no man is an iowan

 Haven’t been posting the past couple of days because I’ve been completely absorbed in the 75th reunion of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Old pals and famous writers new and old. Some of the old pals have become famous writers, at least in the literary microcosm. Alan Gurganus and T. Correghessan Boyle came out of my workshop (’73-75), and they were both here and properly feted. Some people even recognized little old me, though not many – and of course not officially. The stigma against science fiction, commercial fiction, is still strong in this tradition-bound literary “frontier.”
When lists were intoned of mighty writers who have passed through these halls, Vonnegut was sometimes mentioned.

(They did have a panel on “How Can Literature Imagine New Futures?” and the third speaker did mention science fiction. The other two were all about guerilla poetry, Lessing, Atwood, Shirley Jackson. Two males, Orwell and Updike, merited mention.)

It was a pleasant time, and a very well-run celebration, even if I sort of passed through it like a neutrino. That’s not inappropriate, though. I’ve written very little that thrives within the walls of their carefully tended garden. But I do think that literature includes the jungle outside.

At least the library knows I exist – even the workshop library has about a yard-long section of my books, and to the university library I’m a writer catalogued among other real writers. Going out this morning to see the sculpture exhibit there that includes THE FOREVER WAR; will take a picture to post in LJ.

Joe