Secrets of the City

MnSpeak’s own Kurtis Scaletta author’s an unauthorized followup to his own book, Mudville, combining regional baseball with the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft: As they got closer they became yet more horrid, with innumerable eyes on their bulbous heads. Several of my own party instantly went mad, and two or three bound off into the snow alone, leaving us shy on the bench and with only one pitcher in relief.

The Heavy Table continues to expand its content into previously unexplored regions of food writing. In this instance, they are publishing a serial novel called Knife Skills (part one, part two) by James Norton. From part one: At three in the morning, Paul Wednesday dined alone. He sat at the head of a 24-foot-long table hewn from a single solid piece of hardwood, lightly sanded, burnished, but otherwise raw. Its surface was slightly warped, and it was clean and empty other than a single pewter plate heavily laden with red meat, sliced thinly, nearly raw. He chewed his steak thoughtfully, in the dark. Streetlights shone through the restaurant’s stained glass windows, throwing colored shadows onto the various animal skulls fastened upon the walls.

Minnesota Historical Society Acquisitions Librarian Patrick Coleman in a video about Minnesota’s contributions to pulp literature, including the rarely told but fascinating tale of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, steamy novelist and wildman Dan Brennan, sci-fi great Lester del Rey, and The Drowning Wire, a pulp novel set in Minnesota.

MPR: For thousand of Minnesotans, this week is crunch week. It’s not just because it’s Thanksgiving, it’s because they have to finish a novel by midnight Saturday.