This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, February 04, 2006

What Can You Do With An Indian
When He Stops Being an Indian?



'The national literary organization that gave the former Chapel Hill writer known as Nasdijj a $1,000 minority author award says it is looking into revelations that his American Indian memoirs are fake.

The PEN American Center awarded Nasdijj, revealed last week to be a Caucasian named Timothy P. Barrus, one of five minority author awards in 2004 for "The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping." He was also a finalist for PEN's award to first-time memoirists for his debut book, "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams," in 2001.

Stacy Leigh of PEN said Friday that the organization's board will review the Nasdijj entries. Earlier in the week, PEN issued a statement saying that if accurate, the disclosure makes both works ineligible.

"PEN deplores the misrepresentation apparently perpetrated in these two cases and regrets the recognition accorded these books by PEN's literary awards process," the statement said.'


Thanks to Fred, a reader.

[And can you think of a more bogus title than The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams? It's as if the writer were doing all he could to tip off anyone with a jot of literary sensibility that he was full of shit.]