Neil Gaiman is perhaps best known for his comic book series The Sandman, but he has a prolific body of work that includes one of my favorite novels, American Gods. To best describe Neil Gaiman’s writing style, I would probably equate him with DB blog guest Jerry Williams, except without the supernatural machinations. Gaiman, in American Gods, and Williams in his DB entries are quintessential Guy’s Guys. But I digress. The real reason I bring up American Gods is because of the book’s central premise: the relevance of tradition.
Tradition has never had a good track record with posterity. It’s a given that each successive generation will want to forge its own set of values, its own identity. It’s also a paradoxical given that these generations will want to preserve those ways for the future even with the awareness of their impermanence. In Gaiman’s novel, the Old World gods migrated to America hell-bent on asserting their place in the future. The thematic overtone is obvious: no one wants to be forgotten. Also: we all came from somewhere.
In a time of contraction, what worries me the most is that all the old ways will be clumped together as a single scapegoat. It’s true that our elected leaders failed us and that businesses merrily shirked their providence over the public trust. But a broken system shouldn’t penalize the decline of print media, for example. Newspapers constitute a very unassuming scapegoat: the elephant in the room that’s also a dinosaur. Everyone who reads the news reads it online now, right? And as for books, who wants to carry several cumbersomely thick books when you can fit hundreds into your e-reader? In fact, e-readers and digital media as a whole, although they are certainly important measures of progress, are tenuous salves for societal ills. We hail the Kindle and the iPad as keystones of the future even as economic chasms gape ever wider, shoving societal boundaries against one another like so many commuters in crowded city bus until a final, rotten contraction that results in empty suburbs, shuttered businesses, and a public so toxically cynical that everyone is a candidate for the Communist Next Door. At our insolence, the gods of the Old World tremble with laughter. We have made progress with our innovations, but we have not earned that progress.
In 2003, DB was a pioneer that sought to bridge tradition and progress. At that point, we were already on our fifth issue. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lisa Russ Spaar called to mind DB’s basic premise: the “provocative juxtaposition [of] emerging and established voices, traditional forms of representation and works of art endemic to the Web, and international and domestic artists”. DB’s mission certainly painted broad strokes, but as Ravi, our Founding Editor, said in Ms. Spaar’s article, what makes the Web so much better than its predecessor is precisely that access to broader, more diverse audiences. Said Ravi in the article: “Even the most salable print literary journal has perhaps a print run of 5,000. That’s how many hits we sometimes get in a week (emphasis Ms. Spaar’s).”
The written word has always had a tenuous relationship with pragmatism. As discussed in a recent edition of Talk of the Nation, if it doesn’t have crossover appeal, then the written word has very little monetary, if not practical, value. Consequently, poetry is the literary art form that gets the shirt shrift. Novels can be turned into movies, and lyricists differ from poets because the lyricists has musical talent to inspire a catchy — and marketable — tune. In contrast, poetry is more esoteric, the domain of laureates and coffee houses.
In her article, Ms. Spaar, who has had work published in DB, wrote that she began discussing “the fate of poetry in the electronic age” as early as 1993. At that time, the nascent cyberspace culture was gradually but doggedly taking shape from the humble beginnings of Bulletin Board Systems and “legacy” services such as GEnie, Delphi, and an embryonic entity known as America Online. As largely local phenomenon, bulletin board systems and dial-up providers naturally and necessarily brought together small community pockets that were much less anonymous than today’s cyberspace culture. It was a novel idea to quickly and easily post a short story or a poem to your online friends, but in terms of forging a literary career, it was more of a hobby. Legitimacy belonged to the old guard. You still needed to see your work bound by a strong spine. You needed to a dotted line to sign, a blurb, an advance… As poetry becomes more accessible because of a publication like DB, its scrutiny is heightened as well. You certainly have a larger forum to air artful grievances — the eight years of George W. Bush as President constituted one exciting field day for anyone who wanted to use verse to complain about the world. At the same time, debate about poetry’s esoteric nature is further magnified. Poets may now have access to a wider audience and technological bells and whistles like hyperlinks and Flash animation, but what does it ultimately mean in terms of empathy and relevance? There will always be a pull between the old and new, between the sacred values of family and the demands of a larger, unpredictable world. There is no easy bridge to connect such opposing forces. Like evolution, our culture, humanity itself, will experience fits and starts. Our growing pains will seem endless and endlessly agonizing. No one knows what the final product will look like.
In this time of contraction, there are many who understandably believe that Barack Obama’s election has resulted in more of the same. Instead of revolution, we got saddled with the Same Shit, Different Day. Full disclosure: this writer is a registered Democrat, but now I look with wary and weary eyes at all politicians from all parties. It’s 2010, the second decade of the twenty-first century, yet teachers are being fired left and right. The engineers, construction workers, and bus drivers who fuel and maintain our infrastructure are revered about as highly as asphalt. The boundaries that distinguish respect, celebrity, and credibility are demolished. Who wants to build roads and teach kids when you can scream the loudest on a reality TV show? Hope fades. Our future is uncertain. This is not meant to be a pep talk or offer empty campaign promises. The new (or the new-old?) buzzword should be authenticity: are you true to yourself? To others?
By Joe Ramelo, Social Media Assistant.
Drunken Boat is co-hosting a performance coinciding with this year’s AWP. Peter Yumi is among the lineup. And don’t forget to check out Issue 11 for our Life in a Time of Contraction folio.
They say that March “comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb”. Although they, technically, refers to roots in astronomy, for me, they refers to my first set of teachers from pre-school up until at least mid-elementary school. (By the fifth grade, you would probably be too grown up to recite such cute little proverbs.) Ah, how I miss those innocent days! The proverb still holds some truth even now in adulthood, except for the fact that, at the start of 2010, the lion had already arrived long before March.
The second decade of the 21st century found the nation mired in coast-to-coast snow, while Hawaii, the only state not to experience the wintry precipitation, was threatened by a tsunami (which fortunately did not come to pass) and very recently suffered a minor earthquake. These things happened after the disasters in Haiti, Chile, and there was even a threat to Illinois — the last place most of us think about when we think of earthquakes. This apocalyptic spread dared to silence, if only momentarily, the Christopher Hitchens in all of us.
2010’s assault on humanity makes Peter Yumi’s lung infection piece all the more affecting. According to his blog, lung infection is part of a video series called ‘COLD’. For astute listeners who happen to have an ear for Hank Williams, the first thing you will notice in lung infection is “Cold, Cold Heart” as you have never heard it before. Had Mr. Williams survived into our times, perhaps he would have found it appropriate for “Cold, Cold Heart” to be covered in the manner of a broken man’s dying breath, set to a string of images that evoke a sort of X-ray storyboard.
Mr. Yumi says that ‘COLD’ is about “men and their self destructive behavior”, and the X-ray visuals set to Hank Williams might convey the worst kind of romantic heartache. (Think Jerry Williams — no relation to Hank, at least not traditionally.) But if a heartbroken man’s self destructive behavior also applies to all of humanity, then lung infection beautifully captures our world as it goes up in a kind of bloody smoke (recurring in the video, but quite effective in 3:37 – 3:54). Indulgence leads to incurable infection (:25 – 1:05). The end of lung infection implies that the cycle will continue, thus affirming our self destructive nature.
No one wants to admit that our gloom, unless we make some radical changes, is going to result in permanent doom. If we’re not placing blame on someone else (Tea Baggers versus the government, Tom Delay and Jim Bunning against the American people, and on and on…), then we’re trying to spin the truth: all you have to do is listen to the constant stream of conflicting unemployment reports. Jobs are up, jobs are down. Unemployment rate remains at an all-time high, but hey, things are going to get better soon, at least statistically speaking…! And if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing saga that is the vast Toyota recalls, you might get the feeling that, rather than taking responsibility, Toyota seems more focused on saving face and covering its ass. The common line of thinking might look something like: thank you for the cute commercials, but how do they help my sidelined Camry get me to the minimum wage job I had to take after I got laid off from my startup that went bust and now I’ve got no healthcare for myself or my family?
Once again, the Real World proves that Truth is the exclusive enterprise of Art and Literature. Mr Yumi’s series conveys raw truth and emotion that rarely has anyone in a position of power been capable of conveying. In addition to his series, you might also want to check out this piece by Scott T. Starbuck, which is a man-on-the-street account you might never get from our trusty media. And here is Laura Kaufman’s Weight of the World. In a time of contraction, where earnings are inflated and credit card interest rates skyrocket as salaries go down, the weight of the world seems to be the only right number in the whole universe — at least, hopefully until April. With our last lingering threads of hope, let us protect the surviving lamb.
By Joe Ramelo, Social Media Assistant.
What you need to know:
Registration deadline: $75 deposit must be submitted ASAP to reserve your place. $850 base tuition. Deposit will be applied to total cost of fees (see below).
Conference dates: June 17-21. A one-day festival (registration required, $225) will be held on June 19 for participants who cannot attend the full conference.
Genres included: novel, short story, poetry, journalism, documentary and family history, biography, translation and short- and long- form nonfiction
Manuscript deadline for on-site consults: May 10
Scholarship and fellowship application deadline: April 2
Click here for fee schedule and additional information about registration, scholarships, and fellowships
Main conference site with full details:
www.wesleyan.edu/writing/conference/
Award-winning writers Amy Bloom, Andre Aciman, Roxana Robinson, Michael Dirda, and Peter Gizzi will join more than 20 writers, editors, and agents at the 54th annual Wesleyan Writers Conference, June 17th-21st, 2010 at Wesleyan University. In addition to the five-day program, a one-day festival will be held on June 19.
The conference offers advice for writers at every stage of their career, featuring classes, workshops, guest speakers, readings, publishing advice and talks with editors and agents. It welcomes new writers, experienced writers, and everyone interested in the writer’s craft. Manuscript consultations are available.
Dr. Mara Berkley says, “Attending the conference gave me incredible confidence. I met wonderful people, every class was excellent, and I found a long-term mentor.” Journalist Tom Hallman says he owes his Pulitzer Prize to what he learned at the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Attending the conference helps participants to get their work into print, find a community of writers, and connect with mentors and other experts.
For more than a decade, Wesleyan¹s conference participants have been selected to appear in the prominent national anthology, Best New American Voices, and other publications. Topics at the 2010 conference include novel, short story, poetry, journalism, documentary and family history, biography, translation and short- and long- form nonfiction.
The one-day festival on June 19 welcomes everyone who cannot attend the full-week program. The schedule includes a sampling of classes, a chance to attend all the talks and panels about publishing, and the keynote talk by novelist Amy Bloom. Scholarships and teaching fellowships are awarded: visit the web site for details.
Contact: Anne Greene, Director, Wesleyan Writers Conference
860-685-3604
agreene@wesleyan.edu
Fiction submissions close March 15th. We’re still accepting for our flash fiction folio. For more info: http://bit.ly/4t7KAh
DB is looking for new interns to work closely with our editors on the production of our 12th issue, which will launch this summer. If you, your friends, students, or (very literate) gerbil are interested in gaining top-notch experience in literary publishing, please email intern@drunkenboat.com to find out more.
Yours,
The Editors
“The future of the human race is much less certain.”
—Stephen Hawking
As early as I can remember, science and creative writing have walked hand-in-hand. The finite evidence of observation and the galactic possibilities of abstract thought have always been a perfect marriage of opposites. I grew up so enamored by Mae Jemison and Neil Armstrong that I thought that I, too, could propel myself into the stars.
When you’re a kid, the possibilities are endless.
As life sets in and you learn more about your strengths and weaknesses, dreams become reality, but the possibilities are only as distant as the reach of your imagination. The stars don’t stop twinkling just because life gets hard. When Jodie Foster’s Dr. Ellie Arroway becomes humanity’s first interstellar ambassador in the film Contact, she stares awestruck at her final destination and quavers the following sentiment: “They should have sent a poet.”
This May, science and creative writing will once again converge, this time for a new workshop and conference in Tempe. Presented by the Consortium for Science Policy & Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University, selected applicants will receive an honorarium and travel expenses to attend the two-day workshop and three-day conference at the Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe. That’s an all-expenses paid opportunity to further the scholarly foundation of science by stretching the boundaries of imagination. The application deadline is March 15 and successful applicants will be notified by April 7. For more details about the conference, as well as application procedures, click here for a PDF version of the flyer announcement. This isn’t just science fiction. This is using imagination to usher in new science fact.
Check out these videos to whet your appetite.
Michio Kaku on the BBC explaining his multiverse theory:
In the 7th grade, one of the first science books I ever perused for leisure reading was A Brief History of Time. That same year, I went on to write a theoretical science report about wormholes. It was the first and last time I would ever achieve first place in any kind of science competition, as I would soon discover that my imagination worked harder than the intellectual forces required to approach science with scholarly and logical due. Here, Charlie Rose interviews Stephen Hawking:
Finally, I am including a clip of the end of Contact. (Note: the clip volume is low. You may need to adjust your own volume controls.)
This part of the movie is pivotal because it addresses the conflicting notions of science, faith, politics, and imagination that must ultimately be resolved despite, or perhaps in spite, of their gaping differences.
By Joe Ramelo, Social Media Assistant. With CSPO text.
From April 7 – 10, Drunken Boat will at at this year’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Denver. We will have a table at the bookfair and many of our editors are on panels and giving readings. Be sure to check us out for an opening night performance at the Dikeou Collection that will include Counterpath Books, Guernica, and POOL and Persea Books. Our lineup:
IRINA REYN is the author of the novel What Happened to Anna K. She is also the editor of the nonfiction anthology, Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State. Her work has appeared in publications such as One Story, Tin House, Post Road, Poets & Writers, and many others. She is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
ROBIN BETH SCHAER is the recipient of fellowships from the Saltonstall Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Barrow Street, our own Drunken Boat, and Washington Square, among others, and recordings of her work are featured on From the Fishouse. She has taught at Columbia University, Cooper Union, and Marymount, and worked as a deckhand aboard the HMS Bounty.
PETER STRANGE YUMI is an artist-musician who lives somewhere in the American west. His work is inspired from the works of contemporary poets and his love of cowboy culture, including whiskey, cigarettes, transcendental meditation, and rodeos. He is an MFA candidate at Mass Arts in Boston. More of his work can be seen and heard at his internet home peteryumi.wordpress.com.
The Dikeou Collection is located near the conference site at 1615 California St., Suite 515. The performance begins at 7pm. For a map and to RSVP, find us on Facebook!
Don’t forget to check out our Kay Ryan folio in DB11!
“Okay, well, I guess I’m having too much fun.”
—Kay Ryan, speaking at the JCCSF
This past Monday the 22nd, current U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan came to speak at the Jewish Community Center here in my adopted hometown, San Francisco. The Californian native, now a longtime Marin resident, spoke of her Southern Californian upbringing, read from new and selected works, and charmed the full house with her rollicking stage presence. Creative and scholarly accomplishments have not precluded a refreshing candor. Kay Ryan is a poet you can kick back with.
Before attending the reading, I took another look at our Kay Ryan folio to re-brief myself on the fundamentals of her aesthetic. As an example of Kay Ryan’s approachability, she dutifully remembered both Drunken Boat and the Jane Collins interview that opens our folio. I had quoted my favorite bit from that interview: “Start hard.” Kay Ryan nodded. “Ah, yes,” she told me. “Always start hard.”
But I’ve always been a bit of an awkward case around celebrities. When Billy Crystal appeared for a book signing at the dearly departed Cody’s Books, I gushed my way up to him. And then as I was leaving his table, autographed 700 Sundays in hand, I tripped over myself and landed flat on my ass in front of Mr. Crystal, his entourage, and the long line of fans who had been waiting all morning. When I met Jane Smiley at the San Francisco Writers Conference, my starstruck silence and woozy grin prompted this response: “So, you’re a little shy.” It doesn’t get any better with Connie Willis at Comic-Con. At a discussion panel for her novel Passage, I sputtered out a question that resulted in this grumble from the audience: “Gee, thanks for giving away the ending, kid.” At the book signing that followed Kay Ryan’s lecture, I wasn’t courageous enough to force my way through the unspoken policy of no photographs. Though I did get a chance to briefly speak with Ms. Ryan, here is my only collected evidence from that night (click the image for a larger size):
Start hard. Probably more than her magnificent poetry, those two words have stuck with me as the mantra for the unfortunate profession of writing. Dive headfirst into the roughest waters. Embrace hardship. But if Ms. Ryan’s two-word advice inspires the will to soldier onward, then her poetry and her delivery at the JCCSF provide a kind of meaningful comic relief. When a poet muses about flamingos, you know you’re in for the ride of your life. When a U.S. Poet Laureate jokes about sleeping with the Librarian of Congress, you know that her writing is a talent that isn’t reserved for a narrow few. Reminiscing about her early career, Ms. Ryan mentioned the existence of an unpublished work based on each card in the Tarot deck. She had intended for it to be a simple writing exercise, but then she got the idea to turn it into a book. It even had a title: Face Up. “I sent it to the Tarot company. I thought they’d be amused,” she recalled. “They turned out to be less excited.”
Though comic, I thought the anecdote inspiring. “I didn’t know how to write,” Ryan said of her beginnings. She also described herself as someone who is completely unteachable. Calling herself an autodidact, the Tarot card exercise was her method of teaching herself how to write.
How serious does a poet have to act? Should a poet walk around with a scholarly and impenetrable air? Kay Ryan’s poems are as serious as they are witty, and to that end, many critics have described her as an outsider of “mainstream” poetry. I’m not sure if this is an academic way of saying that Kay Ryan is fluff. It’s really an unfortunate assessment, because her nuanced handling of rhyme and meter is spectacularly educated. Her work is written as a devotion to form as much as it is written to be read.
I wish I had the money to buy both The Best of It and The Jam Jar Lifeboat and Other Novelties Exposed, both of which were available for purchase at the lecture, courtesy Green Apple Books. The former is Ms. Ryan’s newest collection. (In fact, you can find ‘Star Block’ in our folio.) She also brought up the latter during her lecture, in which she explained that the collection was inspired by, of all things, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!. This was enough of an enticement for me to buy Jam Jar, but to tell you the truth, I was also stricken by how the layout appealingly resembles a children’s book. I do love my children’s books, and one day when I’m filthy rich, I want to collect them like Sarah Michelle Gellar, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress who has apparently used her celebrity earnings to fund an admirable hobby like collecting children’s books. In the meantime, would someone be willing to extend to me a long-term loan of The Best of It? The venerable San Francisco Public Library system doesn’t seem to have it in circulation… yet.
By Joe Ramelo, Social Media Assistant.
by Jerry Williams
Immediately after I finish any serious relationship with a woman, I always make a mad dash for Las Vegas, Nevada, which means I’ve visited that fair city several times over the past two decades. Solo. It doesn’t matter where I’m living when the breakup occurs—California, New Jersey, Rhode Island—I’ve got the trip planned weeks before the bond’s actual demise.
Now, I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m a particularly sturdy person. Terminating even the most meaningless fling liquefies my innards, dispatching me to the nearest cut-rate psychiatrist to beg for meds. It has simply been my experience that nothing heals a broken heart like twenty-two hours of single deck blackjack at Binion’s Horseshoe, where mobbed up dealers with pock-marked faces dourly flick cards across the green felt and scantily clad, fortyish waitresses shout cocktails (!) over your shoulder.
For a casino, the place used to be ominously quiet, exactly what you need after discovering that your live-in girlfriend despises trade unions and practically wretches whenever she encounters a striking worker. (I don’t understand how I could end up in the same room with such people. And there I was living with one of them. From then on, I decided to include a question about labor history on the entrance exam — wait, that’s Match.com’s job. Actually, the failure of the relationship was mostly my fault anyway.)
Anyway, since I’m the type of individual who never sticks to his own protocol, I decided, after my four-month post-breakup grief regimen, to bring a date to Las Vegas, a potential disaster for the serious card player. At best, you’ll wind up lollygaging on the roller-coaster at New York New York and nibbling overpriced Caesar salads at the Venetian; at worst, your date will stand behind you at the blackjack table and gasp every time you increase your bet by ten dollars. Nevertheless, I wanted to take a chance.
Phoebe (not her real name) and I had only been seeing each other for about two months, but we had this partners-in-crime thing going on; therefore, Vegas seemed like the perfect vacation. We were both finishing Ph.D.s in English at — don’t laugh — Oklahoma State University. She had short hair; she was thin, and she was always smiling and sort of squinting. This was in the late-1990s.
I thought we might just hop on a plane — my sister worked as a mechanic at United Airlines, and she would send me these cheap stand-by tickets — but all the employees at United were about to go on strike (they might have been engaging in a bit of the old sabot, if you know what I mean), so we chose to drive the nearly five-hundred miles to the City of Sin and hole up downtown at the Horseshoe for three days.
The drive itself was grueling. If it hadn’t been for the immense blue sky in Arizona (my Saturn had a sunroof) and the Dramamine, the crossing would have proved unbearable. And somewhere near Kingman, Phoebe announced that she wanted to “suck me” while we sped down Interstate 40 (I say this now because I’m basically an old man eating stewed tomatoes out of a can).
That type of thing always made me feel guilty, especially when Phoebe did it. The entire time I was thinking, I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve this. (I imagine it has something to do with my lousy kidhood. After my birth, I should have bribed the infant in the next incubator to switch places with me.) Furthermore, if I smashed into the back of an S.U.V., I didn’t want guilt to be the root cause, so I declined the offer. As a result, the conversation turned to masturbation.
“Do you think guys ever masturbate when they’re driving?” said Phoebe.
“Uhh, yeah,” I said.
“You mean they can do both at the same time?”
I raised my eyebrow in mock-pride and said, “Men can masturbate while they’re masturbating.”
When we arrived in Las Vegas and checked in at the Horseshoe, we dumped our suitcases in the room and Phoebe lay down for a nap. I splashed some water on my face and headed straight for a ten-dollar minimum blackjack table, bought in for two hundred, and asked the floorman to fill out a rate card for me.
As a migrant academic, I didn’t have much cash to throw around, but I always tried to buy in for at least two hundred dollars, so the pencils (pit bosses) thought I had a lot more money in my wallet than I actually did. Then they’re more likely to fork over the free coffee mugs and dinner buffets.
Three people sat at the table: one very pure old man with incredibly tan skin; a middle aged woman with obscenely thick glasses and a mangled rabbit’s foot; and this absurd greenhorn who kept blathering on about the different rules at his basement game back home in Indiana.
As a player, I’m loyal to Edward O. Thorpe and Julian Braun’s Basic Strategy and Hi-Lo Count System. These guys are the Marx and Engels of 21. Something that always mystifies me about playing blackjack in Vegas is how many people don’t know anything about the Basic Strategy. They think blackjack is a game of chance and not mathematical formalities. They’re just throwing their money away.
I sat for about forty minutes, and I was up fifty-five dollars when the dealer’s shift ended. During that initial session, I placed several bets on her behalf, and she repaid me by “accidentally” exposing the burn card after each shuffle, which made my card counting more accurate. Picking the right dealer is one of the most important factors in winning blackjack. When you find a good one, stick with her, follow her from table to table, and tip her when you win. If she takes a break, you take a break.
So I was standing at the bar, drinking bourbon and cokes and depositing my winnings into one of those stupid video poker machines. (I have to remember to STAY AWAY FROM THE SLOTS. Video poker is still a slot game, no matter what anyone tries to say. Free drinks cannot possibly compensate for the loss of capital.)
About that time, Phoebe came downstairs, and we did the tourist thing: up to the Bellagio to check out the blown-glass flowers in the lobby; over to Paris to drink mimosas at the bar and then take the elevator to the top of the imitation Eiffel Tower; we even changed into our swimsuits and sneaked into the pool at the Tropicana to play swim-up blackjack, which is where I invented the concept of “Bedside 21.”
Pretending to be staying at the Tropicana, I asked the water pit boss if he would ever send a dealer to someone’s room, so he could play blackjack in bed. With a smirk, he looked at my three-dollar bet and said, “If your wagers are big enough, the Trop’ll provide you with any service you require — within reason.”
Between the roller-coaster at the top of the Stratosphere, the Liberace Museum, and the Penn and Teller show at the MGM Grande, I never made it back to the tables at the Horseshoe for any serious gaming. I did, however, teach Phoebe to count cards while we ate breakfast in the coffee shop on our second day in town.
All afternoon, she lay by the roof-pool and practiced counting with the deck of cards I bought her in the gift shop. Face cards and aces are minus one; 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s are plus one; 7s, 8s, and 9s are zero. You keep a running count of all the cards as they’re turned up on the table, altering your bets and your strategy accordingly. If the count is positive, the deck is ten-rich, an advantage to the player. If the count is negative, the deck is ten-poor, an advantage to the house.
That night Phoebe stood behind me in Binion’s Horseshoe at a twenty-five-dollar table and counted the cards for me. She could see the entire playing surface and had no problem keeping accurate numbers. After every hand she tapped out the count on my back, finishing with an affectionate little scratch whenever the number was negative. It was beautiful. The floorman never suspected a thing. He even let Phoebe drink for free just for standing behind me. The pencils assume any man playing with his girlfriend or wife is a sucker. Sexists.
In an hour and fifteen minutes, we won three hundred and forty dollars, a great session. Even though the video poker machines made eyes at me after we walked away from the table, I resisted. Phoebe and I went up to the room and poured the pork to each other (old man, stewed tomatoes, etc., and I’m so happily, happily married now that it’s deranged). I threw out my shoulder trying to attend to her clitoris while screwing. I should probably have had it looked at — my shoulder. Bottom line, though, the blackjack cure worked. Until Pheobe later, well, cheated on me. Think of that montage in Snatch when Dennis Farina keeps flying back and forth between New York and London. That’s my old breakup life.
Photo credit: Licensed purchase ©iStockphoto.com/RealDealPhoto.
Writers seeking international study opportunities may want to consider pursuing a low-residency MFA at the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. The innovative 45-credit, two-year program will accept a limited number of students in creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. The degree in Creative Writing specializes in Asian writing in English, and is the first program of its kind in the world. The nascent English Department has the advantage of being “dynamic and innovative”, according to Professor Kingsley Bolton, Head of English at the University. Though based in Hong Kong, the University aims for the Department to be an epicenter of writing for the Asian region. The first residency is scheduled for summer 2010. Applications, which are available at the Department website, are due on April 15.
This is your chance to prepare for a lifetime career of writing: the low-residency model promises individualized learning and intensive feedback that approximates the professional editor-writer relationship. During the semesters, students work via distance learning with writing mentors on a one-on-one basis. Then these semesters are followed up with brief residencies that occur at the University two to three times a year. Although the program is based in Asia, with study catered to an Asian focus, the student body often includes Western writers of non-Asian descent, particularly in a time when many Westerners and other non-Asians are drawn to countries such as China and India. In the U.S., the low-residency model is commonly applied to creative arts studies. City University’s program promises the same benchmark of learning alongside a contemporary and historical perspective on Asian literature, creative writing, drama, and overall cultural studies.
Internationally-renowned novelist Timothy Mo will be the program’s visiting writer. The faculty writers for the 2010 class span Hong Kong, India, the U.K, Canada and the U.S., with connections and roots in China, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, among others. Drunken Boat’s own Ravi Shankar is part of an international cast that will include Tina Chang, Marilyn Chin, Luis Francia, Robin Hemley, Justin Hill, Sharmistha Mohanty, James Scudamore, Jess Row, and Madeleine Thien.
Applications: http://www.english.cityu.edu.hk/MFA
Deadline: April 15
