■ It’s a Mystery: Spotted in the current Village Voice Literary Supplement, halfway down a list of December poetry readings, is this curious notice: “Free Poets Project, Fireside Café, 523 Third Avenue: December 14, Nicolae Ceausescu reads the poetry of Enver Hoxha.” Of course, as NR readers will know, Enver Hoxha is the lately deceased longtime dictator of Albania, while Nicolae Ceausescu is his counterpart (71 years old and still going strong) in Rumania [see “Solving the Rumanian Problem,” Christie Davies’s call for a joint U.S.-Soviet invasion of that country, p. 37]. Does President Ceausescu really plan on reading Mr. Hoxha’s poetry this week at the Fireside (as it happens, a pleasant Irish bar and lunchtime favorite of NR editors)? Consulted on the question, Ioan Voicu, the Rumanian UN Mission’s Minister Counselor, offered mysteriously that “this is just another provocation in a series of provocations. For provocations we have only the feeling of rejection.” Contacted at the politically ultra-correct VLS, Assistant Editor David Kim was equally mysterious. “I didn’t get a biographical sketch,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
■ Tick, Tock: Though little read, publishing-house press releases can be great fun. One release sent out recently from Harper & Row informs us that K-Mart minimalist Bobbie Ann Mason is working on a new book which apparently has her editor, Ted Solotaroff, all worked up. “Any new project of Bobbie Ann Mason’s makes my editorial eye gleam with anticipation,” Solotaroff is quoted as saying. “But this story is so unique [sic] and yet so rooted in her territory that my expectations are boundless.” “Any of the stories here,” chimes in a blurb from USA Today, “will at the very least tick with truth.”
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