Back in 2019, once it was all said and done, I felt like my presentation was probably the only "amateur hour" talk, as in I wasn't dealing with a dissertation or monograph I had worked relentlessly on for months or years. My talk was engaging, as was I, especially being a person who works in the Real World TM, and everybody was very kind.
This year we got a few more, as I call it, amateur hour talks, but only in that they were put together and delivered by folks who don't publish dissertations or monographs regularly as, er, work.
Like mine in Rome, they were by no means amateur work. I only bring it up because I was very proud. One was about asportation and teleportation in Pynchonian works, and the other was about photography.
We were being hosted by the Dortmund Technisches Univeritat, and the building we were in was the International Meeting Center, or IBZ auf Deutsch.
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| Entrance, with main room on right |
Inside over the course of the week there were plenty of wild and deep discussions about Pynchonalia. It was set to be a wild year, what with Pynchon releasing a new novel, Shadow Ticket, this past October, and PTA's "One Battle After Another," a loosely-based-upon version of Pynchon's Vineland.
They had titles like "Authorial Grace and Readerly Charity: Reading Pynchon with Compassion," and "The Foregrounding of Characters and Events in Pynchon's 'Under the Rose' Rewritten in V."
That Foregrounding talk took me a while to understand what she was going for, but they were all rather fascinating talks. I learned about a German reclusive writer of Out There work, Walter Moers, but his books are for children.
There was a long discussion of the magenta/green color scheme for everything, and about how it shows up all throughout Pynchon's ouevre.
There was a talk by a violinist, a fan from Vancouver who was so inspired by the Poisson Curve elements in Gravity's Rainbow that he designed an entire violin concerto composed with the same, the Poisson Curve, as it's foundation. He was going to be playing a section of it at the Friday evening concert.
When I told Cass about it, he asked me to film it, and then play it back and he would play it for me in person after checking it out. Cass has been taking violin at his school for two years, so I'm sure he would be ready for an experimental violin concerto. But, I thought it would be really cool to take the kids to the show that Friday, so Cass could see it in person.
Back behind the IBZ on campus was a little nature hike. It was serene and mostly shady, and provided a mice respite from the lunchtime searching for overpriced currywurst sausages with fries covered in mayo.
There was even an abandoned wheel for a coal mine access route.
Coal mining was an original reason for the town's explosive growth in the nineteenth century, and it housed the country's first electrically-powered coal mine.
We learned that on our field trip to Zechner Zollern, which I may get to here eventually (I had Corrie's phone for that day).
On campus, like any good university campus, there were some publicly placed art installations, the coolest of which is seen below.
Here's a slide from an intense talk from a very young first-time presenter from Sao Paulo:
On Friday, I took the kids a few stops into central Dortmund and walked over to the venue. Every good little German village will have a fifteenth-century church or cathedral, and Dortmund is no different:
This venue was called Domicil, and was in a neighborhood inside the old wall:
Inside, the street floor was similar to any tiny bar, and reminded me of a fancier version of SLO's own Library. But, when you ventured all the way to the back, unlike the Library, where you'd find a door to the covered smoking area, this had a large stairwell up to the left, which split at the landing into two separate flights, both heading to the same spot:
The door on the left seen above was to the bathroom, and the stage venue area was to the right above.
One thing had begun to take shape over the last few days in Dortmund, was the heat. It was getting warmer, and warmer, and then hot, and then hotter. At the end of the time in Dortmund, the temps were in the upper 90s, which is easy money for Sacramento people, or Texas folks, but nowhere had air conditioning, as it was just something that nobody really put thought into, as the temps were never that bad.
By that Friday, reports of a rainstorm coming through and taking a bite out of the heat were rampant. The sky was a bit darker with clouds than normal, but it was still steamy when we got inside.
When we got up to the venue, it was maybe 85 or 90 up in that room. The show was to start at 8, and the first performer was going to be our violinist Jack, which was nice because besides the heat and stuffyness, it would be late by the time we got back to the flat.
Have you ever been to a concert at a bar? They always start on time, right? The acts are exactly how you think they'll be right?
Our violinist Jack was the third act of the evening, and got started around 9:25. If he wasn't going on, we were leaving right then. It was crazy hot, and Camille had had enough of the talented German singer-songwriter girls.
Finally Jack started, and Cass watched, rapt. Once he finished his first, er, violin piece, Camille was begging to leave, but I told her we'd stay for at least one more piece, for Cass. Jack played only a single other violin composition, bowed, and waled backstage as we cheered. Cass turned to me and said he wanted to go congratulate Jack. I said, Cool, just go behind that ungarded backstage door.
He looked at me funny, and I said, Let's go. I took the two kids and we walked straight for the door, passing by twenty-something locals who gave us funny looks. The door was unlocked and led to a simple hallway---that was at least 20 degrees cooler. It was amazing. Jack was alone, leaning against the wall, trying to catch his breath.
He was shocked that Cass wanted to come back and talk to him, to say thanks for the show, and shoot the breeze about violin. "Keep playing, young man, just keep playing" Jack reiterated. Jack was young, tall, fit and square-jawed like a good Canuck, with a deep and sonorous voice. I thought it was great for Cass to see this dude as a star violin composer and player.
At the IPW this year many talks were centered on Against the Day, my favorite work, while others looked at different things from Bleeding Edge, Shadow Ticket, and Gravity's Rainbow. Some talks mentioned One Battle After Another, but there was less of that than I expected.
I handed out my bootlegs and some of my own work, and enjoyed talking about literature for the week. There was also some wary chats I had with various Germans and Austrians about how they were no excited to see the German nationalism brought on by the world cup. "Zere are so many flags flying...did everybody just forget?" Sobering talks.
Anyway, it was already decided where the IPW 2028 will be happening: The University of Aarhus. Where might that be?
Oh my...
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