Autocorrect insists I mean dingy. Its 2nd choice is dainty.
Dinty W. Moore is neither, but he proved to be unassuming and
intelligently witty at his reading yesterday evening. Nicknamed by his mother for an Irish bar where
his father holed up while she birthed Dinty, he first read a piece about the
deeper roots of his namesake: a long-running (87 years to be exact) comic about
a sweepstakes-winning Irish immigrant to America: Bringing up Father (aka Maggie
and Jiggs).
Despite Moore’s attempt (my guess) to head off queries about connections
with beef stew, someone in the crowd did
ask about that. Moore answered
graciously, belying having ever heard the question before. (Further research on my part revealed that
the Dinty Moore is also the name of a sandwich, attributed to Detroit, which is
a double decker corned beef and
cabbage with lettuce and tomato—not such a bad association, I think.)
The other couple of works Moore read—in the wonderful setting of the
University Art Museum--also tapped into his Irish (and, at the risk of being
redundant, Catholic) upbringing, including selections from his work-in-progress
based on the Baltimore Catechism (look it up you Protestants, athesists, Buddhists,
etc.—I had to).
I left with a couple of souvenirs:
his little hardbound The Mindful
Writer and The Rose Metal Press Field
Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction (thanks, V. Patterson for recommending
this one).
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