"Let me lend a hatchet to your mental thicket"

I sat in on an author reading/discussion with Joshua Furst this past Monday, as part of a literary series my writing professor hosts each week. I would find out, having showed up with no background on the author, that Furst is the author of two novels, The Sabotage Cafe and Short People, and a professor of writing at the Pratt Institute in New York. This was all well and good, and Furst provided some very insighful thoughts on the literary theories of trajedy in a postmodern world, but my thoughts lingered towards things more pertinent.

...Does the writer sport the turtle-neck, or does the turtle-neck sport the writer? This consideration of cause and effect holds more weight than one might think.

Furst strolled into the room with an nonchalant swagger. He had a humbled presence- a subdued, bohemian "coolness" almost too stereotypical for the New York writer- and had a welcoming and informal air about him. He was clad in black and grey tones, wearing straight legged chinos, boots, and a black turtle-neck sweater that draped across his skinny frame in a way that accentuated the hollowness between his limbs and the fabric. The classic scruffy beard he wore, aided towards that disheveled look the ladies dig, yet he refined his demeanor with some black framed glasses, reinforcing the fact that he is indeed a scholar.

I'm instantly thinking this dude knows what's up: he's fresh, he's cultured, he's modern- but the whole time i was asking my self what came first? Because if it was the talent in the writer, and the writer then accomodated his profession with a comfortable turtle-neck sweater, then I have to live and let it be. But if perhaps there is some secret power in a turtle-neck, one that endows its wearer with proclivity in prose and speech, and so explains the rule of "he who writes wears trendy and comfortable clothes in earth-tones", then perhaps the only thing standing in my way towards fame and accomplishment in the writers hall of fame, is a trip to the Gap.



ah the silver lining.