Gygax RIP; PENAmerica examines historical fiction; Death of the Zine?; my humble AI resignation

So many interesting things happening this week, and I haven't had a chance to present any of them to you! Mea culpa. Some weeks are just busier than others.

In the spirit of sharing, let me distill these tidbits for you...

• Monster Manual man moves on
Gary Gygax, infamous co-founder of the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, which I played a little in college and which has deeply informed my writing life on the level that Tolkien and Bradbury have, died on March 4. (I still have my Monster Manual from 1985.)

I didn't know he was living in Lake Geneva, WI at the time. That wonderful place is just a 30-minute trek from my old stomping grounds in Wauconda, IL. Dungeons & Dragons was created 34 years ago and really, let's give it the credit it deserves: there would be no good electronic gaming of any kind without D&D's brilliant pen-and-paper blueprint. Gygax deserves to go down in the history books for being a forefather to one of pop culture's most significant shifts in entertainment.

Read the NYT obit here.

• A question for literary scholars…
PENAmerica wants to know: Is the fictionalization of historical fiction a growing trend or just a blip on the lit culture radar? They ask a rather interesting question after discussing the work of Ilija Trojanow, who "revisioned" the life of Richard Burton:

"Has historical fiction really become a larger part of the serious literary landscape over the last few years?"

My first reply is a kind of balking. Is it really so much a leap to call historical fiction serious literature? I have always stood in awe of historical writers who can move into territory out of time and resurrect it for me as the reader. That's no facile, formulaic feat. The very first book that comes to my mind as a successful fictionalization of historical fiction is Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. Who would say that was not a piece of serious literature?

If you would like to answer that question, take a gander here.

• Zines gone six feet under: Old news?
I hadn't been completely aware of the death of zines until I read this article by Tim Brown at Critical Mass (the blog for the National Book Critics Circle). And I'm still not sure I agree that it's all over for zines. Or, if it's all over for zines, it's because the internet came along and turned them into blogs or websites or McSweeney's and others like them came along and reinvented them as commercial enterprises. Thoughts, anybody?

• Crying Uncle!
Okay, I think it's pretty obvious right now that my weekly or twice-weekly column on American Intellectualism has seen way too much of the back burner. What can I say? New projects rise (or rot) like spring bulbs.

Since I took on the AI project last fall, I've started writing a new nonfiction book, began work on a new anthology, increased my volunteer efforts for one active writer's organization and accepted the responsibilities of conference director for another local writing community.

By now, you should sense what has become inevitable news, that I've decided to suspend my further adventures into American Intellectualism right now so that I can wrap up some other projects that need closure (the nonfiction book, overdue revisions on a novel, new revisions on a children's book, and the production of the anthology).

Thanks to those of you who wrote to me personally about the series. I'll probably pick it up again someday, but probably not in 2008. I appreciate your understanding, and thanks for reading.