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…

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.

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.

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!