregation, and the Cultural Politics of Listening” Chair: Carla Kaplan (June 2007) Annalisa Zox-Weaver, “Seeing Through Evil: Women Modernists and Their Fascist Dictators” Director: Joseph Boone (May 2007)
HOLLYWOOD HORIZONS
Congratulations go to teaching adjunct, Peter Nickowitz, who has learned that his screenplay, “The Obit Writer,” has been selected for the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival’s Fast Track Program. It has also been selected for the 2007 No Bor- ders Program, which is part of the IFP Market in NYC. The screenplay will be directed by Bill Oliver and produced by Susan A. Stover. Nick- owitz has published a critical study of Elizabeth Named the twentieth-first recipient of USC English’s Magill Poetry Reading award, the Bishop, has had one-act plays produced, and is poet Jorie Graham—pictured with Carol Muske-Dukes and Leo Braudy—gave the annual Magill Reading in Doheny Library this past fall. Graham’s The Dream of the circulating a volume of poetry for publication. Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize. She is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University.
RECENT CONFERENCES AND READINGS
Emily Anderson, Invited lecture, “Fiction ‘as’ Performance: Jillian Burcar, “Slipping Between the Cracks: Exploring Voy- An Eighteenth-Century Perspective on Grammar, euristic Fissures Created in Blue By Kiriko Nanan- Genre, and Selfhood.” U of Pennsylvania, Eigh- an,” Text/ure: Form Content, and Materiality (annual teenth-Century Colloquium (Sept. 2006). AEGS conference), USC (Mar. 2007). ______, Invited lecture, “Mansfield Park and the ‘Womanly ______, Poem “Recently Living Rabbits” set to music by Style’ of Fiction,” Center for the Study of Women, composer Ben Phelps, performed by the Contempo- UCLA (Jan. 2007). rary Music Ensemble (Oct. 2006). ______, Panel organizer and chair, “Pitching the Eighteenth “Problematic Pairings and Pained Purses: Century: A Pedagogical Roundtable.” American Brooke Carlson, Shakespeare and the Purchase of Love in Twelfth Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Atlanta, GA Night,” Shakespeare Association of America confer- (Mar. 2007). ence, San Diego, CA (Apr. 2007). ______,“She Stoops to Strategy: Goldsmith, Cowley, and the Performance of Gender.” American Society for Thea Cervone, Presented at 41st International Congress on Eighteenth-Century Studies.Atlanta, GA (Mar. 2007). Medieval Studies. ______, Presented at USC-Huntington Early Modern British Jennifer Barager, “Sex and the City: Tuning into Postfemi- History Seminar. nist Television,” Production: Critical Race Analysis and Literary Studies, NYU (Feb. 2007). Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, “Hello, My Name Is: Televising Empathy in Korean Adoptee Birth Search Inter- “Quo vadis, European Cinema?” Conference Alice Bardan, views,” Documenting Lives conference, College on “Perspectives and Challenges for Cinema and English Association, New Orleans (Apr. 2007). Media Studies,” Vienna (Jun. 2007). ______, “Transnationalism and Adoptee Identity Routes,” ______, “Welcome to Dreamland:” Pawel Pawlikowski Asian American Adoption, East Coast Asian Student and British Realism, Oxford (Jul. 2007). Union Conference, Yale U (Feb. 2007). Aimee Bender, “Wondrous Strange.” Key West Literary Michael du Plessis, “Decadent Commodities and Narrative Seminar. Objects in Gustav Meyrink’s ‘Strange Tales’,” “‘A Ruth Blandón, Roundtable participant, “Who’s That Wavin’ Leap from the Temple of Culture into the Abyss’: That Flag? On the Signs, Stories, and Strategies of Decadence in Central and Eastern Europe,” Harri- the Current Immigrant Rights Movement,” Skylight man Institute, Columbia U (Mar. 2007). Books, LA (Feb. 2007). Alice Echols, Roundtable on music and politics (with Barry Amaranth Borsuk, “The Text/ure of the Page:Altered Egos Shank and Penny Von Eschen), ASA conference, Found, Purloined and Plagiarized Writing,” Text/ure: Oakland, CA (Oct. 2006). Form Content, and Materiality (annual AEGS confer- ______, “More, More More,” Inaugural lecture, Rutgers ence), USC (Mar. 2007). English lecture series, Newark, NJ (Mar. 2007). ______,Reading, with Jillian Burcar, Bryan Hurt, and Saba ______, “Hot Stuff: Donna Summer and Sexual Politics in Razvi, The Loudest Voice, LA CA (Sept. 2006). the Seventies,” Northeastern U Women’s Studies lecture series, Boston, MA (Mar. 2007). T.C. Boyle, Appearance in conjunction with city-wide read- ______, Roundtable on Ellen Willis’ legacy, Socialist Schol- ing of The Tortilla Curtain, in Silicon Valley, Laguna ars Conference, New York, NY (Mar. 2007). Beach, and U Alaska, Anchorage. ______, Invited participant, Columbia U Woman and ______,Reading at Mark Taper Forum, LA (Apr. 2007). Gender Seminar (Nov. 2006). ______,Reading at LA Times Book Fair, UCLA (Apr. 2007). Bill Handley, “The Aesthetics of Estrangement—or, an Anato- Leo Braudy, Keynote address, “Secular Anointings: Fame, my of Feeling Western,” Past President’s Address, Celebrity, and Charisma in the First Century of Mass Western Lit. Assoc., Boise, ID (Oct. 2006). Culture,” NYU/Rutgers-Newark Conference, Con- ______, “The Vanishing American,” Symposium of the structing Charisma: Fame, Celebrity and Power in Media Studies Group, U of London, London, Eng- 19th Century Europe, New York (Apr. 2007). land (Feb. 2007). ______, Moderator, “Profiles in Terror,” Los Angeles Times ______,“Having It Both Ways: Brokeback Mountain and Festival of Books, UCLA (Apr. 2007). some Paradoxes of the Western” U of Vienna, ______, “Jewish Stardom: Celebrity and Freedom,” “Acting Vienna, Austria (May 2007). Jewish” Conference, UCLA (Apr. 2007). ______, Commentator, Superman: The Ultimate Collection, Amelia F. Hardin, “‘Eye to eye opposed:’ Self-knowledge and Warner Bros., 2007. Specular Theory in Troilus and Cressida,” Shake- ______, Commentator, The Dirty Dozen, Warner Brothers, speare Assoc. of America, San Diego, CA (2007). 2007. Christian Hite, “‘Pleasure is a Very Difficult Behavior:’ A Note ______, Moderator: “Hollywood Left and Right: Anti- on Foucault and the Auto-Erotic.”On Difficulty:Tufts Fascism, Anti-Communism and Anti-Semitism be- U English Graduate Organization Conference, fore WW II,” USC Casden Inst. (Mar. 2007). Medford, MA (Oct. 2006). continued on pg. 11
10 continued from pg. 10 Mark Irwin, Presentation, AWP Conference, (Mar. 2007). ______, “Writing as Rewriting: Brazilian Concrete Poetry,” Yale Symposium on Concrete Poetry (Nov. 2006). “Sentencing Ovid.” Plenary Session of the Heather James, ______, “The Poetic Practice of Paul Celan” (Reinhard Shakespeare Assoc. of America. San Diego, CA Kuhn Lecture), Brown U (Nov. 2006). (Apr. 2007). ______, “The Futurist Manifesto” (Getty Lecture), Robert ______, Organizer and chair, Spenser’s Acoustic Worlds, Creeley conference (Oct. 2006). International Spenser Society Session, MLA, ______, Speaker, “70 Years of Directed Studies,” Yale Philadelphia, PA (Dec. 2006). Conference, SUNY Buffalo. ______, “Grace Notes.” Conference in Honor of Harry Berger, Jr., U South Carolina (Oct. 2006). John Carlos Rowe, “The Death of Francis Scott Key and Other Dirges:Music and the New American Studies,” Conference Host and Main Organizer for Susan McCabe, America Without Borders, USC (Oct. 2006). CoSponsored USC and CSU Long Beach ______, “Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho,” Carver Modernist Studies Assoc. 9, Long Beach (Nov. Lecture in the Humanities, U Iowa (Oct. 2006). 2007). ______, “Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Idaho,” Soka ______, Invited paper “The Bryher Age: Modern Female University; Aliso Viejo, CA (Feb. 2007). Husband,” International Association of U Professors, Lund, Sweden (Aug. 2007). Laura Long Scheurer, “Love and Trouble on the Homefront: ______,Participation in MOCA’s Feminaissance Conference Film and Interracial Romance in the Post-WW II on Women, Feminism and Experimental Writing Period,” American Comparative Literature Assoc. (Apr. 2007). Conference, Puebla, Mexico (Apr. 2007). ______, “In and Out of the Archives: Bryher, Illegitimacy and “Sex and Syntax,” “Shakespeare’s Couples, the Melancholy of Money,” panel presentation at Bruce Smith, Shakespeare’s Couplings,” day-long workshop for Modernist Studies Assoc. 8, Tulsa (Oct. 2006). LA-area high-school teachers, UCLA’s Center for Brett Myhren, “A Historical Los Angeles: Booster Future, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (May 2007). Ethnic Past,” Huntington-USC Brown Bag Seminar ______, “Shakespeare’s Noise,” Deutsche Shakespeare on Western US History (Apr. 2007). Gesellschaft annual meeting, Bochum, Germany ______, “Invisible Past, Inevitable Future: Nineteenth- (Apr. 2007). Century Los Angeles,” (dis)junctions: Malappropria- ______,“Theory for Fun and Profit,” “New Ways of Teaching tion Nation, UC Riverside (Apr. 2007). Old Texts” session, Shakespeare Assoc. of ______,“The Imagery of Social Erasure: Visual Materials in America meeting, San Diego, CA (Apr. 2007). Nineteenth-Century Los Angeles,” Text/ure: Form “Clarissa and the Eye of Fashion,” Content, and Materiality (annual AEGS conference), Kathryn Strong, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies USC (Mar. 2007). conference, Atlanta, GA (Mar. 2007). Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Ghostly Stories, Haunted Memories: Panel organizer, “Modernism and the South Korea and Viet Nam,” ASA (Oct. 2006). David Tomkins, Frontier,” Modernist Studies Assoc. 9th Annual, Long ______, “Not Like Going Home: On Ambivalent Returns to Beach, CA (Nov. 2007). the Source,” “Look East” Symposium, USC (Apr. ______, Invited presenter, “The ‘Lost Generation’ & the 2007). Generation of Loss: Ernest Hemingway’s Materiality ______, “Little Shop of Horrors: Harrell Fletcher and the War of Absence.” ALA Conf. Boston, MA (May 2007). Remnants Museum,” LA> 11 RECENT CONFERENCES AND READINGS continued from pg. 11 Adrienne Walser, “Global Tracking: Technological and Bodily Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Movement in Jia Zhanke’s The World,” American Conference, “Speaking With Authority,” U Kentucky, Comp. Lit. Conference, Puebla, Mexico (Spr. 2007). Lexington (April 2007). ______, “‘The Modern World/ The Distances Are Too Far’: ______, Panel moderator, “Gender and Origin in Shelley’s Blaise Cendrars Tries to Take it All the Way in ‘The Frankenstein” Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Prose of the Trans-Siberian and Little Jeanne of British Women Writers Conference, “Speaking With France,’” 20th Century Literature Conference, Authority,” U Kentucky, Lexington (April 2007). Louisville, KY (Spr. 2007). Cecilia Woloch, Panel on Polish-American Culture and Alice Marie White, “Catherine Hubback at the Jane Austen Polish-American Poetry, American Historical House Museum,” Joint conference of the Chawton Association, Atlanta, GA (Jan. 2007). House Library, the U of Southampton English ______,Director 7th Paris [France] Poetry Workshop (May Department, and Goucher College, “Collectors and 2007). Collecting: Private Collections and their Roles in ______,Poetry reading, Maison des Ecrivains, Paris, (May Libraries,” Chawton House Library, UK (July 2007). 2007); Krakow, Poland; Rzeszow, Poland Sandomi- ______, “Catherine Hubback Cultivates a Governess Plot erz Festival of Music & Poetry, Sandomierz, Poland for Jane Austen’s Emma Watson,” Eighteenth- and (all Jun. 2007). WIGGINS’ NEW NOVEL A TRIUMPH OF VISION English Professor Marianne Wiggin’s eighth novel and tenth Wiggins’ central preoccupation, Smith continues, “is the human work of fiction, The Shadow Catcher, published by Simon and journey through territory and time. Curtis’s and Marianne’s fa- Shuster this summer, is receiving rave reviews across the na- thers both took their most important journeys alone. ‘It’s im- tion. possible to know for sure if they were running from or running to,’ muses the narrator. ‘Huck never says where or what he’s A daring blend of various genres—his- bound for, he just needs to go. Make tracks. Get outta Dodge. torical fiction, contemporary “Califor- Hit the highway. Avoid, elude, escape Aunt Sally.’ “ nia novel,” memoir, and travelogue in which photographs strategically insert- Jane Smiley in the “Los Angeles ed in the text become crucial elements Times” calls Wiggins “one of our in “telling” the story—The Shadow most adventuresome and enterpris- Catcher uses myriad angles of vision ing novelists, an author who has to evoke the elusive life of Edward S. wrestled time and time again with Curtis, renowned for his monumen- strange settings, shattering events, tal, idealized and, as Wiggins shows, questions of survival and its costs . . “doctored” photographs of native . Coincidences begin to accumulate, Americans. always a challenge for an author, but Wiggins embraces them the Wendy Smith, reviewing the novel for the “Washington Post,” way anyone would — she marvels writes that “There are passages . . . so piercingly beautiful that at them, comments on them, follows I put the book down, shook my head and simply said, ‘Wow.’ them up . . . The Shadow Catcher is Buoyed by Wiggins’ gorgeous prose, we soar in the very first both mesmerizing and convincing.” scene, as she imagines flying over California, ‘on the edge, at night, after the coyotes end their braying’ . . . [and] we al- The “San Francisco Chronicle” de- ready know that this restless, challenging author is once again scribes the novel as a “vertiginous . . . puzzle-box that rewards asking us to contemplate the deeper meaning of our national dives into murky interpretive waters: The more effort you de- character and destiny, the ways the American landscape has vote to thinking the book through, the greater its rewards,” and shaped us and we have shaped it.” Robert Woodward in “The New York Times” raves: Curtis’s history is told primarily from the perspective of his Wiggins is so fluent a stylist — I tore through the book in one sitting — that questions about what’s true and what isn’t don’t interfere wife, Clara, and Clara’s story is juxtaposed with the first-per- with the rapid pace of the interlocking stories or the aching theme son narration of a contemporary writer named “Marianne,” of absent and unknowable fathers idolized by their love-starved whose desire to find out how a dying man in Las Vegas has children . . . Fictive memoir? Fact-based novel? I don’t care what come to assume her father’s identity leads to a road trip that she calls this book. I’ll gladly read it again. not only intersects with Curtis’s personal quest but becomes a profound mediation on the darker side of the American west- “According to conventional wisdom,” Yvonne Zipp reminds us ern mythos. Taking Huck Finn’s declaration to “light out for the at the end her review in the “Christian Science Monitor,” “a territories” as her springboard, Wiggins presses that desire to picture is worth roughly 1,000 words. In The Shadow Catcher, its conclusion. the assessed value is considerably higher. And what words they are.” 12