Good evening.
That's loud.
Before I begin, I would like to mention as a preface that prior
to this reading there was a rather heated discussion about
the pronunciation of the word spelled P-L-A-N-T-A-I-N.
And we almost came to blows about it.
So it was decided, excuse me, that for the purpose
of tonight's reading, it will be pronounced plantain
for anyone who has questions, speak up now.
[LAUGHTER]
It's fine.
OK?
Tonight we're honored to be joined
by two extraordinary writers, Pete Rock and David Foster
Wallace.
Well, Rock and Wallace read out of different traditions.
They share a common unsentimentality
in their exploration of human weakness.
They are masterful in their ability
to play with point of view to serve
reader expectation of traditional linear narrative.
They do so seamlessly, opening up their text,
and asking the reader to question
the boundaries of narrative.
Pete Rock, who will read first, was
born in Salt Lake City, Utah.
He attended Deep Springs College and Yale University where
he received his BA in English.
He was the 1996 recipient of a Henfield Award,
completed a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford in 1997
and received a National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship in 2000.
He currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches
fiction at Reed College.
Rock has been described as having
a polished talent one might expect
of a grizzled 70-year-old writing veteran.
He's the author of three novels, This
is the Place, Carnival Wolves, and The Ambidextrist.
The characters in Rock's fictional worlds
are often people on the margins of society, drifters,
jaded blackjack dealers, pedophiles, drug addicts,
and misguided teenagers.
The landscape of this world echoes their isolation
whether it is rural Alaska or an urban Philadelphia riverbank.
The heart of Rock's work lies in the moral struggles
the characters face and the grave mistakes
they make in order to find human connection.
Once again, it's an honor to have both writers here with us
tonight.
And please help me welcome Pete Rock to the podium.