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| Hearsay: |
The Quill points to Esquire magazine’s Napkin Project where they mailed 250 napkins to writers of varying repute and asked them to do as they pleased. (Canada’s wunderkind Sheila Heti was one of the respondees and writes a cryptic, funny vignette.)
It’s an old story, we figured. Someone, in a bar somewhere, scribbling on a napkin in the failing afternoon light; the kind of story or list or note that might be crammed in a pocket and pulled out years later to tell something deep and forgotten — perhaps life’s most intimate first chapter, nearly lost forever. So we gave this spontaneous medium a shot. We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country — some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories. We present a sampling here — from lush to spare, hilarious to terrifying.
Can the poet contest be far behind? Yes. Sigh.
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January 25th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Hey George!
Cool idea from Esquire – and holy, could you cram any more on a napkin Rick Moody?
Cheers!
January 25th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
I think that there was some kind of mistake transcribing the Sheila Heti napkin. Looks like Margaux to me.
January 26th, 2007 at 3:59 am
I’m torn about whether that’s a transcription error or not.
Also, despite the fact that she’s married and our last contact was years ago and not entirely without misunderstandings and bad feelings, I still want to have Sheila Heti’s children. I loved The Middle Stories, and then when I read Ticknor I looked at the book, looked at my own work, and said “omg, Canadian writers *can* be accepted if they write like this”, and that inspired me to redouble my efforts.
January 26th, 2007 at 7:24 am
August, that sounds like a napkin in itself.
January 26th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Sadly it’s not as good a story as it could be. I used to run an online journal and was trying to get an interview (she had literally finished writing Ticknor that week, I think), and I asked a question that I thought was innocent, but offended her (apparently she had just come from LA and where she encountered a lot of two-facedness and she thought I was making fun of her). So the interview never came off and she just kind of stopped answering my emails.