This one kills off any hopes I had that I might have inherited some of his talent via genetic relation:
DOOR OPENS on Stephen Dixon's life on June 6, 1936, but at birth he isn't Stephen Dixon, he's Stephen Ditchik, son of Abraham Meyer Ditchik, a dentist, and Florence Leder Ditchik, a former beauty queen and Broadway chorus girl, both born and raised on New York's Lower East Side.
Interesting story.
Also fun (really, just go read the whole thing):
Sometime in 1963, Dixon turns on a television program and there's Rudd, talking about university writing programs. That there is such a thing as a university writing program is news to Dixon, but he likes what he sees, especially the scenes from Stanford University. "I thought, 'You can get paid to write? In California? This is for me!'" The application stipulates that he is to submit 30 pages of writing, but he sends a complete novel. Stanford responds by making him one of that year's four Wallace Stegner Fellows. In California, he says, he doesn't learn that much but he does have fun. He gets to know the novelists Robert Stone and Ken Kesey, and Jack Kerouac's sidekick Neal Cassady. "He was nuts."
His newest book (not counting the one he's working on now) is coming out in September.
1 comment:
He sounds pretty bad-ass. Who knows, maybe you are related after all -- go interrogate your ancestral Dixons and find out if they changed their name from Ditchik, too -- COULD HAPPEN.
Not to threadjack or nothin, but you remember your former co-worker? The crowd over at House of Defect are pining, not to mention concernified. Drivebys appreciated.
Last: My kaptcha for this post is "ikoonk" -- obviously this is the next big thing from Apple ...
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