I continue today to be educated in new ways to freeze to death in a Victorian house. Though the thermostat maintains its adequate setting, subtle but powerful air currents strip the body of vital heat. I don a stocking cap, decide it’s not enough, add a blanket, then two—one under and one over—in order to work on my laptop. An hour later I feel warm, but unbundled I discover too late that I’ve sweated just enough to dampen my cotton clothing, and I’m hypothermic in minutes.

Still, it’s a satisfying bright winter day. After another round of edits, my book is going out for advance reviews. I learned I won the LAS Dean’s Award for undergraduate teaching and will advance to campus competition, where the winner receives a major award. My sons built the snow fort pictured at left, displaying the young’s natural talent for burrowing and finding shelter. When I tried to straighten after scooping snow with a bucket, Starbuck said, “Poor poor weird funny daddy,” and offered to buy me a milkshake. It’s a good day.

Their fort reminds me of the front cover of William Gass’s brilliant Finding a Form (Cornell UP, 1997), which everyone who cares about literary art should read. I’m re-reading it for the third time in preparation for Gass's AWP tribute, reading, reception and a dinner that I've just been invited to attend. What does one say to William Gass, given the chance?

I could tell him that I once attended a reading he did at the (once) great Barbara’s Books in Chicago. As he signed something for me, I asked him where I might do an MFA in the manner of John Gardner. Novelist and creative-writing teacher Gardner, from what I understand, was Gass’s friend but bitter intellectual-aesthetic foe, and the look on Gass’s face as he tried to process what I’d said was illuminating. (Not to mention that Gass refused ever to teach creative writing and was a philosophy professor instead over a long career.) Now that a dozen years have passed, it would be interesting to see what his face would do if I brought up the incident again, but given the chance I’ll probably try to say how important he’s been to me, though in my case, silence or even, “Gonna eat that?” might be more sage.