I can find no one who recalls Scott Sommer’s work and there’s little online about it, maybe because he wrote during a pre-internet time and history is being written up at such a pace each day, by the epic recording that takes place both individually and collectively, that anything pre- a few years faces obsolescence. Yet from what I have found Sommer was far from an obscure writer in his time.
Somebody has asked on a question forum when did Scott Sommer die? Not far from this question is a neighbouring question: Who flies to Tapei?
I am going to hunt the rest of his work, in addition to the title I discovered last week, and pen A Consideration on the work. His prose demands it.
Plants vs…
It is the time of year when people start to think about and plan their gardens, or garden plots. I love to read about them thumbing through the seed catalogues and visualizing how and where the plants may sit in relation to the weather, light and so on.
In contrast I don’t feel the same buzz when I read the endless articles and interviews with writers on “why or how they write…” What they write concerns me, the ideas around what they write perhaps, the research, in someways what they fail to write or don’t write concerns me more than why they write.
Literary Weather Forecast David Foster Wallace
The forecast number 4 Oct 7th 2009 featuring Nerf 555 live music on violin — bella. DFW extract from his essay on Tennis and Public Enemy exit music.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA8b81Gfjl4&hl=en&fs=1&]
Iraqi cultural books article
Here’s a link to an article I wrote about Iraqi cultural books…
Given that Iraq is so topical, it’s remarkable we hear so little about Iraqi writers or aspects of Iraqi life beyond dictator, war, and occupation. We are becoming increasingly fluent on Iraq only in sectarian language and ideas. Words like Shia, Sunni, Moqtada, IED, roll off our tongues but we know little of Iraq’s rivers, soccer players, musicians, visual artists or food.
For those who protested or opposed the invasion of Iraq, a logical follow up could be to support some ongoing cultural life amidst the mayhem that prevails in Iraq. One way to do this is to actively purchase Iraqi books and thus create more publishing opportunities for Iraqi writers.
Click here for the rest.