Ohboyohboyohboy. WORLD CUP ACTION STARTS TODAY!!! YEEAAGGHHH!!! RRAAAWWWRRRR!!! RRRRRR!!!!

Sure, you may be saying, “Dave, why all the excitement? Doesn’t this so-called football merely consist of ninety minutes of a bunch of grown men running around in the grass trying to kick a rubber ball into a net … and failing. Isn’t it true that any time it looks like someone might actually do something interesting he gets fouled or called offsides?” But that just shows what a stupid American you are. If you were here in Europe like me, you’d understand what it is that makes this game worth rioting over.

At the grocery store, every magazine has something World Cup-related on the cover (even, no joke, National Geographic). Here in the Netherlands, people display the color orange to show their national spirit. The streets are clogged with orange pennons, and, I shit you not, adult-size orange lion costumes are on sale everywhere. Sure, buy it for the World Cup, but wear it year round.

If you’re in the U.S. and want to get in on World Cup fever, I’d say that your best bet is probably to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and tune into ESPN 8 (“The Ocho”).

So about the Netherlands.

Before you get too excited, I’m not in Amsterdam. I’m staying on the campus of a scientifically-oriented college on the outskirts of the country. Cow pastures make up a substantial proportion of the grounds. There was also a week-long torrential downpour when I first arrived, which limited my adventuring significantly.

Anyway, about the Netherlands.

They eat chocolate sprinkles on their bread at breakfast. Brilliant.

They also eat ham and cheese. Lots of ham and cheese. Seriously, if you ever secretly fantasized about eating ham and cheese three meals a day, then man have I got a country for you.

They have really nice bike paths. The bike paths crisscross the whole country, and have their own traffic lights. More people ride bikes than drive cars. Everywhere you look you see 80-year-olds bicycling around.

They have intermission for movies. They literally stop playing the movie right in the middle and make you sit around for fifteen minutes. This is supposed to force you to buy more popcorn and soda. This can get pretty tedious, especially at a movie like X-Men 3 where you were already pretty bored.

Marijuana is sold legally here in Head Shops. Despite this, the students I talked to had trouble thinking of anyone who smokes it (which would not be the case among college students in the U.S.). It’s the same thing with alcohol. I think the drinking age here is like 16 for beer, and even that is barely enforced. The result is that alcohol just isn’t that exciting. Students here are aghast at stories I tell about going to college in America. They’re like, “You mean people drink and vomit, and then keep drinking and vomit again, and then pass out and have to be taken to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped?” That’s basically unheard of here. And I say, “Well, only on weekends. Mostly.”

The students wanted to know what Americans think of the Netherlands, and I had to break it to them that the answer is “They don’t,” and that 90% of Americans would no doubt accept this statement at face value: “I’m Dutch. That means I’m from Denmark. It’s a small country in Eastern Europe nestled between other small nations such as Holland, the Netherlands, and Scandanavia.” Despite stuff like this, the students told me, “People will think it’s cool that you’re American. They’ll think you’re rich.” To which I responded, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” Well, actually I didn’t. But I thought about it.

Oh yeah, and they also call a Quarter Pounder a “Royale with cheese.” But you probably knew that.

I’ll be making my second appearance on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf radio show on July 15th. (On WBAI 99.5 FM, a local New York station.) I’ll be chatting about my recent adventures and reading my new short story “Blood of Virgins.” I’ll try to post clips from the interview to my website. You can also listen to clips from my previous interview on my Media page.

I just got a subpoena to go testify against my mugger. The subpoena was sent to my old address, even though I paid the post office there to forward my mail. (I want my dollar back.) Fortunately, my roommate is still living at the same address, so he received it, otherwise I probably never would have seen it. I haven’t heard anything from the Court for four months, now they need me to appear on Tuesday to testify. I’m in the Netherlands. Needless to say, I probably won’t make it.

So the local Dutch computer guys fixed my laptop. This did not, contrary to earlier reports, require replacing the hard disk. In fact, I think it only took them about 20 minutes. In fact, I think all they did was run checkdisk or something and that fixed it. I’m glad I got all my precious, precious data back, but I’m still vaguely irritated with IBM tech support for telling me that I needed a new hard disk when I didn’t.

I had all sorts of unforgettable observations this week that I would’ve blogged if I’d had my laptop, but now I can’t remember any of them. Oh wait, here’s one thing I was thinking:

I’m going to be reading some short stories by Guy de Maupassant. I’ve never read him before, don’t know if he’s any good or not, but I can say this with some certainly: he has the most kickass writer name ever. Seriously, Guy de Maupassant, how frickin’ cool is that? I would totally change my name to Guy de Maupassant if he hadn’t preemptively stolen it first. In fact, if I ever find and/or invent a time machine, the first thing I will do is travel back in time to kill Guy de Maupassant, so that I can appropriate his name without anyone being the wiser. Then people would all be like, “Wow, aren’t you that Mr. de Maupassant?” and I’d just be all like, “Please, please. Call me Guy … de Maupassant. That is, please call me ‘Guy de Maupassant.’ The whole thing. It just has this ring to it, don’t you think?” Then I would be famous.

Well, it’s late. More trenchant commentary later.

So last week I’m sitting in LAX and it’s a half hour until my flight to the Netherlands. I pop open my laptop to copy pertinent information about my itinerary from an email into my spiral notebook — information without which I will have no idea what to do when I land in Amsterdam. (I hadn’t had a chance to do this earlier, and I couldn’t just print it out because my printer was already in storage.) And … my laptop won’t boot. Not even in safe mode. It just cycles continuously between the loading Windows screen and a Blue Screen of Death error message: “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.” That doesn’t sound good. But I’m able to use my cell phone to get my itinerary information.

Then I call up IBM tech support. They say I should replace my hard disk. Thanks, guys. (I sometimes suspect that instructions for tech support workers read: “1. Ask customer to describe problem. 2. Instruct customer to reboot computer. 3. If problem persists, instruct customer to replace hard disk. 4. Thank customer for calling. 5. Hang up.”) They say that I may be able to retrieve data off my computer. This is an even bigger disaster than usual because I had just moved out of my apartment and tossed out most (hopefully not all) of the hard copy backups of some stuff I worked on this past semester. And of course, all that stuff’s in storage in the U.S., so I can’t dig through it and check to make sure I’ve still got everything.

Blurgh. At least the laptop’s still under warranty (it’s less than a year old), but working this stuff out from the Netherlands is a serious hassle.

On the other hand, my bicycle tour around the Netherlands was cool. If I ever get a working laptop around here, I may post more about it. One of the photos did come out looking suitably authorial enough that I decided to toss it up as my new author photo on my website.

I’m leaving in a matter of hours for the Netherlands, where I’ll be hanging for the next couple months. This past week has combined the joys of wrapping up a semester’s coursework, moving out of an apartment, and packing for a summer trip abroad, all in one. So I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye to everyone, but I promise to look everyone up when I get back in the fall.

A car is parked in front of my building. In the extremely grimy rear windshield, someone has written, “I wish my boyfriend was this dirty.”

Anyway, this weekend I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which was more massive than I could have possibly imagined — hundreds of writers, thousands of attendees. It stretched across the whole UCLA campus. It was amazing that so many people showed up to talk about books, but the crowds were just out of control.

I showed up Saturday around 1:00 p.m. I would have gotten there earlier, but I’d had an appointment at noon in Santa Monica to get my car serviced. While my car was parked on the street recently, its headlight was bashed out. I know nothing about the driver other than her name, but I feel oddly certain that she is a sorority girl who was driving her SUV while talking on her cell phone. I got to the dealer and they said they didn’t have the part. I said, “But I talked to you last Thursday and you said you had it.” The guy explained, without the slightest trace of apology, that they’d been bought out by another dealer who had made them send back all the parts they’d ordered and reorder them from a preferred manufacturer. So that was a total waste of time (and gas).

Anyway, I arrived at the Festival of Books. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I went to an information booth and asked when and where on Sunday the T. C. Boyle reading would be, since I was supposed to meet people there. The woman asked if I had tickets. Tickets? To an author reading? I’d never even heard of such a thing. She explained that I should swing by the Ticketmaster booth and pick up tickets, if I could. That sounded ominous. I walked for twenty minutes to the Ticketmaster booth, where I happened to run into my friend Lindsey, who explained that all the tickets had been given away already. I said, “So I can’t get into anything at all?” She said, “You can wait in the standby line and if some of the people with tickets don’t show, they might let you in.” That didn’t sound so promising either. On the upside, Lindsey had an extra ticket to see Joyce Carol Oates later that day, which she gave me.

We waited in a standby line and managed to get in to see a panel on “the Book Biz,” which consisted of a lot of the usual doom and gloom about how book readers are dwindling and how it’s harder and harder to get published if you’re not a celebrity. Which led someone to mention James Frey, which led someone else to remark, “Wow! We made it through an entire half hour on a panel without mentioning James Frey.” Which of course led into a discussion of the girl from Harvard who seems to have accidentally cut-and-pasted numerous long paragraphs from someone else’s novels into hers. (She got a half a million dollar advance, by the way.)

I tried to get into a panel on writing young adult fantasy, but I didn’t have a ticket and there were about 500 people in line ahead of me, so I bailed on that one and wandered around the booths for a while. Then I decided I was going to damn well get a good seat for Joyce Carol Oates, so I went and got there before anyone else and camped out at the head of the line. Later, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, who gave me the lowdown on the festival. She and her husband have come every year for the past 11 years. (Even moving from L.A. to Austin four years ago hasn’t stopped them from coming.) She told me that the organizers hold back a large number of tickets to distribute each day, so if you come first thing in the morning you’re virtually guaranteed to get whatever tickets you want. Good to know.

Joyce Carol Oates was great. My favorite part was where someone asked her about her blurbing materials that some might consider lowbrow, such as the Hellboy graphic novel. She maintained that Hellboy, and many graphic novels like it, have far more literary value than many prose novels that are published, such as almost the entire “chick lit” genre. She also confessed that there wasn’t much reading material around when she was growing up, so much of her childhood was spent reading comics such as Tales From the Crypt and MAD Magazine.

Sunday I showed up bright and early and got in line for tickets. I was about twentieth in line. The woman in front of me turned around, and it was the same woman I’d been standing next to in line the day before. I said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Then I saw someone I know from USC, so I hung out with him for a while and got tickets to everything I wanted. I saw Berke Breathed, creator of the newspaper comic Bloom County, one of the most brilliant creative works of all time. I also saw Larry Flynt, creator of … well, you know. Actually, Flynt told a pretty funny story. For years Flynt’s greatest nemesis was this televangelist. When the televangelist was eventually caught in a hotel with hooker, the police also found a copy of Hustler in the room. Then I went and saw two veterans of the ongoing Iraq war, one of whose memoir I’d read. At one point, the other soldier said, “There’s been a lot of criticism of the media that they’re not providing ‘balanced’ coverage of this war, not reporting the good along with the bad. But look, if you want good news, go report on Disneyland. War is a completely f***** up thing. It’s not about good news.” Then I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading, and actually got invited to tag along to dinner afterward with him and his friends and family, which was lots of fun.

YYYYEEEEAAAAGGHGHGHGHHH!!!!!!!

I just sold my newest story, “Blood of Virgins,” to Realms of Fantasy magazine. Some of you may know that I am insufferably fond of this story, and have put just sick and terrifying amounts of time and energy into writing and rewriting it. I’m thrilled as hell that it’ll be appearing in such a great magazine. You should all go subscribe now so that you don’t miss it.

I’m doing a workshop this week with legendary journalist Gay Talese. The publicity all over campus calls him quote: “the most important writer of his generation.” (But that quote is never attributed. Doesn’t it matter who said it? What if it was his mom? But I digress. At any rate, he’s a big deal.) I read my article out loud. We were only supposed to read the first 4 pages, but he kept prompting me to keep going until I’d read the entire thing. He said, “Wow. That was great. I wanted you to keep going because I was sure you were going to crash and burn sooner or later, but you didn’t. This is publishable.” I felt pretty pleased, since that’s really the first nonfiction piece I’ve written. And just to show that he really knows what he’s talking about, he also said that I was obviously “unbalanced” and “a dingbat.” And that’s just from reading my 12-page article that’s not even really about me. Now that’s insight.

Though he did seem to be under the impression that I’m an aspiring comedian aiming to do radio humor or something like that. I didn’t get a chance to explain that I mostly write morbid, surreal short fiction. That has me thinking though. If other people’s reactions are any indiction, somehow in the last five years or so I seem to have become funny. I don’t know how this happened. I never thought of myself as a particularly funny person. It’s occurred to me that my fiction mostly reflects an older worldview of mine — that of a sensitive, intense, and powerless loner. That’s not really who I am anymore. Now I’m a lot more social, easygoing, and confident. (Though ladies, I am still extremely sensitive.) I’ve been wrestling lately with whether my fiction should be doing more to reflect that shift of worldview.

My buddy Derek James will be opening for frickin’ Blues Traveler this summer. How cool is that?

So the other day I was driving in my car and I heard this song on the radio. The chorus went like, “I heard it’s cold out, but her popsicle melts. She’s in the bathroom, she pleasures herself. Says I’m a bad man, she’s locking me out. It’s ‘cuz of these things, it’s ‘cuz of … these things.” I thought, Hey, that’s a pretty cool song. I wonder what it is? So later I went to my handy google and was like, Okay, how did that song go? Let’s see, something about … popsicle … bathroom … pleasures herself. That ought to get it. I don’t know what I was thinking. That search brought up like 500 million sites, none of which, as you can probably imagine, had anything to do with song lyrics. Fortunately, I was able to recollect another section of lyrics and found the song, “These Things” by the band She Wants Revenge, which is indeed a pretty cool song.

So I was at a barbeque last weekend and the conversation turned to the subject of: what bones have you broken? I have never broken any bones, despite having played lacrosse and rugby, because, in case you were unaware of this, I am #@%&!*@ indestructible. No, actually, I attribute this merely to good luck and the fact that I tend to excuse myself and go read a book whenever someone you’re hanging out with suggests something like, “Hey guys, let’s all jump out of this tree onto these rocks and see who can make the loudest noise,” which, if you’re male, happens about every three days. Anyway, after 45 straight minutes of broken bone stories, I started feeling kinda bored and excluded from the conversation. I also realized that if you’re heard one broken bone story you’ve heard them all. No, literally, they’re all exactly the same. Here is the monomythical broken bone story: “So I was doing something stupid/innocuous and all of a sudden I heard something snap, and I said, ‘Hey guys, I think I might have broken this,’ and then someone said, ‘Nah, it’s probably just jammed/dislocated. Here, I’ll pull it back into place,’ and they tried to do that and it hurt like hell. They said, ‘Better?,’ and I said, ‘Not Really,’ so they tried again. And again. And again. So then I went to the doctor and the doctor said, ‘It looks like there’s a lot of bruising here that happened after the injury,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, we thought it was just jammed/dislocated and we tried to pull it back into place, and the doctor said, ‘DON’T DO THAT!'” I heard this exact same story about twenty times. I even heard one person tell it about her finger and then tell it again about her other finger. Hey, the fact that it’s about a different finger does not make it a different story. Maybe you have to be part of the broken bone club to understand this, but if someone said to me, “Hey, I think I may have broken a bone,” I would think that my first instinct would not be to say, “Well hey, just let me yank on that for ya.” And if I was the one with the broken bone, I would not say, “Okay, sure,” more like, “You get the #@*% away from me.” What is it that makes all these people think they’re doctors? Did they all stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night? I just don’t get it.

I think I almost got mugged again last week. I was walking home from a fancy banquet thrown by my department. I was with my friend Erica and another friend who’d had too much to drink and was going to sober up on my couch before she drove home. Two kids on a bike pulled up near us, and the kid on the handlebars leapt off and rushed us. I tensed. The kid stopped, glanced at us, then turned around and hurried back to his friend. Our drunk friend said, “Wow, that was weird.” I said, “Come on,” and we walked away, toward the emergency call box. Erica said, “Here,” and handed me her heavy U-ring bike lock to use as a club. The kids rode past us and then off down the street. Another student came up to us with his pepper spray out. He said, “Were those guys going to mug you?” I said, “I don’t know.”

I figure what happened is that they saw our drunk friend and assumed we were all drunk and would be easy marks. It was party night on Frat Row, so there were huge crowds of drunk students out on the sidewalks. Then when the kid saw that I wasn’t drunk and was extremely wary, he changed his mind. Or maybe they were just playing a prank, who knows.

Going shopping at the local grocery store here involves running a gauntlet of surly vagrants, so I tend not to turn my back on anyone in the parking lot. But I subconsciously assumed that the black guy in the expensive suit chatting with someone in a convertible was okay. I got in my car, and before I could close the door this guy was leaning in and offering me his hand to shake. He said, “Hey man, you speak English? I’m Robert.” I didn’t really see that I had much choice, so I shook his hand. He seemed way too well-dressed and well-groomed to be a mugger, so I figured he was probably going to try to convert me. He could tell I was apprehensive, and was like, “I’m okay, man. See, that’s my jag right there.” A jaguar was parked facing me. The guy said, “That’s mine. I’m okay. Really. I hang out with the Lakers. I’m on my way to a job fair.” He patted his pockets. “But, man, I forgot my wallet and I’ve looked all over my car and I can’t find any change and I’m almost out of gas. Could you help me out?” I said, “What do you need?” And he said, “A few bucks for gas.” At that moment I was about 50% sure it was a scam, though I wondered why a scammer who’d managed to finagle a suit and possibly a jaguar (I wasn’t totally convinced it was actually his) would bother with me in my gym clothes and 10-year-old car with no hubcaps. But I was so overjoyed at the prospect that I wasn’t getting mugged or proselytized and that I could buy my way out of this for just a few bucks that I was glad to give it to him, especially if maybe he was telling the truth. He was so grateful and effusive that it almost made it worth it even if it was a scam. He got in the jaguar and drove off, so it was really his. Now that I’ve had more time to consider it, I’m more than 50% sure it was a scam. It seems pretty unlikely that someone would just happen to be that low on gas and have no money and be on his way to a job fair. Plus I think the guy’s delivery was just too polished. So what does he do, drive around to parking lots all day doing that? I don’t know.

Last night I went to see a screening of the documentary Invisible Children, which was filmed by three recent USC grads. These guys traveled to northern Uganda to document a civil war that’s been raging there for over 20 years. A band of religious zealots called the Lord’s Resistance Army is fighting to overthrow the government. These rebels replenish their ranks by kidnapping children mostly ages 6-12 from the surrounding villages. The children are then armed and assigned quotas of people they’re supposed to kill, and are executed if they fail. Children who demonstrate their disloyalty to the rebels by crying are also summarily executed. The rebels teach the children that smearing their bodies with oil will make them impervious to bullets. (If this fails to work, it means that the victim had somehow displeased God.) The situation has gotten so bad that thousands of children now leave their villages every night and commute miles into the cities to hide from the rebels. The children sleep in basements, piled atop one another. It’s one of those situations that feels to me like science fiction, but is unfortunately very real. The film is not for the faint of heart, but it’s definitely worth checking out, and is even quite funny in places, as people’s basic humanity shines through under even the most trying circumstances.

All right, well while I’m here, here’s a story you may find moderately amusing. Last week I was supposed to go for a walk with my friend Erica, who lives nearby. She didn’t show at the appointed time and place. Perplexed, I went to move my car, which I had to do anyway, and ran into her a few streets over. She said, “Have you seen a little dog?” I said no. She said, “There’s this little dog. He’s been running up and down my street all day. I think he’s lost. I’m afraid he’s going to get himself run over. I want to catch him.” For reasons that are no longer clear to me, this seemed like a good idea. What can I say? I’m highly suggestible, and I like doing people favors.

I spotted a little dog and said, “You mean that little dog?” She looked, nodded, and said, “I’m going to go get some cheese to lure him in.” I said I’d keep an eye on where the little dog went, but I quickly lost track of him. You’d be surprised how many places there are for a little dog to hide in a parking lot. Erica came back, and I had to confess that I didn’t know where the little dog had gone. As I was saying this, I spotted him again, down an alley. Something had occurred to me. I said, “You know, it seems like I just saw a poster at Ralph’s for a lost dog. And the reward was like $500.” I hadn’t really been paying attention, but it seemed like the dog in the poster was a little yellow-brown rat-dog like this one was. Erica said, “It’s $1,000. Those posters are all over campus too. But it’s not the same dog.” I said, “Are you sure?” She said, “Pretty sure.” I said, “For $1,000, maybe we should make sure.” I was suddenly a lot more interested in catching this dog.

Erica had brought back a big hunk of cheese and a belt. She was going to lure the dog in with the cheese, then slip the belt around its neck like a leash. I have never owned a dog and am not really a dog person, and this dog could tell from a hundred yards away that it didn’t like me, so I kept out of sight while Erica tried to lure it in. She sat very still and would toss little pieces of cheese to the dog, gradually trying to lure it closer. It was very skittish, and would bolt whenever she moved a hand anywhere near it or whenever a car passed nearby. I think she almost had it when a girl came up behind her and was like, “HEY, WHAT’S UP, ARE YOU TRYING TO CATCH THAT DOG?” at which point the dog took off.

Erica and I conferred. A big SUV came by and drove over her belt, which she’d left lying next to her cheese. She picked up the belt and groaned. “This belt is ruined.” I was getting impatient and said, “Look, let’s just chase the dog down. I mean, come on, its legs are like two inches long, how fast can it really run?” We fished some cardboard boxes out of a nearby dumpster. I think back on this now and I really don’t know what I was thinking. Like, what was our plan, exactly? I have much more sympathy now for everyone who’s ever pled temporary insanity. Anyway, we tried to be subtle and cornered the dog behind the dumpster. I thought Erica was going to get him, but he suddenly decided to rush me, which surprised me. I probably could’ve gotten him, but all of a sudden he was like, “ROWROWREOEOROW!,” which scared the shit out of me. It was the first noise I’d heard him make. He slipped past me and squeezed through a fence.

By this point, Erica was irritated with the dog for getting her belt run over, and I was irritated with him for scaring the shit out of me, and I found myself feeling more and more apathetic on the issue of whether or not he got himself run over. Erica said, “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think he’s a lost dog. I think he’s just a straight-out stray dog. I don’t think a house dog would be this skittish.” I said, “I think we should check the reward poster and see if it’s the same dog, and if not just say to hell with it.” Erica was like, “It’s not the same dog,” and I said, “Well, let’s just check.” So we walked over and found one of the reward posters. I stared at it, and was like, “Okay, well obviously it’s not exactly the same dog, but it’s pretty close,” and Erica was like, “This dog in the poster is a miniature poodle. The dog we’ve been chasing is some kind of mutt.” And I said, “Come on, they’re both little yellow-brown rat-dogs. That’s pretty close if you ask me.” So then we went for walk.

By a curious coincidence, Erica had recently related an incident that “happened to a friend of her cousin’s.” This individual was walking along the beach one day and saw an animal drifting in the ocean. They thought it was chihuahua and fished it out of the water. They revived the animal and took it home with them. They left it in their apartment with their cat while they went out to the store to get pet supplies. When they came home, they found that the animal had killed and largely consumed their cat. There was blood everywhere. The animal turned out to be not a chihuahua but a large cat-eating rat from China that had fallen off a shipping boat. I thought this was the most horrifying (and amazing) story I’d ever heard, and I quickly related it to my Chinese roommate, who expressed skepticism that such cat-eating Chinese rats exist. I tried googling it, but couldn’t really find anything. On a hunch, I tried Snopes.com, which debunks urban legends, and they had the whole story, which is completely made up, with the cat-eating giant rat in question supposedly originating in a wide variety of countries. Anyway, these two little rat-dog stories have somehow gotten comingled in my brain, and I now occasionally have nightmares that I’m being attacked by a cat-eating Chinese rat who rushes out from behind a dumpster barking loudly.

By the way, if you happen to spot an apricot-colored miniature poodle wandering in the vicinity of Jefferson and Hoover and answering to the name “Coco,” give me a call, I’ll split the take with you 50/50.

The internet in my apartment has been down for weeks now, which has made it a serious hassle to update my blog (which is why I haven’t much) and do email, if you haven’t heard back from me. I’ll try to post some more stuff soon.

I can’t believe it. James Morrow’s novel The Last Witchfinder is actually out. I’ve been waiting seven years for this. Morrow is one of my favorite writers — a fabulous storyteller and extraordinary stylist who uses the fantastic to grapple with heavy-duty intellectual themes. (I attended the life-altering Clarion workshop in 1999 because he was one of the instructors.) I can’t wait to read his new book.

More Shakespeare in Love stuff: Shakespeare was one of the few Elizabethan playwrights who wasn’t college-educated. Most playwrights had been sent to Oxford or Cambridge by their wealthy families to prepare them to enter the ministry or the military, but had rebelled and decided instead to come to London to work in the theater. At college they had studied Aristotle, and they mostly composed their plays according to Aristotelian principles. Aristotle taught that there were two dramatic genres: tragedy and comedy. Tragedies were about great men who defied the gods and died in a cathartic fashion. Comedies were about ordinary people, were funny, and ended with a wedding. Romeo and Juliet starts out following all the conventions of comedy, with Romeo prattling on about Rosaline, but then shifts genres and ends as a tragedy. The audience of the day would have been startled, and would have felt that this Shakespeare guy really had something interesting going on here. Norman also talked briefly about the character Marlowe. Apparently Marlowe is a much more interesting historical personage than Shakespeare, and Norman was afraid that if Marlowe were included as a character, he’d overshadow Shakespeare, so Norman used Marlowe very sparingly.

Shakespeare in Love was ready to go into production in about 1992, with Julia Roberts playing Viola, but they couldn’t find a satisfactory actor to play Shakespeare. They wanted someone British, and he had to be handsome, be able to do both comedy and drama, and you had to be able to believe that he was an artistic genius. Julia Roberts wanted Daniel Day-Lewis, and when he turned down the project, she walked off, and the picture was shelved for years until they found Joe Fiennes. Most people on the project felt that he was a nice kid but that he lacked the gravitas to play Shakespeare. But the director believed in him, and convinced the studio to go ahead with him.