Contributor's Note

Tim Jones-Yelvington was born in Belleville, Illinois, and, at the age of two, relocated to the Chicago area before again moving, this time to the New York area, at the age of ten. Jones-Yelvington attended public schools until the age of 12, when he relocated to a fruity progressive Manhattan private school after an incident with a gay basher resulted in his breaking an elbow. It was during his years of schooling that Jones-Yelvington acquired a love of reading, which he excercised this weekend by completing George Saunders' Civilwarland in Bad Decline followed by Michael Martone by Michael Martone, reading both in their entirety. Although he is intermittently fascinated by amusement parks, Jones-Yelvington lacks what he interprets as Saunders' full-on obsession. He does, however, value Martone's absurdity and his attention paid to the seemingly mundane, what Martone's mentor John Barth may or may not have referred to as "a rich tapestry of details" (Martone, p. 130). This evening, Jones-Yelvington looks forward to "cracking the spine" on something new, perhaps "Faithless: Tales of Transgression" by Joyce Carol Oates, or Samuel Ligon's "Drift and Swerve," and welcomes his own readers' opinions on which to read first.