"Pynchon is a really interesting writer kind of coming out of the 60s, … the counterculture. And Gravity's Rainbow came out in 74, I believe. And it was this notoriously unreadable, long, unreadable kind of thing that's full of songs that people are supposed to sing. It has mathematical equations in it. And it's all about the blitz in London, the bombing of London in World War II. And it's wonderful."]]> ]]> ]]>
"So we did more literary [works]. The first one was Tom Jones in '92. And we did [reading marathons] for a while, for five or six years ... We had it every year. And then ... the novelty of it wore off a little bit [after Tom Jones] was written up in the Star Tribune. And actually, KYMN from downtown came and did something, ... so it went out on the local radio station."
- Michael Kowalewski]]> The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy]]>
"I remember going and Steve Poskanzer, who's in the political science department now, but he was president then, he read early, like at 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. And I went over to hear him, and he was just reading, you know, and . . . Sayles was basically empty. So you can hear his voice kind of echoing around, and you're looking out [at] all the snow is falling. And it was just a . . . really cool scene. So anybody that was in that marathon remembers the Shandy, we called it, the Shandy Snowstorm."
-Michael Kowaleski]]>