temperatures, and Sinatra singing “I’ve Got the World on a String.”
Everyone says this has been a quiet
residency so far. Nothing yet has happened as dramatic as the fistfight that
broke out last June between two women vying for the attentions of playwright
Mac Wellman, who was doing a pole dance at the time. (The women fought to a
draw.) There is also the fabled Bennington moment when Gretchen (not her real
name) stood naked as a rose is a rose is a bell in an uncurtained window for a midnight hour.
Tim O’Brien, who was supposed to
arrive tomorrow to deliver three lectures and a reading, has cancelled. Liam
Rector, our director, asks if I’ll fill in for one of the lectures. I can
choose the topic. A second substitute lecture will be given by Rick Moody
following a screening of The Ice
Storm, the Ang Lee movie adapted from Moody’s novel. We’re renting the local
movie house for the morning. Which morning? Like everyone else here, I’ve lost
my time sense, punchy from too little sleep and too many sestinas.
The time has come to think up acts
for Saturday night’s varsity show. Amy Hempel proposes a “bad metaphor”
contest, with a prize for the worst. Similes are eligible. Classics of the
genre include “as tall as a 6'3'’ tree” and “Bob and Mary had never met. They
were like two hummingbirds, who had also never met.” Sven Birkerts has agreed
to judge the “pithy summary” contest, with prizes both for the best and for the
most authentically bogus summaries of great novels. The Benningtonians will
reprise the anthem that begins, “We could have stayed all year, / and laughed
and played all year, / but ten days were enough,” to the tune of “I Could Have
Danced All Night.” Lynn Freed will do her Julia Child imitation, and Jill
McCorkle will produce, script, and direct something she is calling the “Novel
Swat Team.” I am in charge of writing a skit satirizing a workshop in which
people take turns abusing a sensitive poet until all see the light and burst
into the Hallelujah chorus or Johnny Mercer’s “Accentuate the Positive.”
— David Lehman