WEbooker of the WEek Goes to Drunken Uncle Anowalk

In keeping with a glorious new tradition here at WEbook, Monday marks WEbooker of the WEek day. This week’s recipient is anowalk. Anowalk is no stranger to WEbook. In his own words: “In terms of the WEbook family, I’m the uncle that refuses to grow up; the one who always shows up for family functions, but drunk or without pants on.”

I don’t know about the pants, but I do know that anowalk’s been around the block. Along with 33 other writers, editors, and other contributors, he helped create Pandora, WEbook’s first published book. (Once you buy the book, flip to Chapter 53 to read anowalk’s contribution.)

More recently, anowalk has become something of a WEbook superhero. In the past couple of weeks, he’s penned an extremely helpful article for 101 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do, on “How to Tell if She’s Faking it”; a poem about a family reunion; and a Haiku Life Story with my personal favorite sub-title of all time:

First Time Out of NJ, I Land at a California Airport with $40, Half A Pack of Cigarettes, Two Shirts, a Granola Bar and My Uncharged Cell Phone to Discover My Brother Has Forgotten to Pick Me Up, At Which Point I Remember and Finally Understand a Philosophy Lecture I Attended in College About Nature and the Sublime.

So who is this anowalk character?

It turns out that he was born in Washington D.C. a month and a half late in the summer of 1983, the youngest of three sons. His father is a high school math teacher; his mother a “short Hungarian woman who can’t stop reading.” Anowalk left home at 18 to experience the “mystical wonders of working minimum-wage jobs at Wal-Mart, overnights at Shoprite and slinging coffee at Seattle’s Best.”

When asked about his history with writing, anowalk  says: “I began writing sport articles for my middle school newspaper in 7th grade. In the 12 years since I’ve branched out to poetry and fiction prose. Writing is what my mind has always seemed to turn back to:  Bored in class, in church, sitting in traffic, at the dentist’s office.  I dream up characters, try to figure out their history and what their story is, or I jot down haiku and random lines of a ghazal. I turn 25 in August.  That birthday marks a tipping point in my life – 12 years not writing, 13 years writing.  Man, I’m getting friggin’ old.”

I’m not even going to touch that “friggin’ old” assessment, which can only be interpreted as malicious provocation for those of us who saw 25 come and go a while ago. But I do have to ask: Anowalk, what the heck is a ghazal?

I assume it’s some kind of poem, and if I’m right, I’m sure anowalk is an authority. He studied literature and philosophy at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and his favorite type of writing is poetry; he loves “the play between passion and brevity that comes with a good poem.”

When he’s not writing or reading, anowalk enjoys black & white photography, Joss Whedon shows, aggressive women, poker, his exceptionally tall roommate Tommy Two-Tone, clicky pens, politically incorrect jokes, the word buxom, talking about himself in third person, and making lists.

If he could pitch any two animals against one another in a one-on-one arena battle, he’d choose a polar bear and a rabid silver-back gorilla. His prediction? The gorilla would KO the bear in the first round. To which I say: Duh, you made the silver-back gorilla rabid. This hardly seems fair. But I’ll give the guy a pass – after all, he is WEbooker of the WEek.

Congrats, anowalk, and enjoy 25 while you can. It’s all downhill from here.

-- Melissa

Comments

[Ryan Placchetti]

Really? I'm a fan of gorillas, but a polar bear has got upwards of a thousand pounds on it. That would be like me fighting a crazed 70 pound midget. I think mods would still be good.

[Ryan Placchetti]

For some reason my computer contracted my and odds. Whatever.

[anowalk]

A ghazal (pronounced the same as 'guzzle') is a Persian form of poetry that roughly means "speaking with a woman".