Spinning class with Colum McCann

Apr 6, 2011

I came home from work this evening in time to shoot hoops with Anna and Malia — little Oliver, too, who I held up to dunk a small b-ball, and then he hung from the rim — but decided I needed to return to Duke to attend the Archive-sponsored reading by author Colum McCann.

I’ve been a fan of McCann since my Peace Corps hammock-reading days: I wrote about his books in my posts An imagination and As darkness falls.

I’m so glad I went back to campus tonight, because McCann was enthralling in his argument for finding and telling stories — there are so many stories to tell, he said, that they “spin in a Yeatsian gyre.” I’m in my decade of narrative, so this opportunity to hear from a great storyteller was an inspiration.

I bought a paperback copy of Let the Great World Spin because my hardcover copy, along with a copy of This Side of Brightness, is off with some friend or relative. Since those days in Vanuatu, when I pressed the advanced reader’s edition of Brightness into the hands of as many of my fellows PCVs as I could, I’ve been urging others to read McCann. You should, too.

Anton Zuiker ☄