Virginia Quarterly Review can claim credit for a real coup: getting Art Spiegelman to be the big guest at the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book, here in Charlottesville. Melanie Mayhew writes in the Daily Progress:
VABook! 2006 will feature Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-illustrator of graphic novels “Maus” and “Maus II” and the memoir “Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!”
[…]
“This is just a fraction” of the hundreds of authors who will attend the festival,” said Nancy Damon, VABook! program director. “There is more to come. This is just to whet people’s appetite.”
Spiegelman’s appearance, sponsored by the Virginia Quarterly Review, will be at the Culbreth Theatre.
“The Virginia Quarterly Review recently began publishing a multi-part work-in-progress by Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Art Spiegelman,” said Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of the review. “This ‘comix memoir’ traces Spiegelman’s evolution as an artist and will run throughout 2006 in VQR and we’re excited to bring him to Charlottesville as part of the upcoming book festival.”
I’m baffled by the apparent renaming of Virginia Festival of the Book to “VABook!” Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I guess.
renaming of Virginia Festival of the Book to “VABook!”
Very much in the spirit of NewSpeak…
I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it. I can only assume that the bang indicates the need for excitement in the voice. But “VAB” confuses me. Is it “Virginia Book,” “Virginiabook,” “Vahbook,” or “Vah Book”? I like to think of it as such:
“Hey, did you hear that Art Spiegelman has been added to the VAHBOOK! lineup?”
Okay, I’ve missed several meetings this year (I’m on the Adult Program Committee for the Festival), but I don’t think they’ve renamed it. VABook.org is the web address, and is convenient shorthand when writing about the Festival.
It’s the exclamation point at the end that’s really bizarre. It’s like a dot-com name. Party like it’s 1999. :)
Here’s one possible explanation for the exclamation mark:
Organizers’ excitement is increasing as the festival nears, Damon said.
OT: feature request. I’m very much enjoying this blog. Would you consider adding a navigation feature? When in one-post-with-comments view, it’s helpful to have the ability to go forward or backward one post (rather than having to click on ‘home’ and then scroll to click on the next post). I realize there’s a workaround, which is always to open the one-post view in a separate window, but there are times when users may want to limit the number of windows open. Just a thought.
Good idea, Nell. I’ve taken a stab at it. Right now, it’s also listing items from “Recommended Reads,” which is annoying — I’ll see if I can’t remove that.