18B *The Michigan Daily Literardagazine - Thursday, March 1$997 0 . 110 The Michigan Oy Literary Magazi mE 1IST! A 'weekly list of who's where, what's happening and why you need to be there.. ~AInterview 'U' Pro f. Charles Baxter represents Ann Arbor's top literary talent By Mary Trombley ~For the Daily thursday CAMPUS CINEMA Ann Arbor Film Festival The 35th Annual Festival continues to showcase the best and brightest in experimental and independent filmmaking. Mich. 3 p.m. (free judge's screen- ing), 7, 9 and 11 p.m. Free. MUSIC Nuno Bettencourt Formerly of Extreme, now out on his own. Harpo's. (810) 824-1700. Counting Crows With the weather in Michigan, it will indeed feel like a long December, which is all the more reason to check out this sold-out show if you have tick- ets. State Theatre. 961-5450. Dorothy East Lansing rock originals. Rick's. 9:30 p.m. Free. Knee Deep Shag Rock originals from this Kalamazoo band, touring in support of its "Intuition" CD. Blind Pig. 9:30 p.m. Space Touring for its new CD, "Spiders." With Star 69. The Shelter. 7:30 p.m. $7. WCBN Bash Come support your University radio station. With Raisin Pickers, Only A Mother and K.C. Groves and the Darlin's. The Ark. 8 p.m. $5 students. THEATER Comedy Company Special Edition The group presents its annual big finale performance fea- turing sketch comedy and improvisation games. Mendelssohn Theater. 8:30 p.m. $5. 763-1107. Fool for Love Sam Shepard's journey into the heart of the American West, where two lovers rekindle their past attempts at love. Arena Theater (basement of Frieze Building). 7 p.m. Free. 764-6800. ALTERNATIVES Blues' Storytellers WEMU producer Michael Jewett discusses songwriting in oral/folk tra- dition. EMU Depot Town Center, 32 E. Cross St. 6:30 p.m. $12. 487-0407. Ellen Driscoll Ongoing exhibit at the University Museum of Art through March 16 - "Ahab's Wife: Working Drawings and Models." Free. Fiction Reading Matt Ruff reads from his lat- est novel, "Sewer, Gas and Electric." Borders. 7:30 p.m. Free. Richard Goode A program of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms in the Ann Arbor debut of this acclaimed, Grammy winning pianist. Hill Auditorium. 8 p.m. $16-$42. 764-2538. The all-star cast returns from the movie "A Fish Called Wanda" in "Fierce Creatures," showing on campus this week. Poetry Reading Laurence Lieberman reads from his work as part of the University Visiting Writers Series. Rackham Amphitheatre. 5 p.m. Free. friday CAMPUS CINEMA Ann Arbor Film Festival See Thursday. Mich. 3 p.m. (free judge's screening), 7 and 9 p.m. MUSIC Blur Come see Oasis' bitter - and better? - rivals. St. Andrew's Hall. 6 p.m. 961- M ELT. Counting Crows See Thursday. (This show is sold out.) Crossroads Ceili Come on over for an evening of Irish song and dance. The Ark. 8 p.m. $11. Local H Keep it copasetic with these guys and their guests, Failure and Beer Nuts. Clutch Cargos's in Pontiac. (810) 333- 2362. The Odds Touring in support of its CD "Nest," this Canadian band features many cool guys. The 7th House in Pontiac. 8 p.m. (810) 335- 8100. Jerry Sprague and the Remainders College-' rock cover band from East Lansing. Rick's. 9:30 p.m. Free. Transmission One stop and you can see a lot of bands of 313 Records'. With Small Change and M.K.R. Blind Pig. 9:30 p.m. Free. Wailing Souls Reggae returns to Detroit with this show at the Majestic. (810) 645-6666. THEATER A Few Good Men The Rude Mechanicals (for- merly Soph Show) presents Aaron Sorkin's courtroom drama concerning two Marines at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. It was turned into the acclaimed film starring Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. U-Club in the Union. 8 p.m. $6 in advance through the Michigan Union Ticket Office. 763-TKTS. Empatheatre Real-life stories from the audi- ence are quickly molded into an improvisation- al scene by a group of trained performers. Kerrytown Concert House, 415 N. 4th Ave. $6 students. 769-2999. Comedy Company Special Edition See Thursday. 8:30 p.m. Fool for Love See Thursday. 8 and 11 p.m. ALTERNATIVES Book Signing University professor Richard W. Bailey discusses his book, "Nineteenth- Century English." Shaman Drum. 4 p.m. Free. Fiction Reading Ray Young Bear gives a storytelling performance and signs copies of his new book "Remnants of the First Earth." Rackham Amphitheatre. 8 p.m. Free. n a story in University Prof. Charles Baxter's new collection of short fiction, "Believers," a character relating a tale at a dinner party says, "I keep forgetting about the necessities of violence in the USA. Well, if you were expecting violence, you'll be disappointed. Something else happened." This statement is almost emblematic of Baxter's own work. His stories, in their graceful depiction of Midwestern life, never hinge on overt brutality. Something else is always happening in Baxter's work - something dark, something slow, some- thing heady, but always something subtle and well- crafted. Even when he's describing an assisted sui- cide or a bar brawl, Baxter's writing is endowed with careful clarity and wit. "I've come to feel that the real challenge to me as a writer is to take ordinary experiences and to make them interesting again," Baxter said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. "Apparently it's not my mission in life to take the huge subjects - war and peace - and deal with them. I make What I do is to take some of these more day-to-day events day event and make them compelling. The author's statement is a compellin bit humble, considering that the "huge subjects" in most - people's lives are the ones 'U' Pi Baxter writes about. Marriage (the lasting kind), conventional confusion and the after-effects of death and disease are mainstays of his stories. As he writes about confused people making choices, Baxter avoids the flamboyant and focuses on slower, scarier realities. In his fiction, a drunken driver will avoid crashing his car, only to have to face the wreckage of his life in the morning. This year has been particularly productive for the author: Besides "Believers," which is in stores now, a book of his essays, titled "BurningDown The House" will be available in April. Vintage Books is also issuing his first collection, "Harmony Of The World," this spring. In addition, Baxter is the current director of the English department's MFA program. Though Baxter focuses on the short story genre, he has written two fine novels - "First Light" and, most recently, 1993's "Shadow Play," as well as a collection of poetry. His work is regularly pub- lished in academic journals and such mainstream magazines as Harper's and Atlantic Monthly."Baxter is frequently anthologized in "Best American Short Stories" and has received numerous accolades, including an O. Henry Price award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Baxter's collections of short fiction have gar- nered him the most attention. Despite his forays into other forms, short stories continue to fascinate him. "I really like the poetry and the compression and the scope of the short story, how much you can tell in a limited space," Baxter commented. "Within this small size, this constriction ... I think you can do amazing things." Baxter's characters are particularly memorable - a young child experiencing the death of his grandmother, a bored banker determined to explode his life, an elderly woman deceiving her husband on his deathbed. Baxter explains that his style of character influ- ences his use of the short story: "I like characters that are impulsive and impulsive characters are ~day to Charles Baxter rof. and author more suited to short stories than novels. I like that in short stories you don't have to give a character's whole history. You just put a char- acter in front of the reader and have that character start to do something." The novel form influ- ences Baxter's work in a different manner. "I really think novels are more about time and memory and people making plans. Novels are often up to the business of creating his- tories." "First Light," for example, traces the relationship of a brother and sister in reverse chronological order, starting from a present-day holiday party and ending at their first meeting in infancy. The book is particu- larly apt at showing the connections between the characters' past and present circumstances; each episode reveals a little more of the complicated links between past events and present pain. Baxter is a native of Minneapolis and has taught in the state of Michigan since 1974. His writing is nearly always set in the Midwest, most particular- ly the fictional rural town of Five Oaks. "I write about the Midwest because I know it and because I'm a Midwesterner and you write about what you know. Even Stephen King writes about Maine because that's what he knows," he said. Baxter's stories are eerie portraits of the region - they accentuate the surreal in the most Charles Baxter. commonplace of Midwestern lives. Five Oaks is Baxter's own mental sandlot: "My imagination can really go wild in it. It really does- n't exist anywhere. I keep fudging the geography ... sometimes that town is near Kalamazoo and sometimes it's up near Bay City or Saginaw. It goes wherever I want it to be. In my head it's this little playground I've created in which I put my characters and I jest watch them do whatever I want them to do or whatever they want to do. "It's true that my fiction is called realist but I get to change the rules because I'm writing it. If changing the rules suits me and as long as the story seems to be plausible, I can get away with that." Chances are a character in one Five Oaks story will pop up again in another story. The most famous of these recycled characters are Saul and Patsy, a married couple that first appears in Baxter's second collection of stories, "Through The Sa "Believ Baxte and mo: out that They're They're go on v about th- Othei his stori example characte "Then never th around ; them ba tions. It I x i~br 3 id~igun 3ag Literary Magazine Literary Magazine Editors: Dean Bakopoulos, Greg Pa Literary Magazine Photo Editor: Margaret Myers. Literary Magazine Judges: Creative writing subconcentrators: Dean Bakopoulos, Chris and Gordon Smith. Daily Books Editor: Elizabeth Lucas. Contributing Writers: Paul Barron, Jeremy Chamberlin, Coreen Duffy, Greg Epstein, Kidd, Jessica Belle Smith, Holly Spaulding, Fritz Swanson, Sara Talpos, Mary Trc Wilson and Beth Ziobro. Photographers: John Kraft, Margaret Myers, Jeannie Servaas, Sara Stillman and Jona Cover photo by Margaret Myers. Cover design by Greg Parker. Arts Editors: Brian A. Gnatt and Jennifer Petinski. Special Sections Coordinator: Meagan Moore. Editor in Chief: Josh White.