To those located in Austin...

Come check out this event on Thursday. Shannon is going to be painting along side a bunch of live muscians, and at the end of the night the painting will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, all proceeds going toward a good cause (i.e. Shannon's rent).

*Addendum- Check the photos.

The 'Art' in 'Artist'

Here are a couple of related articles that I think pair together in investigating the connection between an artist's character and his/her work. One is a pretty entertaining article about authors' drinking habits and what happens when they try to sober up, and the other is (ostensibly) about Budd Shulberg, the iconic screenwriter and director of "On the Waterfront" who died just last week, and who apparently named names for the House's Un-American Activities Committee back in the '60s.

Of course tales of authors' and artists' misconduct are legion, and while in some ways that imbues them with a certain enigmatic interest, it can also make us feel guilty sometimes for enjoying their work, particularly when the misconduct in question is ideological. We feel as if we are somehow being compromised, or that our unconsciousnesses are being influenced by sub-moral messages within the work. In the article on Budd Schulberg, the author (Randy Cohen) makes this good point:

"It’s hard to be a good person; it’s hard to produce great work. Most of us accomplish neither. To demand both might be asking more than human beings are capable of. To deprive oneself of great work created by a less-than-great person seems overly fastidious."

I believe I must agree. Check them out.

Suggested Reading

Here is an article by Tim Kreider posted on The New York Times' Happy Days blog. Though not exactly 'literary' in nature (unless by some over-stretched philosophical connection), I found it to be very good reading, and recommend that you check it out.

Literary Pranks and Padded Rooms: Literature Jests, but is Anybody Listening?

An article in the Chronicle (Washington's, not Austin's) takes a look back at a literary prank it took the Modernism/Modernity's (now questionable) readership five years to get. The prank in question was an article criticisizing David Foster Wallace, titled An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent. Aside from the heresey of the sentiment (coded within an ironically Foster-esque title) the 'prankish' aspect of the article comes into play as early as the author's byline: Jay Murray Siskind, whom many will recognize as the quirky professor of Pop Culture in Don Delillo's epic White Noise. In the five years it's taken for the prank to be recognized, there have been many accounts of the article having actually been used as a secondary source for undergraduate and graduate research, which poses a number of fairly obvious problems with regards to contemporary scholarship (i.e. literary journals' ability to incorporate varied modes of writing, and whether or not they are being read to begin with) and collegiate students' frighteningly under-developed bullshit-o-meter. Do check out the article in full.