Ed Park's Return of the Reluctant

Catching up! Thanks for all the kind words and e-mails and shout-outs attendant to the arrival of DUNCAN.........

I'm going to try to ease my way in.......Hats off to Team Dizzies (including newest hire Devin McKinney—a/k/a THE HAWK) for their excellent posts, please please keep posting.......

For now—a little summary of recent "action"!

1. Over at Mr. David Cairns's Shadowplay, which has been on a roll from day one, my moment of cinema euphoria gets its day in the sun. (Until rewatching the clip, I'd forgotten that Alec Baldwin narrated The Royal Tenenbaums—nice!) "These Days" inadvertently became D.'s lullaby this morning....a bit melancholy but very pretty—

2. I'm perpetually finding and losing an article about the Oulipo that I wrote back in 1999; last night, looking for something else, I found it again, and I figured I'd better type it out on the computer just to have a record. This is early EP, so be kind! There are a few bum notes, and some sentences strain under the weight of LEARNEDNESS, but there are also some nifty things that I'd forgotten and a brief look at Harry Mathews's Cigarettes. (You can find the article at The Unarchivable, along with two other rarities, one from New York, one from Modern Painters.)

3. Jump back in time with me: In this month's Astral Weeks column (out for a while now), I read (and re-read) Joe Haldeman, with a little shout-out to Duncan!

4. Novel news: The cover for Personal Days can be seen on its Amazon page—and also right here!


I must say that I love it! (I'll post the U.K. cover as soon as it goes up—different concept, but very cool indeed!)

I'll also be posting, occasionally, to a Personal Days blog — some news about the novel, but mostly (I hope) links to interesting work-related articles and fun time-wasters.

5. This deserves a post of its own—the 50th Believer is out! I can't "believer" it! I'm an old man! It's a suitably great issue.....More on it later.....you can catch a glimpse here for now.