Stephin Merritt is rare on stage these days. I was disappointed to not see him when I got to see Future Bible Heroes at the Echoplex last year. However, if you are a fan you can catch him during another tour, a book tour to promote his new book ‘101 Two-Letter Words’. The book, illustrated by Roz Chast (a regular contributor to The New Yorker) contains four-line poems based on the 101 two-letter words accepted in Scrabble. Two-letter words? I thought long words were the only thing you could possibly be looking for when you play Scrabble!
Thee book was apparently inspired by his mother, a former English teacher, as Stephin explained to the New York Times a few months ago:
‘My mother is a former English teacher who always expected me to write the Great American Novel, thunderous and profound, so she was not impressed to learn that my first book is going to be amusing light verse. But now that I’ve got her hooked on Words With Friends, she sees the immense value of remembering the two-letter words, and what fascinating little oddities they are, so she’s begging for a copy of the book’
This seems to be a weird turn of events for the Magnetic Fields’ frontman, not the Great Gatsby, but an unexpected book with poems about familiar words (such as at, go, hi, no, and up) as well as more obscure ones (such as aa, ka, oe, qi, xu).
Here is the only example I have found online:
The country folk say “howdy-do”
but here in town, it’s “yo”;
they’ll say it in the country too
in twenty years or so.
Hipsters and fans will love it and others will probably shrug. The book will be published in October by W. W. Norton, and Stephin will be doing several events around the US:
09/29: New York, 7 :00 PM, BARNES & NOBLE UNION SQUARE — BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”. Stephin Merritt and Roz Chast. (http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/84339)
10/01: Boston, 6:00 PM , BRATTLE THEATRE — BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”. (http://www.harvard.com/event/stephin_merritt/)
10/06: Los Angeles, 7:00 PM, BOOK SOUP — BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”. (http://www.booksoup.com/author-events?page=2)
10/07: San Francisco , JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF SAN FRANCISCO — BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”. Interviewed by Aidin Vaziri of the San Francisco Chronicle.(https://www.jccsf.org/arts-ideas/lectures/arts-entertainment/stephin-merritt/)
10/08: Seattle, TOWN HALL SEATTLE– BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”
10/10 Austin , BOOK PEOPLE- BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”.
10/18: Madison , WISCONSIN BOOK FESTIVAL — BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words” Event with Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak. (http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/presenters/stephin-merritt)
10/21: New York, POWERHOUSE ARENA. BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”.
11/07: Chicago, CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL — BOOK TOUR EVENT for “101 Two Letter Words”. On stage interview by Peter Sagal, host of Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me.
