Confessions of a Crap Artist Reading Resources Part 1-- St. Isidore of Seville

We're just a week away from my community read of Confessions of a Crap Artist in Point Reyes Station. To say I'm excited would be an understatement. 

So, to get my wiggles out (as my mom used to call it), I thought I'd provide some resources for readers of the novel, whether they be Point Reyes Stationians or internet bound. 

First off, readers may have noticed that some of the novel's geography doesn't quite work.

Chapter two begins: "Seville, California has a good public library. But the best thing about living in Seville is that in only a twenty-minute drive you're over into Santa Cruz where the beach is and the amusement park is. And it's four lanes all the way."

Google's driving directions don't lie (except when they do): Seville California is just a bit more than three hours from Santa Cruz. 

So what's Dick up to here? 

Anne Dick recalls in her memoir: 

“One afternoon not long after the discussion about Phil's career, we were lying on the bed in the study, our arms around each other. We had just made love and I was feeling happy and relaxed. Phil started laughing and laughing. He said, "I have a great idea for a novel. It's about this guy, Jack Isidore. I'm naming him after an early encyclopedist, Isidore of Seville, who collected weird bits of knowledge. The novel will be in the first person. The opening line Jack Isidore says is, 'Let me tell you about myself. The first thing is: I'm a pathological liar." (In the published version it is, "I am made out of water.") And Phil laughed and laughed some more. For some unknown reason I felt a little chill of unease, but nevertheless I smiled encouragingly. Phil began working on this novel, Confessions of a Crap Artist, during the honeymoon period of our relationship.”

So, the name Isidore, when combined with the location of Seville, becomes a reference to St Isidore of Seville, who Wikipedia tells us,

“At a time of disintegration of classical culture, aristocratic violence and widespread illiteracy, Isidore was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigothic kings to Catholicism, both assisting his brother Leander of Seville and continuing after his brother’s death. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo and Seville.

His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an etymological encyclopedia that assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. This work also helped standardize the use of the period (full stop), comma, and colon.”

Next, you gotta see the French adaptation of the film, "Confessions d'un Barjo" (available for free on YouTube):

I'll discuss the film version in my next post.