Postscripts

El Paso's Cinco Puntos Press has just published Farley's Jewel: A Novel in Search of Being, by Jon Ferguson. The book has been picked up by Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers program, which four times a year discovers 18-20 Great New Writers. For a small press like Cinco Puntos, to have an author included is an achievement. Ferguson, who is the author of two previous books published in French - The Best of Schmaltzy and Neitzsche for Breakfast - will read at Barnes & Noble Arboretum, Monday, August 17, 7:30pm.

Ferguson is an American who lives in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he teaches high school English and coaches Switzerland's pro basketball team. How did someone from Lausanne who has only published in French end up being published by an El Paso press? It turns out that Bobby Byrd, poet, Cinco Puntos publisher, and basketball fan, was asked to be a coach at the 1996 Swiss All-Star Basketball Camp, where he met Ferguson. After the camp finished, Ferguson sent the manuscript, and that was that.

The protagonist of Farley's Jewel is a philosophy professor, and the novel's narrator voices his concerns with remarkable clarity. Entering a grocery store and finding himself in front of the cereal aisle, Farley estimates that there are about 60 varieties of cereal, but the evidence proves otherwise: "There were exactly one hundred and forty-nine cold cereals to choose from. Was this somehow in connection with the Big Bang? Had the same happened in peanut butter, Jell-O, and cake mixes? He was certain it had, though he felt no need to verify." Ah, the intellectual life!... In other El Paso news, it's time to send in your 500-word entry to the Not-Cormac Writing Contest. In The El Paso Times, Ramon Renteria recently wrote that McCarthy's prose is "so unique that anyone trying to emulate it would come across as a bad fake." The sponsors of the contest, which benefits the El Paso Public Libraries, want the best of those bad fakes, so send them by September 25 with $10 payable to the El Paso Public Library Association, to: Not-Cormac Writing Contest, c/o Susie Byrd, 2709 Louisville, El Paso, TX 79930. Judges are Molly Ivins, Abraham Verghese, and Don Graham... Book a reservation now for Texas Folklife Resources' August 29 program, The Language of Tradition: Political Talk, to be held at UT's McCullough Theatre, 7-9pm. Participants include Ivins, Jim Wright, Jake Pickle, and Bob Armstrong, former member of the Texas House of Representatives and currently the assistant secretary for land and minerals management, U.S. Department of the Interior. The program is free, but seats fill quickly; call 441-9255 for reservations.