The Abiding Importance of Pie

Valentine's Day Massacre, originally uploaded by edfinn.

That is what happened to this pie soon after the photo was taken. It is a banana peanut butter cream pie with a chocolate cookie crust. And a little whipped cream on top. I MADE THIS PIE. For my wife. That's right.

I will accept your adulation now.

Papers, papers

In all the excitement of the holidays, MLA and then a trip to Egypt (!), I didn't have a chance to post about an exciting update from the publication front. Since then I also had some good conference news, so here's the skinny.

I'm really delighted to be participating in an awesome book project co-edited by Lee Konstantinou and Sam Cohen considering the impact of David Foster Wallace. The collection is under contract with Iowa and it got a great writeup in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Very exciting! I'm working on revisions to my chapter right now. My piece will explore how different groups of readers are defining Wallace's legacy through book reviews and literary consumption.

I had a paper accepted to Digital Humanities 2011! This may not seem like as big a deal until you start reading the comments on Twitter from people who didn't get in: the acceptance rate was only 31% for panel proposals. I've really enjoyed my previous two DH conferences, and I'm looking forward to presenting with fellow LitLabbers Zephyr Frank and Rhiannon Lewis, with Franco Moretti as moderator. The panel is titled "Networks, Literature, Culture" and it's going to be fantastic. I'll save you a seat.