Letters to Shaver

The other day Sage asked whether I’d like to join her in some sort of rapid-fire daily project. Like those people who write a poem a day or make a craft project per day, something in that line.

We decided to try something collaborative, and I’m hoping it turns out like this: Sage takes a photograph of the Mississippi and Shaver Avenues intersection, same time of day, same general area. She sends the photograph to me and I write a very short story about one subject I find in the image. Perhaps it’s a piece of litter, or a dog wandering by himself, or a woman with a coffee. It’s half a rip-off of Joe Wendroth’s excellent “Letters to Wendy’s,” excerpts of which you can read here. The conceit is this: Wendroth has created a persona that writes some profound or disturbing or plainly bizarre piece of wizdom on the little comment cards you find at Wendy’s restaurants. A real picture begins to emergy, within just a few comments, of what a fringe person is behind the writings.

It’s worth picking up, and might be one of my favorite bathroom books of all time. You can simply flip to any page and, even if you’ve read it before, find something interesting to read. About food and sex and violence and just about everything you could want in an American book.