"Without the merest pop-reference to Darth Vader"

In advance of M. Allen Cunningham's June 9th visit to Corvallis, Oregon's Grass Roots Books & Music to celebrate the launch of The Honorable Obscurity Handbook, writer Nathanial Brodie offers a nice little column in The Corvallis Advocate:

Cunningham’s jaded hipster neighbors may sneer when he describes “novelists and poets, who strive away in shabby rooms” as “forces of unpaid human creativity in service to something larger and more lasting than themselves,” whose only incentive is “destiny.”

But the earnestness of this line, the fact that he can use the word “destiny” without the merest hint of sarcasm or pop-reference to Darth Vader, is a sign that this is a book that at least attempts to transcend sniping and snarking. This is a book—“part consoling source-book, part cultural commentary, part wry self-help manual, and part inspirational anthology”—that speaks to and encourages the nurturing and gnawing heart of the creative spirit within us before the disparaging and capitalistic forces of our daily lives censor it mute.

Read the rest.