Good on Paper

Currently buried under: too many student papers 

I’m not going to lie; I tend to get most of my news from three basic sources: Yahoo headlines, blogs, and Jon Stewart. (Four sources if you count gossip I pick up from friends and colleagues). This could be the reason I never really know what’s going on in the world. It could also explain why I struggled to come up with any literary news to report today.

Pop culture news is easy: Star Jones is getting divorced. Beyonce and Jay-Z got married. Political news was hard to miss today since I live so close to Pittsburgh; it’d be impossible not to know about Hilary Clinton winning Pennsylvania. Any personal news that I might have (poor attendance in my classes today or twelve emails about the Professional Development session I’m helping to coordinate) is inescapable as well.

Where’s all the literary news? It shouldn’t be tough since I am an English instructor and a writer. Sad to say, what’s happening in the world of literature doesn’t saturate my life as much as everything else. I searched during my lunch break, though, to find something:

• It is still National Poetry Month (which I knew but reminded me of an article I can write)
• Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri is still on the New York Times Bestseller List (though she’s number two now, a step down from last week).
• Today is Vladimir Nabokov’s birthday. Maybe I should finally read Lolita.

But I do have my own literary news….kind of. I wrote yesterday and now have fourteen pages of chapter one (a new chapter one). When I re-read what I’d worked on the week before, I surprised myself by not hating it. So it can only go upward from here, right?

Still trying to figure out this blog thing. It’s a work in progress.