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Reader Response
While this is more of an interstitial post, we’ve rearranged the deck chairs of the Affinity and wanted to provide the briefest of briefings: Since not even the most rabid fan would stumble upon easychain.wordpress.com—which was meant to serve as a placeholder—a new domain has been secured to snare the sozzled /lit/ users who opt… — read more
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The State of the Evan Dara Affinity
A notification from WordPress reminded me that this quixotic, Google-averse site turned 1 last month, with zero fanfare. The mission—which was cobbled together during last year’s Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Falcons—remains the same: to offer a forward operating base for supporters of Evan Dara, with an emphasis on collecting the articles, links,… — read more
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American Literature in Transition: 1990-2000
Today’s quick Twitter thread on the publication of American Literature in Transition: 1990-2000, featuring Stephen Burn’s chapter on “Encyclopedic Fictions,” which offers a moderately deep dive into Evan Dara’s The Lost Scrapbook. The collection also includes contributions from Dara scholars Jeremy Green and Patrick O’Donnell, although they don’t cover him this time out. It appears that… — read more
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A Podcast on The Lost Scrapbook
Out of the estimated 250,000 podcasts that make up the podsphere, and the over 8 million episodes they’ve collectively generated, I don’t believe any have placed The Lost Scrapbook under the spotlight. Until now. The Tale Told By an Idiot podcast devoted episode 5 of their fresh endeavor to Evan Dara and TLS, and do it justice,… — read more
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Charlie Harris
WGLT reported that Charlie Harris passed away, which is hard news for anyone who gives a fig about good writing and provocative literature. While Charlie may be best known as the person with the good sense to hire David Foster Wallace at Illinois State University, he championed many other sages and stylists who were/are ahead… — read more
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A Reading of The Lost Scrapbook
While updating the resources for this site, I included an expanded entry for a series of posts from a pseudonymous blogger named Ba Jin. Back in the summer of 2015, he offered a memorable chronicle of his first reading of The Lost Scrapbook, which is laced with sharp insights and the inevitable questions that arise… — read more
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Evergreen Eco-Fiction
This morning’s edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch carried a story which is all too familiar for fans of The Lost Scrapbook. Reporters unearthed documents showing that 13 million pounds of hazardous waste—”bead waste,” containing cadmium, chromium, lead and other heavy metals used in paint pigments—had been illegally stored in a weed-choked warehouse on a… — read more
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Decisions Made Too Fast
This week, I’ve been consumed by the works of a pair of powerful storytellers, whose devotion to detail in chronicling their respective historical sagas is inspiring and daunting. The first is Lacy M. Johnson’s The Fallout, which covers the cover-up of the radioactive legacy of the Manhattan Project, much of which is sitting in the bottom… — read more
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Postscript on Dara and Gaddis
Last month, I sketched out the case that Manuel Puig may have had more to do with the look and sound of Evan Dara’s novels than William Gaddis. But, while setting it up, I wrote that he had broken his silence on only one occasion, in swatting away Tom LeClair’s query about the influence of… — read more
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American Literature in Transition, 1990–2000
After reading the accounts of the attendees of this year’s 4th annual David Foster Wallace Conference, held once again at Illinois State University, it’s clear that the state of the union of DFW studies is strong. The papers, presentations, and podcasts sowed more seeds for Wallace scholars to nurture, while the collision of conversations sparked… — read more
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The Evan Dara Affinity 