spring M - Department of English - University of Minnesota

own move to Minneapolis last year was prompted in part by his “wantinga bigger city” after 30 years in Ann Arbor.Baxter told a New York Times interviewer, only half in jest, that hemight write next about a psychopath, an idea prompted by his sense that“Saul’s sociopathic brother Howie, in Saul and Patsy, might be anAmerican for the 21st-century, just as I think Saul was a characteristically20th-century American. Saul assimilates, finds a way of living in a particularplace. Howie is a shape shifter, kind of a confidence man.Everywhere is his territory; he’s peripatetic, kind of a trickster. We’vealways had people like this, but I feel I see more of them now.”It’s only a notion, he adds—one of many ongoing ruminations aboutlife, literature, and culture. In a senior seminar this past spring, he askedhis students to consider “why we’re suddenly getting so many books andmovies about amnesia. Tim O’Brien’s Lake of the Woods, the new JimCarrey movie, the film Memento—students had many titles of their own.”Baxter, who edited a 1999 anthology on the subject of memory forGraywolf Press, says he and his students speculated that amnesia “mightbe a strategic survival skill—a response to the data smog that surroundsus.“That sort of discussion is one of the joys of being a writer at a university,”he adds. “You can ask questions you don’t know the answers to.That’s bound to provoke your students in interesting ways and nourishyour own work as well.”Published Works by Charles BaxterSaul and Patsy (novel, 2003)The Feast of Love (novel, 2000)Believers (novella and stories, 1997)Burning Down the House! (essays, 1997)Shadow Play (novel, 1983)A Relative Stranger (stories, 1990)Imaginary Paintings (poems, 1989)First Light (novel, 1987)Through the Safety Net (stories, 1985)Harmony of the World (stories, 1984)The South Dakota Guidebook (poems, 1984)Chameleon (poems, 1984)Edited collections:Best New American Voices 2001 (fiction, 2001)Bringing the Devil to His Knees (essays, 2001)The Business of Memory (essays, 1999)—Kate Tyler is a freelance writer based in MinneapolisENGLISH AT MINNESOTA21Charles Baxter, photo by Kate Tyler