November 25

Baton Rouge

To my knowledge there are no Nanoers in Baton Rouge, but the teacher who first got me writing way back when is.

His name is Mark Spitzer and he's a youngish writer who has published a novel called Chum that will either cause you to roll on the ground laughing or throw it away in horror. It's a taste thing. Mark's the assistant editor of Exquisite Corpse, a literary magazine gone zine that you all should take a look at if you don't know it already. Andrei Codrescu, the Romanian guy who does commentary for NPR, started Exquisite Corpse many, many years ago.

On Tuesday, Mark, Andrei, and I walked around the vacant streets of downtown Baton Rouge running errands. It was a very sad downtown, one of those where you think, "This could be so great. Look at the architecture!" but for some reason all the shops and most of the offices have been abandoned for years. Except for Huey Long's State Capitol building, which we visited because Andrei said, "You must touch one of the bullet holes!" Apparently this is a popular pass time in Baton Rouge--sticking your finger in one of the bullet holes along the corridor where Huey Long was assassinated in the mid 30s.

The building is a beautiful tower that soars above everything else; when I left Baton Rouge I could see it in my rearview mirror for miles. It's part phallus, part capitol and done up in art deco. Beautiful really. The hall where Huey was shot is paneled with something like polished marble, and countless spackled-over bullet holes have left the smooth walls covered with quarter-sized pockmarks. It must have been a bloody, bloody day. We had to look for awhile, but behind a plaster bust of Huey, we finally found a hole that hadn't been covered up. I stuck my finger in it. And then we left.

In Baton Rouge I also learned about eating coon, a fish called goo, and I sat in on an LSU graduate fiction writing workshop. When I told them about National Novel Writing Month, they were all friendly and chuckled and then asked about the prize money.