{"id":13027,"date":"2008-07-12T14:37:10","date_gmt":"2008-07-12T18:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=13027"},"modified":"2014-01-17T19:42:27","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T00:42:27","slug":"the-one-readercon-event-you-should-not-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/12\/the-one-readercon-event-you-should-not-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"The one Readercon event you should not miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just noticed that the following event is scheduled to take place on Friday at 9:00 p.m.  <\/p>\n<p>For me, this will take priority over everything else scheduled that weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Bring your kleenex.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><b>Tom Disch&#8217;s &#8220;Winter Journey&#8221;<\/b><br \/>\n<i>(40 min.)<\/i><br \/>\nAlmost exactly a year after the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor in September 2004, Tom Disch began writing a sequence of poems, which he shared on his blog. Eventually there were 31 of them. He titled the sequence &#8220;Winter Journey&#8221; after Schubert&#8217;s lieder cycle &#8220;Winterreise&#8221; (a work Naylor loved). Elizabeth Hand calls the sequence &#8220;an extraordinary efflorescence of grief &#8230; tragic, bitter, bleakly funny, romantic, heart-rending&#151;and also accessible. I can imagine, by some divine fluke, the book becoming a surprise, posthumous bestseller&#151;an irony Disch would have appreciated.&#8221; When the sequence was completed, Disch contacted friend and filmmaker Eric Solstein, and asked if a reading of the work might be videotaped to serve as a suicide note. At its conclusion, he said, he would kill himself, the attendant publicity hopefully contributing to the success of the recording. A deal was struck between Tom and Eric&#151;the taping would proceed if the suicide were postponed for some indefinite period of time. This will be the first public showing of &#8220;Winter Journey.&#8221; The poems are to be published later this year, by Payseur and Schmidt, with a DVD of the reading included.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just noticed that the following event is scheduled to take place on Friday at 9:00 p.m. For me, this will take priority over everything else scheduled that weekend. Bring your kleenex. Tom Disch&#8217;s &#8220;Winter Journey&#8221; (40 min.) Almost exactly a year after the death of his longtime partner Charles Naylor in September 2004, Tom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,446],"class_list":["post-13027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-readercon","tag-thomas-m-disch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13028,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027\/revisions\/13028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}