Reading Lund

I've blathered away on this blog a gazillion times about my favorite book of all time, Little Follies: The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy, including HERE, HERE and HERE. Today I was thinking about how much I love the author Eric Kraft when I was reminded that for 15 years I've had a book about Thackery sitting on my bookshelf that was written by the very professor who introduced me to the Peter Leroy series, Michael Lund.

Mostly I'm reminded of a college professor who introduced me to my super-slice Peter Leroy, and his telling of the first time he met the author Eric Kraft - he had been expecting to meet a small-time, scrambling to have his little stories published in whatever periodical would have them writer. Turns out Kraft had put together a series of children's textbooks that were accepted as the standard curricula for Texas and California. My professor was still chuckling almost two decades later at his slight disappointment upon seeing Kraft come rolling up the street in his brand new Porsche.

On a side note, it was Prof. Lund that brought the genius of the Muppets into the classroom:

Other than Fozzie being a comedic influence I can't really say I grew up on the Muppets any more than anyone else, but as I've mentioned it in this blog several times (although I can't fucking find any of the posts grrr) the highest-level English class I took in college as an English major was Literary Criticism, in which the professor would constantly tie in how, say, The Mimetic Theory, could be applied to The Muppet Movie. It sounds silly 15 years later, but at the time it was always like "...is this guy retarded? what the...oh, shit, look at that. He's right." Bizzare. "How would Aristotle or Pope have interpreted this particular passage from Frankenstein? Okay, let's go to the tape: here's Fozzie and Kermit coming to a fork in the road while driving and..."

So in deciding to read Vanity Fair at least just so I can read Lund's book Reading Thackery, I stumbled upon his website for his own Route 66 series of novels. Which, judging from the site, bears great resemblance to the Peter Leroy joints I love so much. I'm gonna read them, and sight unseen I'm giving them the offical Xmastime Book Club recommendation for you too!  :)