If you're in the area ...

... this Thursday, February 8, and want to see me express this kind of jollity in public, I have been invited to speak at one of WordSpace's evening events. I'll be hemming and hawing around the topic, "Why Listen to Critics?" -- an engagingly self-fulfilling, self-negating exercise in that you'll have to listen to a critic in the first place to hear any attempted answer.

Our Hero: The Happy Critic

Wine is served at 7 p.m., I begin mutttering 30 minutes later, but you really should call in advance to 214-826-0877, so Martha will know how much liqour to round up and pour in the vats. Critics should all be thick as a Brik: Smiley, the guy in the photo, is actually Russian constructivist and formalist critic Osip Brik, as photographed by Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1924 -- or just about the time Stalin's regime started harrassing and exiling avant-garde writers like Brik.

Why Listen to Critics?
Thursday, February 8
7 p.m.
1523 Abrams Road
Dallas, Texas
214-826-0877