It's tenting season. Twelve Dukies are gathered inside their Krzyzewskiville tent. While waiting for their Duke-UNC basketball tickets, they begin to tell stories about K-ville.
This is the opening scene in a book written by Aaron Dinin, a junior from Marietta, Ga., about the experience of a group of friends during tenting season. Modeled after Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, his book is called The Krzyzewskiville Tales. The characters in the book mirror those in the original: for example, a fraternity brother takes the place of Chaucer's drunken Miller.
The book, which tells the stories, history and mythology of K-ville, started out as a project on dictionaries for a class Dinin took last year.
"We had to come up with a glossary. I was in the middle of tenting, so I decided to do a glossary on 'Crazie Talk,'" he said.
The glossary explains, for example, that while "tent" can be defined as a "portable shelter, as of canvas, stretched over a supporting framework of poles with ropes and pegs," it also is a "group of 12 people of which one can represent the whole during a tent check."
It can also be used as a verb, as illustrated by this example: "You can't be in DSG and FSAE, write for The Chronicle, lead an anti-war movement, triple-major in Chem, Econ and Computer Science, work at the bookstore, volunteer at the hospital, and tent all at the same time."
Dinin gained momentum on this project at a K-ville town hall meeting later in the year.
"I stood up in that meeting and commented on the over-regulation of K-ville; that they were ruining the spirit of it," Dinin said. He mentioned at the meeting that he had been reading old articles about K-ville. The K-ville town hall meeting was written up in The Chronicle, which prompted alumni to call Dinin about his research. It also gave him the opportunity to introduce himself to Coach K, whom Dinin gave a copy of the project.
"Since I had done some of the footwork already, I decided it wouldn't be that hard to go one step further," Dinin said. "While I was at Duke over the summer researching Walt Whitman, I also continued my work on Krzyzewskiville. During that stretch, I contacted and interviewed a number of alumni."
Since then, Dinin has worked with Assistant Athletics Director Mike Cragg. Although Coach K quite understandably has other things on his mind at the moment, Dinin was happy to meet with Cragg to show him the original project; Cragg is now in the process of reading the longer version. "It's exciting. We're definitely encouraging him to go forward," Cragg said. "It's a unique way of capturing the history of K-ville."
Cragg said the folks in the Athletic Department have given their blessing to the project, and hope they can help open some doors in the publishing industry for him.
"Hopefully they'll love it," Dinin said. "I plan to work closely with them."
Dinin, a Trinity English major, was born and raised in what he calls "picturesque suburbia." "I had never cared for sports before attending Duke," he said. "I came here because I found a school that had this brilliant reputation, but was not trapped by its hundreds of years of traditions."
K-ville, however, is one tradition Dinin is happy to keep. "K-ville is uniquely Duke," Dinin said. "This is a book about the phenomena of this tent city which has happened nowhere else in the country."
He decided to use The Canterbury Tales as his model because "it's almost a perfect setup: a group of pilgrims trying to pass time as they travel to Canterbury."
In Dinin's version, the narrator and his 11 fellow tenters begin a storytelling contest. Each person tells a story related to his or her major: The Tent Captain, for example, is a history major, and his story recounts K-ville's origins in the 1980s; The Public Policy Major's Tale talks about tenting policy and The Freshman's Tale reveals his youth and inexperience. Dinin hopes to get the book published next year.
"As luck would have it, the next basketball season marks the 100th anniversary of basketball at Duke," Dinin said. "The plan is to promote the book in conjunction with this anniversary."
The Krzyzewskiville Tales might be his first book, but may not be his last. Dinin aspires to become a college professor, and is involved in researching the numerical and mathematical tropes of Walt Whitman's poetry.
"I'm attempting to analyze literature -- writers and poetry -- through a mathematical form of analysis," Dinin said.
In addition to becoming an expert on K-ville, Dinin is deeply involved in campus life. He serves on the executive board of Blue Devil Guides and is a member of the Dulcedo Quartet, where he plays the viola.
"Being a tour guide is one of my favorite things on campus," Dinin said. "The perspective freshmen look up to you. If the tour is great, students will go to the school. It's one of the most deciding factors."
Dinin also acts as a liaison between Duke's music department and the Durham Partnership schools and writes the comic strip "The Campus Beat" for The Chronicle.
He may be a Blue Devils fan, but the comic strip shows he isn't just a booster. "The strip is really fun," Dinin said. "It takes up a lot of time, but it's a good way to satirize Duke."
If that weren't enough for one person, he also wants to become "the great American writer. ... I don't want to wake up in 50 years and feel trapped by teaching -- that all I know is Walt Whitman." Or K-ville.
Written by Shadee Malakou, a freshman from Los Angeles.