Robert P. Baird
The fall issue of Narrative Magazine includes a pair of excerpts from American Idol, the novel I’ve been writing in fits and starts during this long slow slog through graduate school. The novel tells the story of an American anthropologist who lives South America and studies American Christian missionaries, though the latter don’t appear in either excerpt here. I was especially pleased and grateful to see that on their front page the good folks at Narrative had nudged my mug up next to my friend and mentor Annie Dillard, whose stunning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is excerpted in the issue as well. Anyway, check it out…
Robert P. Baird

This week Harvard University Press is publishing The Heart of William James, a selection of essays edited by my friend Bob Richardson. Bob is the author of a trilogy of tremendous biographies—on Thoreau, Emerson, and James—and to celebrate the publication of this new book he’s got a guest post up at The Second Pass today on James’s “war against war.” Here’s a bit from the start:
By 1910, James was against war itself. His notion of a “war against war,” as he puts it, had been building for at least a decade. His position, unusual still today among peace advocates, recognizes that war is a deeply attractive thing for many of us, and that we do not in fact want peace—at least not entirely. He wrote before D.H. Lawrence observed that “the essential American is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” And long before Simone Weil’s “The Iliad, or, the Poem of Force,” James noted that “the Iliad is one long recital of how Diomedes, and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector killed.” It is the greatest strength of James’ argument that he seriously recognizes the grip war has on us and will continue to have. Rather than say we all love peace, let’s not fight, James instead tries to harness the war-spirit and turn it against itself. We will have to kill war.
While you’re over there, be sure to check out the rest of TSP’s William James week. Good stuff.
Joshua Baldwin
Black Helmet is a DJ who knows how to make people move. All I can say is he spins records that have a ton of soul, and that he makes me think of a passionate chemist having an excellent time with his beakers up there. Damn.
What I mean to say is that tomorrow night (Thursday, 8/26) Black Helmet will hit the decks after I read from Poems and Fake Book Reviews. So come on out to Veronica People’s Club, at 105 Franklin Street in Greenpoint Brooklyn. Your closest station stop is the G at Greenpoint Ave, but I have heard about people who take the L to Bedford and then walk. Whatever you want!
Happy hour ends at 8. I’ll read around 9. Black Helmet will hold it down from 9:30 on. Celebrate the birth of depress!
And check out this hilarious poster that Black Helmet made for the event.
Joshua Baldwin
Come celebrate the release of Poems and Fake Book Reviews at Veronica People’s Club in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on Thursday, August 26. Come around 7 p.m. for the good drink deals, as happy hour ends at 8. The DJ comes on at 9:30, so sometime before then I’ll probably read a poem and a fake book review or two. There will be copies of the chapbook for sale, too. Hope to see you there!