Postscripts
Upcoming events in Austin's literary life
By Clay Smith, Fri., Feb. 9, 2001
Upcoming
The people who run the Great Books Foundation in Chicago want to stir interest in the things that Dead White Males have written while also opening up the canon a bit, so they're sending Don Smith, who has taught more than 300 courses for the Foundation, to Austin to spread the word. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie Dillard, Toni Morrison, Yukio Mishima, Gabriel García Márquez, and Duong Thu Huong, among others, have all been taught as Great Books authors. Most Great Books discussions taught at bookstores take the following course: The leader asks someone in the group to read out loud the passage under discussion, and then prompts discussion by asking a sort of loaded, open-ended question. Only the text at hand is up for discussion, so know-it-alls aren't allowed to monopolize the seminar by bringing in facts about the author's life or intellectual history of any kind. Smith will be at Barnes & Noble Arboretum on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2-3pm. No word on what the text will be... "Semblance: A Portrait Sampler" is the recently installed Ransom Center exhibition that features "creative people portrayed creatively." The exhibition includes, among other items, Hugh Oloff de Wet's bust of Dylan Thomas, a cigarette lingering on his lips just so; self-portraits by Tennessee Williams, Anne Sexton, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry Miller; one of three copies of the death mask of Dante Gabriel Rosetti; what must be the world's two most haunting portraits of that great eccentric Dame Edith Sitwell; and a portrait of Sinclair Lewis made by his secretary Barnaby Conrad while the two of them were playing chess, the only known portrait made of Lewis from life. The exhibition is in the Leeds Gallery on the fourth floor of the Flawn Academic Center on the UT campus and is open Monday-Friday, 8am-4:30pm. It will be there until July 31... Chronicle Cuisines writer Rebecca Chastenet de Géry, co-author of Skewer It!: 50 Recipes for Stylish Entertaining (Chronicle Books, $17.95), will be serving items from the book and signing copies at BookPeople on Tuesday, Feb. 13, at 7pm... Those of you who can't get enough of R. Crumb and Daniel Clowes now have a chance to bid on a van graced by their artwork (as well as the artwork of Jim Woodring, Peter Bagge, Jaime Hernandez, and others). Fantagraphics Books' 1985 GMC Vandura is "weather-beaten, corroded ... with an absolutely irreparable engine," but it looks neat. This "one-of-a-kind art object is not something you should ever expect do go joyriding in," Fantagraphics reports. Beginning Feb. 14, the van will be up for auction on eBay. Type in "Fantagraphics Van" to locate it. Bidding ends Feb. 28... For the past five years, the HRC's Pforzheimer Lecture Series has featured an expert on bibliography, book arts, libraries, and related topics. On Monday, Feb. 12, at 6pm in the fourth floor auditorium of the HRC (21st & Guadalupe), Duke professor Janice Radway (A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire) will deliver the Sixth Annual Pforzheimer Lecture, titled "On the Sociability of Reading: Books, Self-Fashioning, and the Creation of Communities"... Oh Henry! Musical Short Stories, a new musical composed by David Tolley with lyrics by Jack Nides that comprises five of O. Henry's short stories ("The Gift of the Magi," "The Ransom of Red Chief," "A Retrieved Reformation," "The Last Leaf," and "The Ventures"), will premiere at the Scottish Rite Theatre (18th & Lavaca) on Friday, Feb. 16, at 8pm. The production will run for three consecutive weekends following the premiere. Call AUS-TIXS or the O. Henry Museum at 472-1903.