Minneapolis / St. Paul Blog

If you see someone reading a book on the 21 to and from MCTC, there's about an 80% chance it's written by Tom Robbins.

For the last, oh, let's say, hundred and fifty years (it feels that long sometimes), Tom Robbins has been turning out satirical and imaginitive novels by the bushel in a mad attempt to sate an appetite for them that, quite obviously, can't be sated. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates. These and a slew of other novels, poems, essays and works of criticism have made Robbins one of the most persistent, if not consistent, voices in American letters during the last twenty years.

More than 40 years after his death, legendary comedian Lenny Bruce is still often misunderstood. The godfather of so-called sick humor, who challenged the status quo in the 1950s and was frequently jailed for his troubles, will be the focus of a lecture and panel discussion tonight, Tuesday, March 3 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the Turf Club in St. Paul, hosted by Stand Up! Records.

The Open Book, located in downtown Minneapolis, hosts a crucial showcase of youth writing tonight.

For over twenty years, the Perpich Center for Arts Education has been an oasis for high school students statewide to practice art in almost all its forms in a supportive and wholly unique environment.

But the financial situation of the school has reached a level of unprecedented peril as legislature proceeds to slash its budget, curtail its one-of-a-kind admissions process, and turn the school into a charter.

The potential victims? The hundreds and hundreds of burgeoning artists across the state, like those handful of young writers on display tonight at the Open Book, who stand to lose their protective bomb shelter of creative development.

Taking a break from cultural criticism, Chuck Klosterman released his first novel this year, Downtown Owl. Set in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota, in the year 1983, it's a tale of small-town mishaps, philosophical quandaries, and life-threatening blizzards. While driving up the West Coast, Klosterman took a moment to chat with City Pages.

It’s an ongoing joke that senior citizens are the only people that bother to get out and vote. If that is true, then the Baby Boomers will soon be (if they aren’t already) controlling our country. Yet there’s another pocket of people here in the states as well: The Millennials. Born roughly between the years of 1980 and 1994, this group almost rivals the Boomers in population.

Wrecked beyond reconstruction? Author Thomas Frank discusses how conservatives wreck and rule our government.

Attention all M*A*S*H fanatics: Mike Farrell is in town this weekend. Fondly remembered as Dr. B.J. Hunnicutt, Farrell has spent decades as a political activist, writer, and producer as well.

Talking Volumes with Michael Ondaatje
Fitzgerald Theater, May 27
By Dan Sinykin

I spent the evening with a roomful of cooing, mostly women-of-a-certain-age watching the charming blue-eyed old novelist Michael Ondaatje talk about his life’s work at the Fitzgerald Theater for MPR’s Talking Volumes Series. What strange behavior for all of us at the Fitz tonight, flitting and fluttering while Ondaatje answered canned questions from Midmorning’s slick Kerri Miller. Though I’m terrified that no one agrees with me. William Gaddis, a dead brilliant satirist, once said of book readings, “What is it they want from the man that they didn’t get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left when he’s done with his work, what’s any artist but the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follows it around?” As Gaddis knew and despised, the cooing women wanted a wink and a smile, the vain pleasure of the initiated. The aesthetic purist (i.e. asshole) in me wants to snicker with Gaddis, but my other (better?) half, the half who thinks of my mother, finds more than self-congratulation in the choral coos.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is the most famous cupcake blogger ever to have penned more than 100 erotic stories.

Since she penned her first lusty tale -- a Monica Lewinsky-inspired narrative -- during law school in 1999, Bussel has been writing extensively about sex matters, fictional and otherwise. First, she was asked to co-edit an anthology of spanking erotica. Then, she wrote a column for the Village Voice for nearly three years. Now, besides continuing her own writing and editing of erotic volumes, she teaches workshops for would-be practitioners of the craft. This weekend, she's in town to lead just such a group at the Smitten Kitten. We spoke with her twice by phone to get a sense of what one of these workshops entails.

Photo by Sue Kearns

A one-eyed Buddhist Harley rider and a 70-year-old writing teacher probably seem like an unlikely pairing.