Registration Day

Today was registration for school. I was put temporarily in a rage when I thought that I did not get any of my top-choice professors, but I found out later that the real designations will be given out later this week.

After registration, I had a chance to explore the New School area. What a writer's Mecca! There are all sorts of stationery stores, pen stores, book stores. Of course, the biggest stand-out is the Strand bookstore. Its ads boast 18 miles of books. I stepped inside and was overwhelmed. Books were piled twenty feet in the air. There are al types of categories: Art books, occult books, chess books (yes, there's a small section only on chess!). Everything is so damn cheap there. I still think it is cheaper to buy used books online, but the Strand is so well laid out, so chock full of books that it demands your patronage. I did not even make it to the rare books section today. I'm going there for Christmas.

Orientation was not too informative. I know I should not have been, but I was actually surprised when the director has us each rise and (gag) say something about ourselves. My heart was pounding ten people before me. When I stood, I tried to mutter a joke about me being tired of editing nonfiction and looking for an escape, but I started to sit down halfway throughout it, and it got no laughs.

Afterward, there was a meet-and-greet. I talked to the assistant director about the idiosyncrasies of Berkeley Heights, NJ. He told me that there is a little artists' community there that share a pool. I spoke to Helen Schulman, author of P.S.: A Novel. She explained to me the nuances of having one's book made into a movie.

I was quite shy today. Everyone else was downing Brooklyn lager and siphoning bottles of wine and I was wallflowering it, trying not to seem like I was eavesdropping on anyone's conversation. Ultimately, I did meet some interesting fellow students.

One guy worked researching furniture for the Times magazine. A activist woman had just yesterday harassed Elizabeth Dole as she was being interviewed my reporters with down syndrome (a blatant photo op by the GOP). Alex and Darryl were singing the praises of Shelley Jackson, a professor there that they had workshopped with in undergraduate school. Another guy wanted to write essays assailing the fact that many intellectuals scoff at sports. There were a lot of interesting views today. Bring on tomorrow.

Palladio

I am reading Palladio by Jonathan Dee. Here's the description from Amazon.com:

In her small upstate New York town, Molly Howe is admired for her beauty, poise, and character, until one day a secret is exposed and she is cruelly ostracized. She escapes to Berkeley, where she finds solace in a young art student named John Wheelwright. They embark on an intense, all-consuming affair, until the day Molly disappears–again. A decade later, John is lured by the eccentric advertising visionary Mal Osbourne into a risky venture that threatens to eviscerate every concept, slogan, and gimmick exported by Madison Avenue. And much to John’s amazement, one of the many swept into Osbourne’s creative vortex is the woman who left him devastated so many years before.

The Birthday Boy

Today was my birthday, and I was glad to get some literary gifts. My girlfriend got me Sieze the Day by Saul Bellow and Revising Fiction by David Madden. Seize the Day is taught in Columbia University's writing program. Revising Fiction looks promising, too. It gives 185 techniques for improving fiction. My mother bought me five or six books of stamps to pay for postage when I submit stories and novels.

Registration for classes is on Wednesday, as is orientation. Classes start on September 7 and I am reading recommended titles and works by my professors at top speed. I wrote about 500 words a couple days ago and thought of a great idea for a series of YA books. Off to write!