Were something to happen it would be both funny and interesting

by Matthew Shindell

Limited edition poetry chapbook, hand-printed and bound by the poet in the Type Kitchen of the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The ebook version was scanned from one of the printed and bound editions.

Genres: Poetry

13 pages, Artist Book

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Matthew Shindell lives and writes in La Jolla, California. He is a PhD student in History of Science and Science Studies at UC San Diego. He holds a BS (1999) and an MS (2004) from Arizona State University’s Center for Biology and Society, where his work focused on the social and historical study of science. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2001).

Shindell's first full-length book of poems In Another Castle will be published in October 2008 by Three Candles Press.

Shindell's poems have been included in Digerati: 20 Contemporary Poets in the Virtual World , edited by Steve Mueske (3 Candles Press, 2006), and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel , edited by Reb Livingston (No Tell Books, 2006). One of his essays was included in Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes , edited by Laurel Snyder (Soft Skull Press, 2006).

Shindell's limited edition chapbook, Were something to happen it would be both funny and interesting, was published by the Galom Press in 2001.

Shindell's poems have appeared in American Letters and Commentary, The American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, FENCE, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Jubilat, The Melic Review, No Tell Motel, Northwestern Review, Octopus Magazine, Phoenix Downtown Magazine, Pleiades, Tarpaulin Sky, and Unpleasant Event Schedule.

Reviews

[sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have limited poetry experience and patience and stumbled on this... loved the boy/deer parable and thought some of the other poems were intriguing and fresh too. Wasn't a huge fan of most of the artwork only because I like to imagine my own pictures, especially when I read poetry, though I did like the squid playing the N64 videogame...(spoiler alert!).

[Douglas Hopkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is out of print, but a great book and author to Google. Copies can be found. My Dad bought the copy I have, in 1943; he passed it on to me.

Harold Gatty was a celebrity of his time, one of the finest navigators of the modern age. He was the first air navigator to circle the globe. This out of print is considered one of the best practical navigation books ever written. In our age of GPS, an art of thousands of years is soon to be lost.

From BBC's excellent h2g2 site:
"He can take a one-dollar Ingersol watch, a Woolworth compass, and a lantern and at 12 o'clock at night he can tell you just how many miles the American farmer is from the poorhouse. He can look at the Northern Star and a Southern Democrat and tell you if Oklahoma will go Republican, or sane. He knows the Moon like a lobbyist knows the Senators."
- Will Rogers

Selected from Wikipedia: A year after the circumnavigation with Wiley Post, the US Congress passed a bill allowing civilians to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross. President Hoover pinned the medals on Gatty and Post. In 1934, Gatty formed the South Seas Commercial Company with Donald Douglas, with the plan to deliver air service to the islands of the South Pacific. However, the company was soon sold to Pan Am who brought Gatty into the company to organize flight routes in that region. During the Second World War, Gatty was given the honorary rank of group captain in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and worked for the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the South Pacific. He was later appointed director of Air Transport for the Allied forces, based in Australia, under General Douglas MacArthur. He resigned his position in 1943, as a result of difficulties with MacArthur and his organization being disbanded. He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he authored The Raft Book, a survival guide for airmen downed at sea. The book became a success and was placed in the survival kits of all Allied airmen serving in the Pacific. After World War II, Gatty relocated to Fiji with his Dutch-born second wife. Here he formed Fiji Airways which later became Air Pacific. He wrote a book on navigation, Nature Is Your Guide, which was published soon after his death from a stroke in 1957.

Charles Lindbergh called Gatty the "Prince of Navigators."

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it!

Van Leeuwen's view of the Atriedes tyrants as ferociously cruel (see introduction) is borne out in the unfolding of events in this speculative sequel.

I found the story engaging and wouldn't get up from the computer until I was finished. (Luckily, in this matter, the online book is not a Michener work.)

The only google results I got on the author showed a similarly named person working on types of grasses working with their environments... HM, SOUND FAMILIAR? If this is the same Marcos Van Leeuwen, then it truly is no accident that the writer's style is a strong echo of Frank Herbert's.

As much as Brian Herbert's filling in around the original books makes for entertaining reading, it is arguable that Dune Atriedes is to Heretics of Dune as um Jar Jar Binks is to Chewbacca. (The Wookies might be more difficult to understand, but they nonetheless are more highly regarded.) Semi-elitists who occasionally cringe at the "more readable" son's writing approach will likely find solace in Van Leeuwen's dark, dense text.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R

W
A
R
N
I
N
G



if you think this story has a happy ending, then you are one sick puppy.

go read it, likers of Frank Herbert, go go go!

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm writing this review just to let you know that my chapbook will be available here on the site for review as an ebook. Though all of the print copies are now gone (all but the few I saved for myself), you can read the chapbook in its PDF form (and I hope you will) by downloading it here at goodreads.

By the way, so I don't seem too conceited, let me claim here that I gave myself five stars because that's how much I enjoyed making the book, not reading it - and also how much I enjoy the idea that I can share it with anyone who wants to read it. Does that seem fair?

[Apryl Anderson]

Great cheesy wonderful good fun, what what!



This is not bedtime reading. The book's too heavy. Fall asleep, and you'll be smacked on the head.