October 4 — Michael Martone on Michael Martone
Fiction writer Michael Martone spoofs conventions of travel guides and political candidates’ memoirs.
When: Thursday, October 4, 4:30 p.m.
Where: University Library, Lilly Auditorium Visitor parking is available in the North Street Garage. Map and directions.
The 2007-08 Rufus and Louise Reiberg Reading Series focuses on cultural dialogue — loopy, intense, full of humor and candor. The series features poets, storytellers, translators, authors, artists of fiction and nonfiction, in verbal celebrations of the written word and is presented by the English Department in the IU School of Liberal Arts together with the University Library and University College. All events are free, and open to all. Contact Karen Kovacik, 274-9831.
Premier fabricator Michael Martone loves to spoof the truth. The author of The Blue Guide to Indiana, a fictitious guide to the Hoosier state, and Michael Martone by Michael Martone, a collection of fifty sprawling bio notes about himself; Martone is also known for Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle; Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List; and The Flatness and Other Landscapes, a collection of essays about the Midwest, which won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction. His Double-Wide: Collected Stories is just out from Quarry Books.
Want a flavor of Martone?
The Mayor of the Sister City Talks to the Chamber of Commerce in Klamath Falls, Oregon
It was after the raid on Tokyo. We children were told to collect scraps of cloth. Anything we could find. We picked over the countryside; we stripped the scarecrows. I remember this remnant from my sister’s obi. Red silk suns bounced like balls. And these patches were quilted together by the women in the prefecture. The seams were waxed as if to make the stitches rainproof. Instead they held air, gasses, and the rags billowed out into balloons, the heavy heads of crysanthemums. The balloons bobbed as the soldiers attached the bombs. And then they rose up to the high wind, so many, like planets, heading into the rising sun and America. . . .”
I had stopped translating before he reached this point. I let his words fly away. It was a luncheon meeting. I looked down at the tables. The white napkins looked like mountain peaks of a range hung with clouds. We were high above them on the stage. I am yonsei, the fourth American generation. Four is an unlucky number in Japan. The old man, the mayor, was trying to say that the world was knit together with threads we could not see, that the wind was a bridge between people. It was a hot day. I told these beat businessmen about children long ago releasing the bright balloons, how they disappeared ages and ages ago. And all of them looked up as if to catch the first sight of the balloons returning to earth, a bright scrap of joy.
If this sounds interesting, check out Martone’s talk at his alma mater Butler earlier in the day. And check out some of the other writers coming to town this fall.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
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