The Early Posthumous Work

Contents

Contents Kid Stuff An Ironic Dog’s Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Snakes, Snobs and Sanctuary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Christmas Tree Fort War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Pop? In a Hat? C’mon.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Not As I Recall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Off to Work We Go. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Second Best Friend Fancy Girl, Fancy Car . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Second Best Friend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 The Back Porch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Out There, Lucky and Loose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Just Passing Through . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C’mon, I’m Serious House of Ideas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Now We See Us, Now We Don’t. . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Fan in Exile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 You Easterners Aren’t Bad at All . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Proust at Lunch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Mississippi: Idiosyncratic, Incomprehensible, and Air-Conditioned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Louisiana, Home of the Blues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Urban Farmer, Amiable Crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 An Old Acquaintance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Gamblers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 People’s Right to Allegedly, Sort of Know . . . . . 110 I Do, I Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 A Thirty-Five-Year-Old Book Review . . . . . . . . 118 A Cubist Take on Teaching Some Notes on Teaching and Writing. . . . . . . . 127 What I Did Last Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Writing Workshops, a Tiny Testimonial . . . . . 134 Some TA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 First Class (Letter to a Friend) . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Thousand-Word Wisecracks Enough Already. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Forget Mercurochrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Beautiful Deuces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Random Telephone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Kung Fu Defended . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 The Newsweek Short Story: Celestial Puzzler . . . 170 Don’t Move: A Memoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 This page intentionally left blank. This page intentionally left blank. ...