Final Note Before Returning to Vegas;

Well,I'm moving back to Las Vegas tomorrow. The reasons for my leaving and coming back are too complicated to get into here. I think the question people who read my blog, that are familiar with my work might be surprised by the city that is generally my home, but let me clarify a few points. This was left on the other blog I write for, Art Observations with Jerry Magoo. It is for my review of the new William T. Vollmann book. I corrected the spelling. Here it goes: "Hello,

I had the chance to see Vollmann give a reading of a short story at Fresno State University a couple years ago. 

It was a strange event. The audience was an older, local crowd. From what I could tell, they did not really appreciate his detailed account of sex with tentacled vegetation." The funny thing about that is- the sex with plants thing, that's not William T. Vollmann who did that. I've never heard of William T. Vollmann writing about having sex with plants with tentacles. That's Mark Von Schleggell the commentator is talking about. It's an error that betrays quite a bit of information accidentally I suppose it was a given that William T. Vollmann and Mark Von Schleggell are not household names exactly, I would have said William T. Vollmann was far more well known then Von Schleggell. To an extent that's true. However, here's the thing- William T. Vollmann and Mark Von Schlegell- what few people know who they are might not even be able to keep them straight. I'll be honest about it. It's really quite sad. What you have to understand is that Mark Von Schlegell and William T. Vollmann are relatively successful writers as far as it goes. They have publishing deals, something relatively hard to get. A lot of those experimental fiction guys were/are academics. It's brutal. I'm far to the right of most of those guys politically now, but it's still brutal to see that. I express that with the firmest of sincerity. It would be very easy to dismiss a city like Las Vegas as being uncultured, but then we would have to step back and really examine how much interest there really is in the Mark Von Schlegell and William T. Vollmann types even in New York. Jerry Magoo is primarily a New York based webpage. People are forced to spend a lot of time chasing paychecks and New York would appear to be be becoming more and more a city for the very wealthy. In other words, it's kind of irrelevant. Las Vegas doesn't have the cute little used book stores with the hipster in the horned rim glasses sitting behind the counter, but what of it?

(cover of the book about sex with plants)