Professor Dinty Moore wrote a comedic book with illustrations on Casa Nueva’s napkins and is holding a book launch.
Dinty Moore wants to be roasted Wednesday night.
The director of creative writing at Ohio University is inviting people to Casa Nueva to drink beer, shout obscenities at him and win prizes during his book launch.
Moore is debuting his latest book, Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, which is a humorous book that pretends to be an advice column.
The Post sat down with Moore to discuss his latest book and why he used Casa Nueva’s napkins to illustrate his story.
The Post: What will the book launch consist of?
Dinty Moore: Usually when an author has a new book, they will do a public reading where they will read long passages of their book and everybody nods and smiles and hopefully buys the book. But since this is kind of a silly book, I thought I’d do a silly book launch. I’m going to read for about two minutes instead of 40 minutes. Then we’re going to crack some jokes and we’re going to have a contest to see who can draw the best picture of a polar bear because there are a lot of polar bears in my book. We’ll see who can draw the best picture of a polar bear on a napkin stolen from Casa. The book itself is illustrated with napkins that I stole from Casa and drew various pictures on. It’s really kind of a goof but I think it’ll be fun.
P: There are napkins incorporated from Casa. How did that come about?
DM: I play with form a lot, so one of the essays is a series of Facebook posts between me and my friends. … I like trying to write in experimental ways. I have one essay, which is just one long footnote to a single sentence. I was sitting around one day thinking, ‘What else can I do that might be a goof?’ And I thought, ‘Napkins. I’ll do napkins.’ I had white napkins at home, and I tried, but they just fell right apart. The next day, I was at Casa for dinner. At the bar, they have these thicker, brown recycled napkins and they work perfectly. I think Casa is OK with it, but I took a handful, sat at the bar and drew on them.
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P: Where did the idea come from for it?
DM: I’ve always liked funny writers and I’ve always like humor on the page. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve said (to myself)... 'You should probably just write what you want to write and have fun doing it.’ Turns out, writing a funny book is more fun than writing a serious one.
P: What are the illustrations of?
DM: They illustrate the various essays. There is a joke in the book about polar bears, so there is a polar bear meditating. There is a polar bear looking like a Brazilian cannibal. There are polar bears waving goodbye.
P: What are some of your other works like?
DM: I’ve written a book about Buddhism in America. I’ve written a book about Internet culture back when the Internet was very new … I’ve written a serious textbook about writing that’s used in undergraduate classrooms. I’ve written a memoir about my own childhood. I’m working on a book about hell. I personally think hell is a myth or a metaphor. There isn’t actually a whole lot of fire down in the belly of the earth with devils walking around, but I’m writing about how pervasive the idea of hell is in our culture and how it’s really affect not just religion but government and human behavior and just about everything else. But that’s actually going to be a funny book too. It doesn’t sound like it.
P: How long have you been writing?
DM: When I was in Kindergarten, I probably started writing incomplete sentences and said I want to be a writer someday. I grew up north of Pittsburgh in Erie, Pennsylvania. My father was a mechanic. I barely knew people who read books — much less people who wrote books. I ended up doing what most working class kids who like writing do: I went into the newspaper business. … Though I liked journalism, I think at a certain point I wanted to write much more personal material than journalism was letting me write.
P: And for the book launch at Casa, you said that’s going to be more of a humor event?
DM: We’re giving away copies of the book and I have some other goofy prizes. I’m going to have something like a roast. I’m going to have some of my friends get up there and publicly shame me by saying horrible things about me because I steal napkins. It’ll be quick and it’ll be funny.
P: How long the was process of writing it?
DM: It took me about a year to write it, but the thing about publishing is when you turn in your absolutely final draft, it still takes another 8 months to do all the production work and get the book in the stores.
Moore’s book released on Aug. 18 and is currently available online, in bookstores and in Athens at Little Professor Book Center.
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