Disseminating Josh Maday

2010-08-20T15:04:00.001-04:00

{Artist: Banksy; via Brooks Serritt}

Now Available -- On the Clock: Contemporary Short Stories of Work

2010-08-06T10:09:00.000-04:00

Over the past year, I co-edited with Jeff Vande Zande a fiction anthology about work. On the Clock: Contemporary Short Stories of Work is now finished and available to order from Amazon or, even better, directly from the publisher, Bottom Dog Press. Jeff and all of the writers have been a joy to work with on this project.

On the Clock is 188 pages of fiction about work by Jim Daniels, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Daniel Orozco, Kennebrew Surant, Rick Attig, Lolita Hernandez, Michael Martone, Matthew Salesses, Matt Bell, M. Kaat Toy, Sean Lovelace, Billie Louise Jones, Lita Kurth, Anne Shewring, Dustin M. Hoffman, Tania Hershman, Nick Kocz, Michael Zadoorian, Steve Himmer, Peter Anderson, and Pete Fromm.

From the Introduction:

Our focus is contemporary writers writing about contemporary work. We also sought to assemble a collection that is as varied as the diversity of the global community by seeking work that is traditional and innovative in both form and content. And while we believe that it is important to know where we came from, it is also essential to be aware of our current situation, and it is necessary to look ahead to see where this trajectory may take us. The stories range from the end of the manufacturing era to our current moment of transition from muscle-to-mind economy, and even speculative fiction that looks toward our possible future as a global human culture from which every imaginable technology will be inextricable, for better and for worse. We are thankful to all of the writers who shared their work with us, which we in turn share with our readers. We hope this anthology will provoke, encourage, enlighten, and entertain.

Check out the virtual book release on Facebook.

Order your copy here.

New York Tyrant 8

2010-07-15T16:43:00.000-04:00

I will have a collection of about 3,000 words entitled "Dark Math" in the new issue of New York Tyrant. It is part of a larger work in progress, probably a book of some shape and size. Another piece has recently been included in Dzanc's Best of the Web 2010, and another was published as part of the MLP chapbook series. I'm very happy to have my work appear in these publications.

Here's what editor Giancarlo DiTrapano said about New York Tyrant 8 (via HTMLgiant):

New York Tyrant 8 (Vol.3, No.2) is available for preorder. The book went to press today and will be back and ready to ship in two weeks. Not to blow my own horn (and I can do that, you know), but this is a pretty solid issue. Sam Lipsyte, Ken Sparling, Noy Holland, Breece D’J Pancake, an interview with Padgett Powell, Daryl Scroggins, two beautiful pieces by Brandon Hobson, Andy Devine, Ken Baumann, Sean Kilpatrick, Michael Kimball, more drawings (one sampled below) from Atticus Lish, and a shit ton of other great writers. The theme of this issue turned out, unintentionally, to be knives. Lots of knives in these stories. I swear I don’t do this shit on purpose.

A couple issues ago, we made the Tyrant 300 pages long. We are now back to a better length, less than 200 pages. I hate when journals get all bulky and are just too intimidating to even get through half of the stories. We’ll be having a launch party within the next couple of weeks so I’ll keep you updated on that. But until then, please go get your copy of the new Tyrant. Buy a subscription. Okay, here’s a deal. If you buy a 4 issue subscription or the larger 8 issue, we will throw in a copy of Brian Evenson’s novella Baby Leg. And if you buy a copy of the new Tyrant in the next 5 days, we will include a copy of Tyrant Books’ latest release, Firework by Eugene Marten. I’ve never done this discount/sale thing before but it feels good and right. No it doesn’t. It sucks and it hurts.

2010-01-14T10:59:00.002-05:00

Interview with Ornela Vorpsi at The Collagist

2009-11-17T16:58:00.002-05:00

My interview with Ornela Vorpsi about her new book, The Country Where No One Ever Dies, is live on The Collagist's blog. The interview begins this way:

1. Can you talk about the inspiration for The Country Where No One Ever Dies? What was on your mind while you were writing this book?
I cannot say precisely where and how I found my inspiration for this book, if it is indeed inspired, as I abandoned myself to the process of writing, without even thinking about writing a book or having it published, I just subjected myself to what was coming, organically, without seeing too clearly. Of course I wanted to talk about Albania. About some lives. About some people. It mattered deeply to me.

Thanks to Matt Bell for the opportunity to interview Ornela about her novel, which I think is brilliant; and thanks to Ornela Vorpsi for taking time out of her busy schedule to participate so generously in the interview.

Read "Bel Ami," excerpted in Issue Four of The Collagist.

The Country Where No One Ever Dies is officially available today from Dalkey Archive.

FOR now available from ML Press

2009-11-16T15:16:00.003-05:00

Originally due out in December, my ML Press chapbook, FOR, is now available from ML Press for $3 (includes shipping). It's part of the subscription trio including work by Joanna Ruocco and Michael Martone. I'm honored to have my work alongside theirs, and to be part of the massive first year of chapbooks from ML Press. Thanks to J.A. Tyler for his incredible ambition and hard work.

I'm looking forward to the 2010 schedule of chapbooks by Rauan Klassnik, Riley Michael Parker, Cooper Renner, Amy Guth, David Gianatasio, Ben Segal, Kuzhali Manickavel, Michael Bernstein, Eric Beeny, Matt Bell, Ryan Downey, and Evelyn Hampton.

The Collagist, Issue Four

2009-11-15T11:32:00.001-05:00

The fourth issue of The Collagist is now live.

Issue Four features fiction from Cooper Renner, Chad Benson, Kate Petersen, and Lance Olsen (with art by Andi Olsen), as well as novel excerpts from Xiaoda Xiao and Ornela Vorpsi (see my review of The Country Where No One Ever Dies in Issue Two). Also, poetry from Arlene Ang, Stephen Dobyns, Judy Huddleston, and Keith Taylor; non-fiction from Brian Oliu and Melissa Pritchard.

Book reviews of Translation is a Love Affair by Jacques Poulin, The Suburban Swindle by Jackie Corley, Girl Trouble by Holly Goddard Jones, The Southern Cross by Skip Horack, and The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales, as well as a video review of The Bigness of the World by Lori Ostlund.

You'll also find a new Classic Reprints section, which, according to editor Matt Bell, "will be appearing frequently in the months to come." This month features a reprinting of John Cheever's "The Fourth Alarm" alongside an introductory essay written by his son, Benjamin H. Cheever.

mlp {first year} anthology

2009-11-12T12:18:00.001-05:00

Early this morning J.A. Tyler posted the cover of the mlp {first year} anthology designed by Steven Seighman. Looks great, of course, and is available for pre-order.

Here's info about the anthology from MLP:

an anthology of everything we have ever printed in our chapbooks beginning in the fall of 2008 & going through the end of 2009 & featuring the most fantastic authors as they first appeared in mud luscious print, most of which are sold out now or will be soon, & here collected all together

The contributors:
ken baumann, shane jones, jimmy chen, brandi wells, blake butler, nick antosca, sam pink, james chapman, colin bassett, michael kimball, jac jemc, kim chinquee, kim parko, norman lock, randall brown, brian evenson, michael stewart, peter markus, ken sparling, aaron burch, david ohle, matthew savoca, p. h. madore, johannes göransson, charles lennox, ryan call, elizabeth ellen, molly gaudry, kevin wilson, mary hamilton, craig davis, kendra grant malone, lavie tidhar, lily hoang, mark baumer, ben tanzer, krammer abrahams, joshua cohen, eugene lim, c. l. bledsoe, joanna ruocco, josh maday, michael martone

This is a great chance to get a look at the early MLP Chapbooks that sold out before a lot of readers could get them.

Pre-order mlp {first year}

J.A. Tyler in a roundtable discussion about chapbook publishing at The Chapbook Review

2009-11-11T11:13:00.004-05:00

In a few days, Issue 4 of The Collagist will publish. Meanwhile, Issue 3; it includes new work by Matthew Derby, Roxane Gay, Sarah Norek, Catherine Zeidler, Hesh Kestin, Norman Lock, Mary Biddinger, Rick Moody, Peter Jay Shippy, Ross White, Greg Bottoms, Kelley Evans, as well as a video review by Anna Clark, written reviews by Diane Leach, John Madera, Jill Meyers, and my review of Gert Jonke's The System of Vienna. Here's the opening:

Gert Jonke opens The System of Vienna, an ostensibly autobiographical work, with the following: “Allow me first of all, in the interest of facilitating the greatest possible understanding, just a few brief words concerning the methodology of the working process I have adopted, thereby also expending a few more words on myself and my academic development.” Jonke then relays a short account of the hours before his birth, an account that can't be anything but fiction, without ever returning to discuss his “methodology,” which has of course already been demonstrated through this tale of his “beginnings.” Jonke emphasizes this with the compound distance of a synoptic description: “The story begins with a description of that cold winter night and how my mother allegedly started out not being able to find her shoes ...”

Yeah, it's been out for almost a month and you've probably read it all already; but maybe you said you'd come back and get it but haven't. Today's a good day to get it. You know, because I know what's best for you and how your time should be used. I'll be emailing your time management spreadsheets soonly.

Meanwhile, the flash fiction contest judged by Kim Chinquee at The Collagist is nearing the deadline of November 15. Git yer werds to 'em.

The Dalkey Archive Holiday Sale is here again. It's going on through November 22 and applies to books published before November 2009. Get 10 books for $65 or 20 books for $120.

My review of Hungarian novelist Ferenc Barnás's The Ninth was published a few days ago at The Quarterly Conversation. Thanks to Scott Esposito for his tremendous patience and hard work editing this piece. Here is the opening:

Telling a story from a child’s point of view is one of the most difficult modes of fiction to write successfully. The narrator of Ferenc Barnás’s The Ninth is a nine-year-old boy—The Ninth child of ten (eleven, counting the brother who died) in a large Hungarian family—whose inexperience and bare vocabulary are compounded by a speech disability.

In writing The Ninth, Barnás seems to have wanted to give himself a taste of what difficulty his narrator must face when trying to give expression to his experience.

Get your hands on the new issue of NANO Fiction. Word is that copies are going quickly. NF 3.1 includes work by Dorothy Albertini, Jaynel Attolini, Andrew Brininstool, Ed Casey, Jimmy Chen, Stephanie Dickinson, Rodney Gomez, M. J. Kelley, Ashley MacLean, Josh Maday, Traci Matlock, Michael K. Meyers, Dan Moreau, Edward Mullany, Evan J. Peterson, Martin Rock, Sankar Roy, Didi Schiller, Holly Simonsen, Audri Sousa, Robin Tung, Luisa Villani, and Shellie Zacharia. My piece is an excerpt from a long work I've been laboring over, two pieces of which appeared in the Lamination Colony edited by Michael Kimball, and another long excerpt will appear in Issue 8 of New York Tyrant. Check out Jimmy Chen's piece, "A Hollow Back and Forth," from the issue. I'm a big fan of Jimmy's work. There's no question that the guy is incredibly smart. His writing is cynical yet funny, a combination which disarms any sense of condescension.

New from Barrelhouse: Mixtape, Episode One: Baltimore

2009-09-24T10:00:00.005-04:00

The guys at Barrelhouse are tireless. Besides making it difficult to drive anywhere (I know, that was cheap), that means that they have produced yet another fine contribution to the independent literary world. The first episode of their new monthly podcast, Mixtape, is now on the virtual air. The inaugural episode focuses on the independent literary scene in Baltimore, which, for being one of the all-too-common cities left burned-out and crumbling after the decline of manufacturing and having one of the highest murder rates in the country--despite all of that, the artistic community is strong, civic-minded, and incredibly inclusive and collaborative regardless of genre or medium. Being from a smaller but similarly depressed city myself, that gives me hope.

This first episode of what I hope will become the Indie Lit channel on XM radio focuses, specifically, on Adam Robinson and Michael Kimball, two ambitious artists/creators injecting life into Baltimore's literary scene; they're cultivating a kind of contagion of creativity and innovation that is spreading around the nation (and world?) with projects like Robinson's "outdoor journal" IsReads and Kimball's Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard). I'm excited that I was able to read my poem, "The Everyday Juggernaut," from IsReads 4 for the first episode of Mixtape. Dave Housley added some city noise to the background so it sounds like I'm reading from the ledge of a tall building, which I think works really well. Thanks to Dave for asking me to record the poem and for his hard work putting the first episode of what will hopefully be a long run of more focused attention on the many facets of the independent literary world.

Issue 2 of The Collagist

2009-09-18T00:56:00.005-04:00

The sophomore issue of The Collagist went live the first part of this week and it does not suffer from the old sophomore flop. The new issue includes my review of Ornela Vorpsi's The Country Where No One Ever Dies. Here's the opening of the review:

Albanian life in Ornela Vorpsi’s The Country Where No One Ever Dies revolves around sex, communist rule, and—despite the book's title—death. The book is separated into titled vignettes, reflecting the fissured self of a young girl living among the ruins of reason. Constantly accused of being or becoming a whore and dealing with her father’s disappearance and imprisonment as a political prisoner, this protagonist escapes into the otherworld of books, where even tragic novels and the darkest of Grimm’s Fairy Tales are a reprieve from her absurd world . . .

In Issue 2, you'll find fiction by Angi Becker Stevens, Elizabeth Crane, Jonathan Callahan, Sean Lovelace; novel excerpts from Stephen Elliott, Edward Falco; poetry by Jason Bredle, Rachel Contreni Flynn, Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney, Christopher Kennedy, Jamaal May; non-fiction by Erik Anderson; book reviews by Brian Allen Carr, Anna Clark, Darby Dixon III, Jill Meyers, John Madera, Stacy Muszynski, and Keith Taylor

New York Tyrant issue 7 trailer

2009-09-10T11:33:00.001-04:00

Every issue of New York Tyrant is an event. Issue 7 will obviously be no exception.

Trailer by Luca Dipierro, who knows how to get it done with book/lit mag trailers.

(via HTMLGIANT)

John Dermot Woods is a rare combination

2009-09-09T09:36:00.001-04:00

I meant to post about this when it actually arrived, but now weeks have passed, and etc. My copy of John Dermot Woods' book The Complete Collection of people, places & things came in the mail, along with a limited edition handmade screen print made by Woods' hands. The print is beautiful. What I did manage to do in a timely manner was put it in a frame as soon as I took it from the envelope and oogled it for awhile. The art is exceptional and the writing is, well, see some for yourself; this is why John Dermot Woods is a rare combination. And maybe the artist/writer is more common than I think, but certainly most seem to be more accomplished or inclined toward one or the other; not Woods, he nails them both. So, is this a plug, a sales pitch? Um, yeah, it is. Sure, I know John through Action Yes and Apostrophe Cast, but, as LeVar Burton would say, you don't have to take my word for it. TCCopp&t has been getting good press elsewhere, too:

Ben Tanzer's words at This Blog Will Change Your Life

Weston Cutter's review at Corduroy Books

And if you're in any of these places at these times, check out John reading from The Complete Collection:

9/22 - Soda Bar - Brooklyn, NY - w/Shanthi Sekaran

9/26 - 510 Series - Baltimore Book Festival

10/11 - Small Animal Project Series - Cambridge, MA - w/Kristen Iskandrian and Matthew Derby

10/17 - &NOW Festival - Action Books Reading - Buffalo, NY

Issue 17 of The Quarterly Conversation

2009-09-08T22:03:00.001-04:00

Issue 17 of The Quarterly Conversation went live yesterday and includes my review of Jean-Philippe Toussaint's novel, Running Away. Many thanks to editor Scott Esposito for all of his help and hard work.

Here is the table of contents:

Features
From the Editors: On the Right Way to Write Criticism

Horacio Castellanos and the New Political Novel

The Right to Write About It: Literature, After Katrina

When a Biography Is Not a Biography: The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys

Words Are Living Tissue: The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Citizen of Literature: Dubravka Ugrešić

The Limits of Human Memory: On Proust and Javier Marías

Serializations
From Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornografia

From The Subversive Scribe by Suzanne Jill Levine

Launching a School of “Creative Criticism”

Reviews

Poetry

For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide

Selected Poems by Geoffrey Hill

Reading Novalis in Montana by Michelle Kwasny

Micrographia by Emily Wilson

Scape by Joshua Harmon

C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems by C. P. Cavafy

Prose

Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme by Tracy Daugherty

The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch

Running Away by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Love and Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Imperial by William T. Vollmann

News from the Empire by Fernando Del Paso

Little Fingers by Filip Florian

The Silence Room by Sean O'Brien

The Father and the Foreigner by Giancarlo De Cataldo

The Bun Field by Amanda Vahamaki

The Feline Plague by Maja Novak

Said and Done by James Morrison

Also, be sure to check out Two Words, the blog of the Center for the Art of Translation, where Scott is the marketing coordinator and blog administrator/contributor.

So much going on

2009-08-04T12:02:00.001-04:00

In no particular order (actually seems to be all at once):

Michael Kimball wrote Meg Pokrass's life story on a postcard.

I know PANK Magazine has been around for a few years, but I've definitely become more aware of the magazine over the past year or so, and I like what I see.

Check out their lively blog for an interview with Gary Percesepe, Associate Editor of Mississippi Review.

They will be publishing Matt Bell's short story "Mantodea" in PANK 4 (see/hear Matt read "Her Ennead" and "Mantodea" as part of the Keyhole Press promotion for Stephanie Johnson's One of These Things is Not Like the Others and his forthcoming story collection, How They Were Found)

They are having a contest with prizes and transparency.

A little more Matt Bell: his sold-out chapbook THE COLLECTORS is now available as a free e-book. As is his chapbook from Willows Wept Press, HOW THE BROKEN LEAD THE BLIND

Jackie Corley interviewed by Lee Rourke at 3:AM Magazine

Call for submissions:

Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide

Edited by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor

We are seeking high quality photographs of your literary tattoos for an upcoming book. Send us your ink! Submissions are open to all kinds of literary tattoo work: quotations from your favorite writer, opening lines of novels, lines of verse, literary portraits or illustrations. From Shakespeare to Bukowski to The Little Prince in a Baobab tree, if it’s a literary tattoo and its on your body, we want to see it.

All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. And of course, you are heartily encouraged to credit the artist who did your work.

We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. How much (or how little) you choose to say about your tattoo is up to you, but a paragraph or two should do the trick.

Please send clear digital images of the highest print quality possible to tattoolit@gmail.com. Pixel resolutions should be at least 1500 x 1200, or a minimum 300 dpi at 5 inches wide. Text should be included in the body of the email, not as an attached document. Also be sure to include one or more pieces of contact information, so we can let you know if you’re going to be in the book.

Blake Butler is everywhere. And while he's there he is eating a copy of his forthcoming book SCORCH ATLAS one page at a time and he's making videos of himself doing it (otherwise, he'd probably just eat candy):

Blake Butler eats Page 1 of Scorch Atlas from blake butler on Vimeo.

Blake Butler eats Page 2 of Scorch Atlas from blake butler on Vimeo.

Blake could maybe go 'Tao Lin' and put the processed pages on ebay. Maybe put them in a mason jar or something.

Glad to see the Christopher Higgs is now a contributor at HTMLGIANT.

Shya Scanlon's Forecast 42 Project, where he is serializing his novel FORECAST, essentially turning a network of online lit mags and blogs into a sort of aggregate literary magazine. The first six chapters have appeared at Juked, Northville Review, Emprise Review, John Madera's website, flatmancrooked, and Lamination Colony, and many more to come since there are 42 chapters.

In the spirit of Shya Scanlon's project, J.A. Tyler is posting his novel(la), THE ZOO, A GOING, one piece at a time, and it won't cost you a dime (good ol' Johnny Cash); each piece will be posted for 24 hours and then will make way for the next, a total of 76 pieces/days.

John Madera reviews Brian Evenson's Fugue State

Gina Myers interviewed Jeff Vande Zande about his novel, Landscape with Fragmented Figures

Everyday Genius guest edited this month by Michael Kimball

I know I'm missing a ton of stuff.

Interview with Andy Devine in elimae

2009-08-03T11:52:00.001-04:00

The August issue of elimae is up, and it includes an excerpt from Robert Lopez's forthcoming novel, Kamby Bolongo Mean River, due out from Dzanc Books in September; poetry by Meg Pokrass, fiction by Tim Jones-Yelvington, and a lot more.

Also, my interview with the mysterious Andy Devine. I had a great time interviewing Devine and taking the opportunity to read his work more closely. His book entitled WORDS is forthcoming from Publishing Genius Press in 2010. Here's the intro:

My introduction to the work of Andy Devine was the chapbook entitled "As Day Same That the the Was Year" from Publishing Genius Press as part of their This PDF Chapbook series. One look and I saw a clever (re)arrangement of what may or may not have been a short story. But another look and my eyes slid out of focus, and I began to see things more clearly. I sought more of Devine's work and found some in the archives of a ceased online literary journal called Taint Magazine. His latest work appears in the new issue of Unsaid. At only a glance it is clear that Andy Devine's work is something different, unlike any writing by even the riskiest literary innovators working today. Devine has dismantled the English language to its elemental state and has used recognizable words to build a language beyond language. In April and May, I asked Andy Devine some questions via email.

August Issue of The Chapbook Review

2009-08-01T18:47:00.002-04:00

Lots of excellent interviews in the August issue of the The Chapbook Review. And reviews, too, of course.

John Madera interviews Thomas Cooper about Phantasmagoria and more.

John Madera interviews Tina May Hall about All the Day's Sad Stories

Matt DeBenedictis interviews Jamie Iredell

Michael Leong reviews The C&O Canal by Francis Raven

William Walsh reviews Circulation by Tim Horvath

Ryan Manning reviews I Am In The Air Right Now by Kathryn Regina

Alec Niedenthal reviews Letters Through Glass by Alexis Vergalla

Andrew Borgstrom reviews Make Nothing Happen by Rufo Quintavalle

Christina Hall reviews Six Recurring Dreams by MRB Chelko

And here is my review of Phantasmagoria by Thomas Cooper

Michael Kimball on NPR's All Things Considered

2009-07-30T22:48:00.002-04:00

Madeleine Brand's interview with Michael Kimball about his project Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) aired today on NPR's All Things Considered. It's been great this year to see the attention Michael's work has been getting.

Pre-Order: Baby Leg by Brian Evenson from Tyrant Books

2009-07-21T22:24:00.004-04:00

Only 400 copies, signed and bloody, at $30, this won't last long. Here's the slip:

In the fall of 2009, The New York Tyrant launches its book arm TYRANT BOOKS with Baby Leg, a limited edition novella by Brian Evenson. Each copy of this collectible will be signed and numbered. Brian will also be dipping his writing hands in blood or some bloodlike substance, handling and fingerprinting the covers to make each copy truly unique.

About Baby Leg
Imagine having recurring nightmares of a woman who has one normal leg and one baby leg, and then waking up to wonder if today will be the day when they—whoever “they” are—find you and kill you. Unless you’re missing the point. Maybe “they” already have “you” and the world is a great deal more grotesque than you could ever imagine. Film noir collides with virtual worlds in this dark and strange novella that only Brian Evenson could have written. Illustrated by Eric Hanson.

Review from Blake Butler
Via a series of sparely rendered dream loops, each wormed so deep into the other that it is no longer safe to say which might be which, Baby Leg extends the already wide mind-belt of Brian Evenson’s terror parade another mile, and well beyond. Those familiar with the Evensonian memory fractals, his freak-noir theaters, and his fetish for leagues of amputees, will find herein not only another puzzle box to nuzzle in its reader’s memory long after the book is closed, but as well enough blood and fearlight and paranoia to make Kafka or Hitchcock seem a foundling. "Who am I?" our narrator, Kraus asks, among Baby Leg’s endless questionings, its barrage. "Where am I?" “What is it?” “And now?” Thereafter, through the magicked wrath of Evenson’s dream speaking, from each of these questions birth more questions, and more questions, on and on, creating around the reader a glassy lockbox much like the one we find, we think, our Kraus, poor thing, inside.

First Paragraph
Night after night, Kraus dreamt of a woman with a normal leg and a baby leg. In the dream, she clomped about on her adult-sized knee and the baby leg, wielding an axe, lurching. He kept watching her pass, yawing with each step. He would hear her first, the thud of the knee and the soft slap of the baby foot, and then see her come by, slow and off-kilter, the sound of her slowly fading. He couldn't move, not even his eyes. He had to lie there, listening to his own breathing, until he heard her coming back. She kept coming and going, until finally, shaken, he managed to wake up.

Dalkey Archive Summer Sale

2009-07-21T21:59:00.003-04:00

It's on.

5 books for $35
10 books for $65
20 books for $120

Prices include shipping.
This is going to cost me a lot of money.

Michael Kimball interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered

2009-07-17T08:56:00.004-04:00

Michael Kimball was interviewed for NPR's All Things Considered about Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard). It's great to see Kimball getting such good attention, for this project and in general. Latest word is that it will air next week.

Part 2 of John O'Brien interview at LA Times blog Jacket Copy

2009-07-17T08:42:00.004-04:00

Part 1 and Part 2.

Thank you, John O'Brien, for Dalkey Archive Press.

Re: Dalkey Archive: I recently read the new title by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Running Away, and it's great. A full review is forthcoming.

LA Times Interview with John O'Brien

2009-07-16T10:19:00.003-04:00

First part of a great interview with Dalkey Archive Press founder John O'Brien at the LA Times.

Some things that have not been done before in exactly this way

2009-07-09T12:51:00.003-04:00

Rain Taxi's Spring 2009 issue is available online.

New work by Michael Martone from his collection of monologues entitled "Whinesburg, Indiana."

Interview with Adam Robinson re his forthcoming book ADAM ROBISON AND OTHER POEMS, and more miscellaneous brilliance at DOGZPLOT.

New work by Kim Chinquee at Web Conjunctions.

Charles Lennox's ML Press chapbook "A Field of Colors" is now available online at Keyhole Magazine. I'm glad J.A. Tyler expedited this one into the world, and that Peter Cole immortalized it online.

Call for Submissions: On the Clock: Contemporary Short Fiction of People and Their Work

2009-07-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

I will be co-editing an anthology of fiction about post-industrial work life. Here are the details. Please spread the word. Blog. Tweet. Email. Print out the flyer below and post it everywhere.

On the Clock: Contemporary Short Fiction of People and Their Work
Working Lives Series from Bottom Dog Press Inc.

We want to anthologize some outstanding fiction about working in a post-industrial world or making the transition from manual labor to intellectual labor, or the conflict of living in both spheres. In short, we want modern stories about people and their work. Although we prefer post-industrial fiction, we will also look at any fiction that deals with work in a meaningful way. Money and how we earn it are an endless source of conflict, loss, redemption and the source of great fiction. Please send us your best fiction about work.

Specifics:

Length: up to 5,000 words.

Submissions are open now.

Deadline: October 1, 2009.

Email submissions strongly preferred (query first if you absolutely must send a hard copy). Send attached .rtf or .doc file to: ontheclocksubmissions [at] gmail.com and make sure the word “Submission” is somewhere in the subject line.

Payment: $50 and two copies

Reprints are acceptable. Please let us know where it’s been published.

Simultaneous submissions are okay as long as we are notified immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Multiple submissions are allowed, up to three stories.

July issue of The Chapbook Review

2009-07-01T11:39:00.002-04:00

New reviews of all manner of chapbooks:

Here is my review of Leonard Schwartz's Language as Responsibility

An Insistence on Meaning: Nicolle Elizabeth in Conversation with Shya Scanlon

J.A. Tyler reviews Tina May Hall's novella All the Day's Sad Stories

Matt DeBenedictis reviews Jamie Iredell's Before I Moved to Nevada

Andrew Borgstrom reviews Norman Fischer's Charlotte's Way

Tina Hall reviews Sarith Peou's Corpse Watching

John Dermot Woods reviews Mary Ruefle's comic Go Home and Go to Bed!

Matt Bell reviews Geoffry Forsyth's In the Land of the Free

J.R. Angelella reviews Michael Kriesel's Moths Mail the House

J.A. Tyler reviews Thomas Cooper's Phantasmagoria

Andrew Borgstrom reviews a multi-writer project entitled Spider Vein Impasto

Review: Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #8

2009-06-25T22:16:00.003-04:00

Okay, this review is about nine months late, but, really, it's right on time for the new issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, which is, I believe, full of new absurdity and will be coming soon.

Issue #8 of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens centers on no particular theme except the general theme of the absurd and surreal. The back cover says, “Some stories feature mindless violence or irreal nonsense. Others display sharp cultural satire or brain-tingling wordplay . . . issue #8 offers a zany feast for the ravenous imagination.” This is no exaggeration.

Mike Young’s short-short entitled “Share This Too” starts things off with this opening line: “In the middle of the city park I found a nun crying because her ice cream cone was full of broken teeth.” The narrator’s obvious, logical solution, “Why don’t you just flick them out?” is, of course, too simple to escape the biblically-proportioned plague of broken teeth to follow.

A couple pieces in the issue don’t give the reader much beyond the initial premise. However, I was really impressed with Ofelia Hunt’s story “Car Accident,” narrated by a person who seems to be responsible for the car accident in question and whatever other horror is connected to it. Using the movement of vague language, Hunt wrings the narrator’s trauma, disorientation, and disconnection as the authorities ask questions, and indirectly expresses the inexpressible. For example:

“What’s your name?”

“Something.”

“I need your name for hospital records and insurance. How old are you? Where were you born?”

“I think I’m me I think I’m something.” I move my head and my head hurts in a sharp and exact way, but distant somehow, as though my head’s a thing and I’m a thing and these things are different things with different nervous systems. I see another gurney and another human and the other human’s very red and black and crusted and hairless and maybe does not have enough skin, so I think about skin and how much skin’s enough skin and I think about my skin and how much skin I have and where this skin is and what if I were to lose this skin.

I also enjoyed other stories by Blake Butler, Cameron Pierce, Darby Larson, Sam Pink, Matthew Simmons, and more. Closing out this slim but potent issue are book reviews of Duncan Barlow's Super Cell Anemia and Jeremy C. Shipp's Sheep and Wolves. I think the range of style and content in this issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens provides something to suit as well as stretch the sensibilities of most readers, even some who prefer traditional realism. Issue #8 and other back issues of Bust are still available (some are online as free pdf downloads, see below)and I've read that the next issue will be online. It will definitely be worth checking out.

UPDATE: The next issue of Bust will be print; online after that.

Meanwhile:

Bradley Sands interviews Sam Pink

Jason Moore interviews Blake Butler

Free downloads:

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens Issue 7 (Winter 2008, Online Flash/Micro Fiction Edition)

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens Issue 2 (Spring 2005, Online Flash/Micro Fiction Edition)

Dragons with Cancer

I WILL SMASH YOU is finished

2009-06-24T13:13:00.001-04:00

I have been waiting for this. And it's finished. It will be here in September. Here's the deal on I WILL SMASH YOU:

I WILL SMASH YOU is a documentary film in which dozens of people each tell a story about an object that has some personal meaning for them and then destroy that object in whatever manner they wish. Michael Kimball interviews each person about their chosen object and the story behind it, which leads to amazing realizations, for both the subject and the viewer.

There are 19 different chapters filled with people, objects, destruction, resolution, and understanding. A man burns his discharge papers from the Army in attempt to exorcise his recurring nightmares about being forced to re-enlist (and always at a lower rank). A teenage girl destroys a papier-mâché version of her mean teacher's head, which she cracks open and then burns in an attempt to get all the meanness out. A man smashes his procrastination. Another man burns his favorite double album, the one that he listened to over and over to get through adolescence. A woman destroys a ceramic bust of Zeus that bears an uncanny resemblance to her husband. Another woman destroys her Ford Taurus with a crowbar because it is cursed.

I WILL SMASH YOU is filled with moments of relief, moments of release, unexpected realizations, and a couple of political statements. You have never seen a film like this

We'll start to screen I WILL SMASH YOU in September. The release party/premiere will happen somewhere in Baltimore.
Anybody interested in getting a screener copy of the DVD can write me at lucadipierro@yahoo.it

Little Burn Films presents
I WILL SMASH YOU
a film by Luca Dipierro & Michael Kimball
concept by Michael Kimball
directed by Luca Dipierro
edited by Luca Dipierro & Michael Kimball
camera by Rachel Bradley, Luca Dipierro, Rodney McLaughlin
with, in random order: Susan Nolan, Ivan Bojanic, Adam Robinson, Chancellor Pascale, Ella Grossbach, Geoff Becker, Jessica Gill, Caitlin Cunningham, Andy Kratz, Leslie F. Miller, Gregg Wilhelm, Tom Smith, Monica Mohindra, Bonnie Jones, Mike Rippe, Jeff Rettberg, Molly Warsh and Piotr Gwiazda, Michael Kimball, Betsy Boyd.
special thanks to Crazy Ray's and Brent Green

The category is Interviews and Things That are New

2009-06-23T11:02:00.000-04:00

Chris Higgs interview at HTMLGIANT that is not old even though it was posted way back on June 14th! I could read a whole book that is only an interview with Chris Higgs.

Michael Kimball interviews editor of Unsaid Magazine, David McLendon at elimae.

And, seriously, get the new issue of Unsaid however you can. It is massive in every way. Here's the lineup that is also a massive name drop:

ANNE CARSON, BRIAN EVENSON, BLAKE BUTLER, DAVID OHLE, EVELYN HAMPTON, PETER MARKUS, ALEXIS ALMEIDA, ROBERT LOPEZ, BEAR KIRKPATRICK, MICHAEL KIMBALL, MEGAN LAYTON, DAWN RAFFEL, EUGENE MARTEN, DAVID HOLLANDER, OTTESSA MOSHFEGH, SHELTON WALSMITH, JASON SCHWARTZ, RUDY WILSON, SARAH MANGUSO, PAUL MALISZEWSKI, RICHARD ST. GERMAIN, SAM MICHEL, EMILIA A. PHILLIPS, BRIAN KUBARYCZ, SVEN BIRKERTS, RICK POINSETT, ALYSON JANE, BIANCA GALVEZ, JOE WENDEROTH, M SARKI, JOANNA HOWARD, WILL ENO, JESSICA NEWMAN, PATRICIA O'CONNELL, MATTHEW THOMPSON, CAROLYN ALTMAN, PETER CHRISTOPHER, ANDY DEVINE, DANIELLE BLAU, RACHEL B. GLASER, PATRICK EHLEN, M.T. FALLON, JONATHAN CALLAHAN, LAUREN MCCOLLUM, KRISTINA BORN, JULIA HOLLEMAN, TRIA ANDREWS, VIRGINIA KONCHAN, BJORN VERENSON, MICHAEL STEWART, TRENT ENGLAND, DYLAN T. NICE, BRIAN SCHORN, RYAN MURPHY, SAM PINK, BENJAMIN LANDRY, EMILY MAHAN, SHANE JONES, THOMAS LAVERTY, A. MINETTA GOULD, COOPER ESTEBAN, LINDSAY ANDERSON, JOSHUA KORNREICH, SCOTT GARSON

To get a glimpse of what's in there, check out the feature at the EWN blog where Dan Wickett asks McLendon to say a bit about each piece and why he chose to include it in Unsaid. This feature could be printed as a supplement to the issue. Thanks, Dan and David, for doing this.

Available for Pre-Order: John Dermot Woods' novel The Complete Collection of people, places & things

I ordered this as soon as the email landed. Here's the info:

PRE-ORDER SPECIAL!
Order The Complete Collection of people, places & things by July 15 and get it for only $12 (25% off the cover price) with free shipping in the U.S. (we can work something out for international too).

EXTRA STUFF FOR THE FIRST 50 100 PEOPLE WHO ORDER:
- A signed/numbered screen print, commemorating the book’s release
- personalized copy with a limited edition, signed book plate

The Complete Collection of people, places & things
a novel by John Dermot Woods
BlazeVOX Books 2009
ISBN: 9781935402466
175 pp. Perfect Bound. With Drawings.

“An accomplished artist and writer, in addition to being an entertaining and often an electrifying one. John Woods does something very original in his combining of the arts in this collection, and my hat’s off to him in his two-hat achievement.”
— Stephen Dixon

“John Dermot Woods’ Complete Collection thrills the daylights out of me. Every word, every image is infused with vitality. Every place, person and thing breathes and moves. It is an android’s heaven, a manikin’s cocktail party. It reminds me of the Golden Age cartoons where human departure imbues clocks, canned goods, books, statues, toys or brooms with sentience. When we close our eyes our kitchens Jitterbug, our teddy bears waltz. The thing I love most about this world is that while Woods’ imagination is opened full throttle, he provides an almost ethnographical structure to explicate it. His wonderland is so thoroughly startling because of — not in spite of — his ability to make his account as reliable as a Fodor’s travel guide.”
— Reginald McKnight

“John Woods’ The Complete Collection brings the small-town America of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio into conversation with Italo Calvino’s fake travelogue, Invisible Cities, and that book’s dreamish vision of Imperial China. Like Calvino’s novel, the book evokes a kind of nearly Renaissance-like iconographic worldview of Memory and the Imagination, but one channeled through the disposable world of American children’s toys and comic books. The flat voice is disconcertingly balanced between farce, comedy and deadly seriousness.”
— Johannes Göransson

Excerpts online:

“Benvereen” (Lamination Colony)

“Voltron,” “Game Cartridges,” and “The Dining Car” (La Petite Zine)

“Gargamel” (Pebble Lake Review)

New Literary Magazine: The Collagist

Dzanc Books is pleased to announce its newest venture: an online Logo journal called The Collagist. Intent on continuing the Dzanc tradition of bringing extraordinary writing to a wide audience, the first issue of The Collagist will be published on August 15th, 2009, and appear subsequently each month thereafter at www.thecollagist.com.

The Collagist is edited by Matt Bell, with Matthew Olzmann as Poetry Editor. Each month The Collagist will deliver outstanding new short stories, poems, and essays from both emerging and established writers, as well as an exclusive excerpt from a forthcoming novel. Early excerpts will include works from the standard bearers of independent publishing, including Coffee House, Two Dollar Radio, and Unbridled Books. The Collagist will also publish several new book reviews in every issue.

The Collagist is immediately open for submissions in all categories. As you might assume, we suggest you read the books Dzanc and its imprints publish to get a flavor of what writing gets us most excited. Submissions guidelines can be found at www.thecollagist.com/submissions.html.

We thank you in advance for your submissions and your readership, and look forward to sharing this exciting new project with you when our first issue launches in August.

Sincerely,

Steve Gillis
Dan Wickett
Matt Bell
Dzanc Books

Mike Heppner's Man Talking Project

2009-06-02T14:30:00.001-04:00

So maybe you've read my review of Mike Heppner's Talking Man at The Chapbook Review. Good. That's good. Now here's some more: last October, Justin Taylor talked about Heppner's work on HTMLGIANT. He said these things:

Talking Man is the second in a series of four thematically linked novellas to be published in 2008 and 2009. The first part, Man Talking (that was released–it’s actually the fourth novella in the series; don’t ask) is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD from Heppner’s website. Talking Man is being released in a gorgeous handmade, highly limited edition of 60. I can’t wait to get my hands on one, and you shouldn’t either.

The other two novellas–Man and Talking–will be released in December ‘08 and Sometime ‘09, respectively. No word on what format(s?) those works will be available in, but why don’t you stop worrying about that right now? You’re already two novellas down–time to get cracking.

Here is a rundown of the Man Talking Project on Heppner's own website:

Mike Heppner and Small Anchor Press announce Talking, the fourth and final in a series of novellas released in 2008 and 2009.

The Man Talking Project has been written about in The New Yorker on-line, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, Conversational Reading, AdFreak, Maud Newton, Media Bistro, The Millions and HTMLGiant. Clare Dudman (98 Reasons for Being) calls the project "...a brilliant piece of writing... innovative, interesting, and absorbing..." and Neil Peart (Road Show) raves "...an artful examination of modern life, and modern love, with perfect dialogue, wry humor, (and) psychological insight."

The four novellas were written between 2007 and 2009. Three of the four were released in full over the past year. One cannot find the entire project in a single location, however it is possible to collect and read the project in its entirety.

Part One, Talking Man, was published in September 2008 by Small Anchor Press. Small Anchor Press is a Brooklyn-based independent press specializing in finely crafted handmade books. Talking Man can be purchased exclusively at SA's website, smallanchorpress.com. A second printing came out in February 2009.

Part Two, Man, was released in December 2008. Five hundred photocopies have been left in random locations across the United States for readers to find and comment on. Some of those comments can be read here.

Part Three, Man Talking, the third in the series (but the first to be made available), can be read for free here. Over four thousand readers have visited since Man Talking went on-line in April 2008.

Part Four, Talking, is a piece of writing; it's also a contest. One winner will receive a single-copy edition of Talking, entirely handwritten by Mike Heppner, plus signed copies of the other three sections. A short documentary film will feature the author awarding the prize to the winner in person (if practical). The winner is the first person to correctly guess the secret phrase, which can be found in one of Heppner's two full-length novels, The Egg Code and Pike's Folly. Both novels are available as Vintage paperbacks.

This takes the idea of requiring work of the reader to a new level. Check out the photos of where copies of Man were left all over the US. And that the last part is also a contest pretty much makes this the most interactive series of novellas ever, and a nice hook to sell some copies of his two previous novels. If one were to play along, Talking actually becomes much longer and more complicated since part of the experience is to search out and piece together the secret phrase, which requires reading two novels, which in any case binds and tangles the novels and the novellas into one huge interactive text. Heppner's project is fascinating in so many ways. To see the contest rules for Talking (I didn't see a deadline or anything, so I assume it's still on), check out Heppner's website.

A linky recap:
Mike Heppner's Man Talking project:
Part One: Talking Man, available from Small Anchor Press
Part Two: Man, check out the note, and then try to find one of the 500(+?) copies
Part Three: Man Talking, free pdf download
Part Four: Talking, "a piece of writing; it's also a contest"

Also: The Making of Talking Man: "Correspondence between Mike Heppner and Jen Hyde [of Small Anchor Press] (July 23 – December 1, 2008)"

And also: read an excerpt of Mike Heppner's novel The Egg Code

And also as well:

The Chapbook Review

2009-06-01T00:09:00.000-04:00

The first issue of The Chapbook Review is here. There's a phlebotomistic (I did indeed have less blood in my body when I finished reading) double interview where Blake Butler and Christopher Higgs take turns being interviewer/interviewee. And then, of course, there are the chapbook reviews.

Tobias Carroll reviews Lawrence Millman’s Going Home: A Horror Story

Sean Lovelace reviews Matt Bell's How the Broken Lead the Blind (the hard copies of which are sold out, but is now available as a free ebook)

Andrew Borgstrom reviews Aaron Burch’s Molting

Kimberly King Parsons reviews Alan Catlin’s Only the Dead Know Albany

Matthew Simmons and Andrew Borgstrom each review Mathias Svalina’s Play

J.R. Angelella reviews Ryan and Christie Call's Pocket Finger

Nicolle Elizabeth reviews Shya Scanlon’s Poolsaid

And I review Mike Heppner's Talking Man

The Chapbook Review is John Madera's brainchild; John Madera, who put together the huge list of lists of many writers' favorite novellas. I would like to thank John for all of his help, patience, and hard work. I think TCR fills a void in the current literary world, where chapbooks go mostly unnoticed and rarely receive the close critical reading so many of them deserve.

Writing Contest: Blake Butler/Lamination Colony: This is not not a Contest

2009-05-29T08:26:00.002-04:00

You've never seen a writing contest like this. No surprised though, coming from the mind of Blake Butler. There's no entry fee. There are more prizes than any other contest ever I think, all donated (I donated my extra copy of Jimmy Chen's chapbook TYPEWRITER). From Blake's blog:

ENTRY SPECIFICATIONS:

Texts between 1 and 2000 words. Just words. Text. There can be pictures in it too. Photos. Stuff. Not poetry or fiction or creative nonfiction, in the name of it, but anything. Words. Say something.

** BY THE ABOVE LINE I MEAN ALL WRITING IS ALLOWED. All forms of words are welcome. **

1 entry per person.

I'm going to read the entries with time I would have spent looking at websites I always look at anyway or watching poker on TV or something stupid.

Winners will be judged on the basis of how much I enjoy them, or think they are good.

Anyone can enter, if you enter under a pseudonym the prize will go to the pseudonym.

If you put terms in quotes that aren't speech in the piece you are disqualified.

If anyone is interested in donating further prizes for entrants, money or books or personal items or offers of fun, please email me, I will announce them and link there here at the bottom of this post.

Please blog this contest around.

Promotional contests should not cost money. Didn't you ever listen to Fugazi.

** WHERE TO SEND **

Please send contest entries to laminationcolony [at] gmail [dot] com, include THIS IS NOT NOT A CONTEST in the title, entries will be accepted for one week, until Friday June 5.

Winners will be picked soon after and published soon after.

This is a contest about life.

Here be the details in full.

Matt Bell's How the Broken Lead the Blind now available as a free ebook

2009-05-27T11:36:00.001-04:00

Here's Matt's reasoning for making this happen:

Since How the Broken Lead the Blind is sold out and won't be reprinted, I've now posted the entire book online so that anyone who couldn't get a copy can still read it exactly as it was in print. This is something I hope to do with every book I publish, as long as the presses I'm working with are supportive of the idea. I truly believe that all books should eventually be available for free in some form, so that any one wants to read them can, regardless of where they live or how much money they have or whatever other barriers might keep them from being able to get their hands on a copy. And then, of course, there are more selfish reasons: I'm so grateful that anyone's reading my writing, and am always happy to do whatever I can to make my work more available to anyone who's interested. So here it is.

In the future, what I'd really like is to be able to to post a book for free on the same day it goes on sale, but that'll obvious depend on who (if anyone) publishes the next book. Still, it's something I plan on bringing up if I get the opportunity.

In any case, you can now read How the Broken Lead the Blind online via Issuu or download it as a PDF for reading offline. Also, if you read the book and would like to add it on Goodreads, you can do so here.

Thanks again to everyone who bought a copy, and to Molly Gaudry, Christy Call, and David McNamara for all their work on this book. I appreciate it more than you can know.

Ryan Manning v Christopher Higgs

2009-05-20T14:02:00.000-04:00

in the form of an interview

Christopher Higgs re: politics = yes, I couldn't agree more

Sneak Preview of David Lynch's Interview Project

2009-05-14T17:08:00.000-04:00

Look see.

William Walsh at Apostrophe Cast

2009-05-14T09:00:00.002-04:00

William Walsh reads from his new book, Questionstruck, at Apostrophe Cast. Questionstruck is definitely one of the most interesting concepts I've seen. Walsh is a master of the derived text. He also gave an interview for the AP blog.

She Take We Apart

2009-05-12T11:07:00.002-04:00

Molly Gaudry posted a mind-blowing assemblage of lines drawn from blogs by the likes of Bailey, Madore, Bassett, Klassnik, Jemc, Regina, Pink, Best, Wells, Butler, Lin, Robinson, etc. Molly certainly has an eye for stand-alone lines, and with the way the lines juxtapose and accumulate, she has written a really good poem. On top of that, each line is linked to its source, which is fascinating to see how such different writers' lines is such dramatically different original contexts could be de/reterritorialized in an entirely new piece of writing that Barry Hannah indirectly inadvertently titled (you'll see). And be sure to check out John Madera's "bleary-eyed blurry remix" in the comments. Good stuff.

2009-05-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Some days even a cup of coffee is violence.

Barry Hannah, Ray

Some Brian Evenson Links

2009-05-02T11:57:00.002-04:00

From 2005: "Brian Evenson: An Introduction"

Matt Bell's recent essay in The Quarterly Conversation

Larry Nolen interview with Evenson [thanks to Scott Esposito at Conversational Reading]

Ben Marcus interviews Evenson at Web del Sol

Evenson's Wikipedia page.

And, of course, Evenson's website

Barry Hannah's Long Shadow

2009-05-01T17:14:00.000-04:00

Great profile of Barry Hannah at Garden & Gun's website. [thanks to Kevin Sampsell for finding this]

Shane Jones and Blake Butler on Powell's Books Blog

2009-05-01T13:29:00.001-04:00

Kevin Sampsell posted a discussion between Shane Jones and Blake Butler on Powell's Book Blog. Topics include: whether or not they feel different now that they have published books, being labeled "internet writers" and other things like cats.

David Lynch's Interview Project

2009-05-01T12:59:00.000-04:00

Here's the trailer for David Lynch's Interview Project. Looks fascinating. Reminds me of Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) and I WILL SMASH YOU.

New Interview Project episodes will be launched every 3 days for a year.

Looks great, of course.

Jimmy Chen's "A photo essay by Philip Roth" at HTMLGIANT

2009-04-28T11:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Jimmy Chen posted "The ecstasy of a faint outdoor wind: A photo essay by Philip Roth" at HTMLGIANT. It's hilarious, the way Jimmy Chen is hilarious, which is very. Just the other day I saw an author photo and felt that warm flush of embarrassment under my skin, because, like most of the author photos I see, it was so overdone with melodramatic neck angles and hyper-serious eyes. Jimmy Chen's "photo essay by Philip Roth" hits the notes. This makes me even more excited for Jimmy's chapbook Typewriter from Magic Helicopter Press.

More Book Blurbs Available

2009-04-25T17:37:00.001-04:00

Here are some book blurbs I am making available. Also, the previous batches of blurbs I posted are still available. I had them for sale before, but If you want a blurb, just take it, use it, it's free. Donations are certainly welcome, especially since work is slow so I need to start making some money. In any case, feel free to customize (tweak, remix, etc) any blurb to include the author's name and/or the title of the book, whatever. So, in about six months, I'm going to begin assuming that every book blurb I see is really one of mine, tweaked, remixed, and attributed to someone else. Thanks and enjoy.

“I haven’t seen such daring since my grandmother left the house without her Depends.”

“Dazzling, crackling, stunning—you’ll probably be incapacitated by the time you’re done with this one. The world will soon be literally deaf, dumb, and blind, too.”

“Seriously, the hype has been so big that I can’t even bring myself to read the book. I just sit and watch the book lay on the desk and I get gooseflesh. Don’t miss out of this masterpiece, a marketing marvel . . . just flip the pages, move it from the bookshelf to the coffee table to your study, just look at the book and think about how great it is . . . buy this book immediately, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed—and you don’t even have to read it!”

"This book will change your life and probably the lives of your family, friends, and even the random people you meet, just from having met you; all because you bought and read this book. If you thought Jesus and 9/11 changed things, you obviously haven't read this yet. And just imagine what you are depriving so many people of if you don't buy this book and read it. That's a heavy burden, my friend, compared to the low low cover price. I'm just saying."

“There’s a lot to like here . . . a nice dust jacket with a photo on the back inside flap with the author in his own corduroy dust jacket, posing for the camera. He looks pretty serious, like he’s mad or horny. The pages, when you have the book closed, are rugged and uneven, kind of giving it an old, rustic look (but the book is new, though, so—). The paper is nice. So I’d say the book is probably pretty good, too. The writing, I mean; the story that’s in it. I’d probably buy one from the store if they didn’t send it to me for free.”

“When the first line is “Nonplussed, the denizens gazed wistfully upon the nondescript regalia and joined in the cacophony of hearts” there is no need to read the rest to know this is an important book by a purely original mind.”

“Any book that leaves your lips bleeding, your balls aching, and your crotch burning like something out of a Nat King Cole Christmas song is worth the price of admission. A band-aid or an ice pack would make a clever freebie, though. Or even some ointment.”

“An instant classic the likes of which have not been seen since Moby Dick or even Confederacy of Dunces.”

“Superb. Delicious. A little tough in areas, but definitely lean and satisfying. Lots to chew on. Tantalizing for the developed palate. Keep a big bottle of sauce at hand and make sure your steak knife is sharp! It's difficult, but try not to eat it too quickly; your bowels will not handle it well if at all.”

“A rowdy, raucous time . . . woke the neighbors . . . police were called . . . two nights in jail . . . helluva time . . . a coloring book and so much more!”

Fiona McCrae on the Life Cycle of the Poem

2009-04-24T13:18:00.001-04:00

Fiona McCrae, director and publisher at Graywolf Press, discusses the life cycle of a poem on the Farrar Straus and Giroux poetry blog.

UPDATE: Here is Part Two.

Blake Butler Interviews Vanessa Place at HTMLGIANT

2009-04-23T16:34:00.000-04:00

This is so good. This is the kind of interview I aspire to. Blake asks Vanessa Place about her massive book (novel?) La Medusa, which was published last year by FC2. Both sides of this interview are fascinating. Here are Blake's opening questions:

BB: (a) I’d like to open our discussion of La Medusa by asking about its birth in you, as an idea. Over the span of its 500 pages, the text manages to worm through quite an insanely number of shells and forms, I believe I read somewhere that you worked on La Medusa for quite a number of years, so I am particularly interested in how the shape of the book continued to evolve and expand within itself as you found yourself deeper in the pages.

(b) What I find really interesting, is that among this huge sprawl, too, is that the bulk of the narrative consists of a set of interwoven strands that focus on the main ‘camps’, if you will, of the discourse, which are in a way defined in the very first sentences of the book:

“Doctor Casper Bowles eyes his mirror’d visor.
Feena checks her pink Barbie mirror
while Athalie her mother looks at her own hand.
Jorge can’t see for shit ‘cuz of the sun,
And the golden-bellied woman stands blind as a proverbial bat.
Then there’s me, flattened & weeping in one hundred and one windows”

These strands are attended to so fervently, and with great poise, so that often it seems like some scenes in the book that may occur over a short period in the timeline of the narrative, actually sprawl out as if minute by minute, almost in the way that David Foster Wallace managed to capture time as time in ‘Infinite Jest,’ and also how Gass used language to define space in ‘The Tunnel.’ I was wondering if you could speak more about directing the complex trajectories of each of these narratives over time and perhaps some of the process involved in how the evolving form dictated content and vice-versa.

Read on and pay attention as your brain muscles ripple and sag.

Coming Soon from Coconut Books: A Model Year by Gina Myers

2009-04-23T15:26:00.002-04:00

Gina Myers
Coconut Books

Top Ten Novellas Project Mentioned on Time Out New York Blog

2009-04-23T12:06:00.001-04:00

The massive list of favorite novellas lists put together by John Madera gets a nice mention on the Time Out New York blog.

Ryan Call Gets All Russian on Your Pizdy

2009-04-22T21:03:00.000-04:00

Ryan Call posted at HTMLGIANT today about his reading of Dostoevsky's novels The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, and it was nice to see someone appreciate the work rather than want to tear it apart and justify why the world would be none the worse if the books got revised out of human history. None of the wrinkle-nosed "Eew, a classic! It must be boring and out of touch." I think Ryan does a fine job of balancing his explaining that, no, reading Dostoevsky is not the same as reading Gary Lutz, and that that's not a bad thing; both are brilliant and magical, they just "make different parts of [the] body light up." That's a great way to say it.

There are not many recent, enormous contemporary social novels that have affected me this way, except for Infinite Jest and maybe some others that I cannot name right now - my bookshelf is currently full of story collections and other short books, so I’m not really reading big social novels anyhow. Maybe that’s why. But I have to admit that reading The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov creates in me a different effect than when I read the work of, say, Gary Lutz, or I don’t know, who else? My point is this: it was a relief to be able to feel concern for characters as if they were real people. I don’t know why, but it felt good to worry about them. See, when I read Lutz, different parts of my body light up, specifically, parts in my head. It is a different kind of reading that I apply to Lutz’s pages: more grammatical/mechanical, less concerned with the fleshy bits. Is anyone familiar with what I’m describing? I’m curious to know if others have found themselves enjoying a suddenly different way of reading? I mean really enjoying it because it is refreshing and new? And by new, I mean, it is how I used to read long ago, before I tried to write for myself?

Jamie Iredell on This Podcast Will Change Your Life

2009-04-22T09:58:00.000-04:00

Jamie Iredell talks with Ben Tanzer about his now-sold-out chapbook Atlanta and his other work at This Podcast Will Change Your Life. Good work, guys.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life - Atlanta (April 2009) - Jamie Iredell - Picnic Cannibal

Check out Iredell's latest chapbook from Publishing Genius's This PDF Chapbook series entitled Before I Moved to Nevada and Ben Tanzer's Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine from Orange Alert Press.

2009-04-21T13:14:00.001-04:00

What happens in the meantime to the many sounds the infant
once easily uttered, and what becomes of the ability he possessed, before he learned the sounds of a single language, to produce those contained in all of them? It is as if the acquisition of language were possible only through an act of oblivion . . .

Daniel Heller-Roazen, Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language

RIP: J.G. Ballard

2009-04-19T20:37:00.000-04:00

J.G. Ballard (1930-2009)

New at Apostrophe Cast: Shane Jones Reads from Light Boxes

2009-04-16T08:44:00.000-04:00

Hear Shane Jones read from Light Boxes at Apostrophe Cast. One of these days I'm going to write more about LB. Excellent book.

Here's Shane's interview.

Apostrophe Cast keeps getting better. Probably one of the best podcast/audio literary journals I've seen/heard.

IsReads in Poets & Writers, FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize

2009-04-15T17:17:00.000-04:00

Nice article in Poets & Writers about IsReads. Adam and Peter are taking the word directly to the everyday world. Way to go. Way to go.

+++ +++

+++

FC2 announces Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Here are the guidelines in case you don't feel like clicking the link:

Eligibility

The FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize is open to any U.S. writer in English with at least three books of fiction published. Submissions may include a collection of short stories, one or more novellas, or a novel of any length. There is no length requirement. Works that have previously appeared in magazines or in anthologies may be included. Translations and previously published novels and collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, former or current students or close friends of the final judge are ineligible to win the contest. Employees and FC2 authors are not eligible to enter.
Judges

Finalists for the Prize will be chosen by the following members of the FC2 Board of Directors: Kate Bernheimer, R. M. Berry, Jeffrey Deshell, Noy Holland, Brenda Mills, Lance Olsen (Chair), Matt Roberson, Susan Steinberg, and Lidia Yuknavitch.

The winning manuscript will be chosen from the finalists by Carole Maso, who will write the foreword to the winning manuscript.

Selection criteria will be consistent with FC2’s stated mission to publish "fiction considered by America’s largest publishers too challenging, innovative, or heterodox for the commercial milieu," including works of "high quality and exceptional ambition whose style, subject matter, or form pushes the limits of American publishing and reshapes our literary culture.”

For contest updates and full information on FC2’s mission, history, aesthetic commitments, authors, events, and books, please visit the website at: http://fc2.org.
Deadlines

Contest entries will be accepted beginning 15 August. All entries must be postmarked no later than 1 November. The winner will be announced 1 May.
Prize

The Prize includes $15,000 and publication by FC2, an imprint of the University of Alabama Press. In the unlikely event that no suitable manuscript is found among entries in a given year, FC2 reserves the right not to award a prize.
Manuscript Format

Please submit TWO hardcopies of the manuscript.

The manuscript must be:

--anonymous: the author's name or address must not appear anywhere on the manuscript (the title page should contain the title only); include a separate cover page with your name, contact information, and a list of three previously published works of fiction with ISBNs and publishers; you may download and use a copy of this cover letter

--typed on standard white paper, one side of the page only; paginated consecutively; bound with a spring clip or rubber bands; no paper clips or staples, please;

Please include a self-addressed, stamped postcard for notification that manuscript has been received, and a self-addressed, stamped, regular business-sized envelope for contest results.

FC2 strongly advises that you send your manuscript first class.

Please retain a copy of your manuscript; FC2 cannot return manuscripts. Submission of more than one manuscript is permissible if each manuscript is accompanied by a $25 reading fee. Once submitted, manuscripts cannot be altered; the winner will be given the opportunity to make changes before publication. Simultaneous submissions to other publishers are permitted, but FC2 must be notified immediately if manuscript is accepted elsewhere. FC2 will consider all finalists for publication.
Submission Address

Full manuscripts, accompanied by a check made out to American Book Review for the mandatory reading fee of $25, should be sent to:

FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize
University of Houston-Victoria
School of Arts and Sciences3007 N. Ben Wilson
Victoria, TX 77901-5731
CLMP Contest Ethics Code

CLMP's community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to:

1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors;

2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and

3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public.

What Was the "What Was the Hipster?" n+1 Panel Discussion?

2009-04-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

Here's an article in today's New York Observer about some of what happened at the n+1 "What Was the Hipster?" panel discussion this past Saturday. And here's Christian Lorentzen's 2007 piece entitled "Why the Hipster Must Die" from Time Out New York.

Top Ten Novellas, Dozens of Them

2009-04-10T21:17:00.001-04:00

John Madera asked a load of writers to list their favorite novellas, and today he posted dozens of lists by these writers:

Leni Zumas
John Dermot Woods
Kevin Wilson
William Walsh
Justin Taylor
Joe Stracci
Matthew Simmons
David Shields
Peter Selgin
Christine Schutt
Bradley Sands
Tim Russell
Adam Robinson
Cooper Renner
Kathryn Regina
Ben Pester
Kimberly King Parsons
Ben Myers
Clayton Moore
Carole Maso
Michael Martone
Micheline Aharonian Marcom
John Madera
Lorette C. Luzajic
Gary Lutz
Sean Lovelace
Reb Livingston
Catherine Lacey
Lee Klein
Paul Kincaid
Michael Kimball
Sean Kilpatrick
Michael Joyce
Shane Jones
Jac Jemc
Jamie Iredell
Lily Hoang
Christopher Higgs
John Haskell
Jim Hanas
Amelia Gray
Brandon Scott Gorrell
Renee Gladman
Molly Gaudry
Timothy Gager
Brian Evenson
Scott Esposito
Nicolle Elizabeth
Jackie Corley
Jimmy Chen
Tobias Carroll
Blake Butler
K. Kvashay-Boyle
Daniel Borzutzky
Crispin Best
Matt Bell
Ken Baumann
Nick Antosca
J.R. Angelella
Steve Almond

Unbelievable. Great job putting this together, John! This is definitely the most impressive, helpful list of novellas I've ever encountered. It's disappointing and exciting to see how much I have missed. I'm happy to see some attention focused on a form that really doesn't get the consideration it deserves. My list is something of a retrospective of the novellas I read in my late teens, early twenties up to just last year. Besides learning about so many novellas I now have to find and read, it feels great to see my name on a list with so many amazing writers. Carole Maso's work is blowing my mind right now, so it's nice to see what work blew her mind.

"Money Walks": LA Times Serial Storytelling Experiment

2009-04-09T09:17:00.004-04:00

The Los Angeles Times website is publishing a serial novel. Here is the deal:

This is the first chapter in an experiment in serial storytelling called "Money Walks" that we will publish in Calendar during the next three weeks. Every weekday and Saturday between now and April 24, we will bring you another installment, first by our own Mary McNamara, and then by Los Angeles fiction writers including, among others, Seth Greenland, Marisa Silver, Aimee Bender, Denise Hamilton and Jerry Stahl.

"Money Walks," a serial novel by 16 Los Angeles writers who will be appearing at this year's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, runs Monday through Saturday until April 24. The festival takes place at UCLA on April 25 and 26.

Today's installment, Chapter 4: "Finding an easy mark isn't easy," is the work of Tod Goldberg, author of Living Dead Girl, Simplify, and a forthcoming story collection entitled Other Resort Cities. Here are the opening two paragraphs of Chapter 4:

Angie believed nothing good ever happened in the Valley. She'd done her time there, like everyone else, working the day shift at Odd-Balls back in the '90s, stripping for CSUN frat boys who couldn't make it past Van Nuys, not even to see naked women.

Even then, the cities of the Valley sounded like they wanted to get out: Northridge, West Hills, North Hills. . . . each one creeping on the fringe back toward the real Los Angeles.

Here's what Tod had to say about participating in this experiment:

The way the serial has worked from a writing point of view is pretty simple. About 24 hours before my 600 words were due, the first 3 sections were emailed to me. I spent the next 18 hours trying to figure out how the hell I was going to go from Diana Wagman's section, which I suspect started with Diana trying to figure out where to go from Seth Greenland's submission, which certainly had Seth trying to figure out just what to do with the initial section, penned by LAT's writer Mary McNamara. I was also thinking, while writing, how I might be able to set up the next section for my friend Aimee Bender, who was originally supposed to go after me, but who ended up moving further down the line, but who, originally, I was going to see the very night she'd have to write her section. See, I'm all about helping others. But, yeah, that didn't work out. So I took a more mercenary approach and decided that the story needed to have a caper and needed one right now, or else the entire project was going to go down in a burning heap. Whether or not anyone else thought this -- ie, the fine folks at the LA Times -- was not made clear to me. So. Yeah. That's what I did.

It was actually quite fun to do this bit of experimental storytelling. You can feel each writer attempting to inject their brand of storytelling into the work and also expressing a will about where they'd like it to go. I don't think people reading it can expect a uniformity in style or even for the writers to try to mimic each other's tone as part of the fun is watching what each of these talented folks choose to do, how their own aesthetic shines through. I fully expect that in Aimee's section, for instance, that everyone will turn into pumpkins. And when Mark Haskell Smith is up, I expect a prolonged scene of scatalogical excess. And then Susan Straight will make it all serious and beautiful. Personally, I'm hoping for scatalogical and downtrodden, but that's just me.

Tod will be on the "Humor & Race" panel at 3:30 p.m. Saturday and the "Enough About You: Fiction & Humor" panel at noon Sunday at UCLA at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

This is interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how this novel evolves.

Michael Kimball Virtual Book Tour

2009-04-08T16:27:00.001-04:00

Michael Kimball will be touring the UK blogosphere in support of the UK paperback release of Dear Everybody. Here's the pertinent info.

Names and Naming in Benjamin Kunkel's Introduction to Peter Handke's Slow Homecoming

2009-04-08T14:56:00.002-04:00

n+1 just posted Benjamin Kunkel's Introduction to Peter Handke's Slow Homecoming, recently reissued by The New York Review of Books (originally published in the late 1970's), with interesting discussion of Handke's manipulation/exploration of the power of names and naming in the novel. Here is the opening paragraph of Kunkel's Introduction:

One of this novel's minor but telling peculiarities is the narrator's extreme reluctance to resort to proper names, and to describe the book in its own preferred style would be to avoid for as long as possible any mention of the author's name or the title of his book. True, we learn (or seem to learn) from the first sentence that the main character bears the last name of Sorger, but in German this is as good as allegorical—Sorger means one who takes care or has cares—and the man's given name in any case doesn't come up for some fifty pages. The place in which the man is working will elicit a description of almost naturalistic precision, but its name is likewise withheld for many pages, as is the disciplinary title attached to his work: a patient and reverent bestowal of attention that involves, above all, "the search for forms," and resembles geology.

And, of course, this fascinates me as I work on an essay all about the concept of names and naming, which I've mentioned briefly before: the essay will be crafted entirely out of quotes from any and every source, something I've been wanting to do for a couple of years, but hadn't found fitting subject matter until I started doing the name drop posts here. Then when I read that Walter Benjamin had wanted to write an essay this way, too, I experienced that simultaneous disappointment and inspiration that someone had had this idea way before I did.

It appears that namelessness runs through most of Handke's books. I'm going to be checking into his work asap.

Keyhole Magazine's Recession Sale

2009-04-08T12:23:00.001-04:00

You can get a subscription (4 issues) to Keyhole Magazine for the ridiculously low price of $19.99 which already includes shipping. And the individual issues are marked down, too (except Issue 1 and Issue 4, which are out of print (but you can download them for free (!!!)))

Opium's 500-Word Memoir Contest Finalists Announced

2009-04-07T07:59:00.001-04:00

Which includes familiar names like Jamie Iredell, Sean Beaudoin, Rachel Yoder, and others I should probably know.

Here's the short list:

From 26 to 32, the Only Years that Matter by Sean Beaudoin
Total Care by Kathline Carr
The Question of Spoons by Rebecca Collins
Lamb Brain by Kate Duva
High Life by Jamie Iredell
Sacred Bodies by Davin Malasarn
Farewell Bend by Nathaniel Missildine
Crossing Styx by Peter Gajdics
Nothing But The Truth by Geoff Kronik
Fifty-Eight Years Later by Helen Phillips
Thief by F.S. Symons
Family Stew by Sean Toner
Dale by Rob Tourtelot
A Merry Sort of Life by Jim Windolf
Creatures by Rachel Yoder

Congrats, folks. I've always wanted to write one of these, but all I can seem to write are negative memoirs, where I tell about things that did not happen instead of what did. I guess that's called fiction?

Verso Spring 09, n+1 Hipster Panel Primer, The Cupboard, Shane Jones, Paris Review

2009-04-06T15:27:00.003-04:00

Thinkers, Leftists, and Theorists: direct your attention to the Spring 2009 titles forthcoming from Verso.

Also, possibly a primer for the upcoming n+1 panel "What Was the Hipster?", Christian Lorentzen's article (Lorentzen will be one of the panelists): "Captain Neato: Wes Anderson and the Problem with Hipsters; Or, What Happens When a Generation Refuses to Grow Up, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou"

The next pamphlet from The Cupboard is available for pre-order. Here's the info:

Play
by Mathias Svalina
36 pages. Tape-bound.
$5.00
Book design by Todd Seabrook.
Cover design by Randy Bright.

Children need preoccupations. Children need supervision and bran in their diets and children need instruction. For you, for your children: Play, a collection of twenty-nine games to issue gentle correctives and urge honing of the child's wayward sense of wonder. For sixteen or more players. For two. For five. For one child left alone to fend for herself.

About the Author
Mathias Svalina is a co-editor of Octopus Magazine and Books. He is the author & collaborator of numerous chapbooks & his first full-length book, Destruction Myths, is forthcoming from Cleveland State University Press. He lives deep in Brooklyn, NY.

It appears that the inaugural issue, Jesse Ball's Parables & Lies has sold out. I've been very happy with my subscription to The Cupboard; the quality of the writing is, obviously, very high, as is the production of the pamphlets. Well worth the $15 subscription for four issues.

Matt Bell reviews Light Boxes by Shane Jones. I'll say it again: one of the best books I've read lately.

Latest Paris Review in the mail today. New fiction by Jesse Ball, Caitlin Horrocks; Poetry and Collages by John Ashbery; Interview with John Banville and Annie Proulx

n+1 Historical Investigation: "What Was the Hipster?"

2009-04-04T11:45:00.002-04:00

Yes, it's official, The Hipster is dead.

Read for yourself: an email from n+1 today:

n+1 Presents
in partnership with the New School

"What Was the Hipster?"

An Afternoon Panel, Symposium, and Historical Investigation

--Next Saturday, April 11, 2009--

Mark Greif (n+1)
Jace Clayton (dj/Rupture)
Christian Lorentzen (Harper's)
+ Special Guests TBA

Free and Open to the Public

Who was the turn-of-the-century hipster? Who is free enough of the hipster taint to write the hipster's history without contempt or nostalgia? Why do we declare the hipster moment over--that, in fact, it had ended by 2003--when the hipster's "global brand" has just reached its apotheosis?

A panel of n+1 writers invites n+1 subscribers and the public to join a collective investigation. Short presentations will be followed by audience debate, comment, and recollection, to be transcribed and published in book form this year.

Saturday, April 11, 2009, 2 pm - 4 pm.
The New School University, Theresa Lang Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor.
Admission: No tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served. Please come early.
Please forward this message to friends.

www.nplusonemag.com
www.newschool.edu

Jamie Iredell's BEFORE I MOVED TO NEVADA

2009-04-03T14:07:00.000-04:00

Just ordered my copy of Jamie Iredell's BEFORE I MOVED TO NEVADA from Publishing Genius. This is an installment of Iredell's novel-in-chapbooks, which has been drawn, quartered (well, thirded (?)), and disseminated via various small presses.

Read BEFORE I MOVED TO NEVADA, and then probably buy a copy. You know, like support quality indie lit.

Then get ATLANTA (Achilles Chapbooks)

And WHEN I MOVED TO NEVADA (Greying Ghost Press)

Alain Badiou Interview on HARDtalk

2009-04-02T11:59:00.000-04:00

[via Verso UK]

April Book Reviews at NewPages

2009-04-01T11:50:00.000-04:00

The April book reviews are up at NewPages, including my reviews of these:

At or Near the Surface by Jenny Pritchett

The Suburban Swindle by Jackie Corley

The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Camera by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint

All of these book blew me away, each in a different way.

There's a good review of Shane Jones's Light Boxes, which I read a week or so ago and loved. One of the best books I've read in a long time, along with the books mentioned above. I'm going to write about it soon.

More reviews include:

Vienna Triangle by Brenda Webster

First Execution by Domenico Starnone

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

The Adventures of Cancer Bitch by S.L. Wisenberg

First We Read, Then We Write:
Emerson on the Creative Process by Robert D. Richardson

Bending the Notes by Paul Hostovsky

Morning in a Different Place by Mary Ann McGuigan

Comfort by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

Shuck by Daniel Allen Cox

Me As Her Again by Nancy Agabian

Lamination Colony: Spring 09: Guest Edited by Michael Kimball

2009-03-31T18:01:00.001-04:00

The Spring 09 issue of Lamination Colony is live. I've been looking forward to this issue. Michael Kimball has delivered an issue stuffed with over 60 pieces by 38 writers. Exceptional design work by Blake Butler, as usual.

Here's what Kimball had to say about the issue:

I guest edited Blake Butler’s Lamination Colony and the issue looks amazing. Blake asked me what I wanted it to look like and then he made it look like that. It’s all different-colored boxes that you have to scroll over until a name pops up and then you click on that some-colored box and there is something for you to love there.

Contributors include: Kim Chinquee, Adam Robinson, Ben Mirov, DS White, Matthew Salesses, Blaster Al Ackerman, M.T. Fallon, Adam Good, Stephanie Barber, J.A. Tyler, Catherine Moran, Cooper Renner, Luca Dipierro, Amanda Raczkowski, Rupert Wondolowski, Whitney Woolf, Lauren Becker, Michael Bible, Robert Swartwood, Darcelle Bleau, Robert Bradley, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Aimee Lynn-Hirschowitz, Shane Jones, Conor Madigan, Krammer Abrahams, Shatera Davenport, Jordan Sanderson, Stacie Leatherman, Josh Maday, Joseph Young, Jason Jones, Gena Mohwish, Jen Michalski, Aby Kaupang, Jac Jemc, Karen Lillis, and Justin Sirois.

My pieces in the issue, "Ashes to Undermine the Smell" and "[Night]", are two excerpts from my novella-in-progress. Here is the opening of "Ashes . . .":

Father is draped over the windows: what is left of him, dried and stiff and burgundy-brown: somewhat wrinkled and dirty, bleeding and caked with soul.

No, this was an accident. It should be soil. Soil, parched and small and something to be washed away at night. Just soil.

I'm honored to have my work alongside that of so many talented writers.

Molly Gaudry's WE TAKE ME APART

2009-03-25T18:01:00.001-04:00

Here is an excerpt of Molly Gaudry's novel(la) we take me apart, forthcoming from ML Press (free for six-month subscribers). It appears to be maybe the dissection of a young woman's mind, where language spawns chains of images and feelings that accumulate with the movement of the text. I like the way the piece lives in the borderland between prose and poetry, which serves the stream-of-consciousness-ness of it well. Gaudry makes good use of repetition and makes poetic use of technical language blended into the text. I'm excited to read the rest.

FC2 podcast with Brian Evenson

2009-03-20T16:20:00.002-04:00

Excellent. Listen to twenty-four minutes of a genius talk about the 'state of literature/publishing,' small presses, the book as object, etc. Brian Evenson podcast.

Publishing Genius: Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously by Christopher Higgs: New: This PDF Chapbook:

2009-03-20T14:51:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting for this particular TPC for months, and finally

I felt this this

or something like it

and something different

a cell phone conversation
poor connection/reception
static replaces every third word
struggle onward to the end instead of hanging up
feel the brain try to (re)build (re)construct (re)arrange
scrambling bits and orders and pieces
Wait, was it you who was telling me?
static becomes word becomes
feel the brain strain and meaning for struggle
feel Broca's area fold into itself

Read Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously by Christopher Higgs

New Work Forthcoming from ML Press

2009-03-19T00:22:00.001-04:00

The line up for the next 18-volume batch of MLP chapbooks has been announced. The volumes run from 7.15.09 to 12.15.09 and go like so:

ryan call : THUNDERSTORM AS FAMILIAL CONVULSION
elizabeth ellen : A THOUSAND & ONE OTHERS, YES
molly gaudry : BY BONES OF THE UPPER LIMB
kevin wilson : SO DARK IN THE WOLF’S MAW
mary hamilton : FROM THE HIP
craig davis : WHERE WE GO WHEN WE LEAVE
kendra grant malone : RAPE CHILDREN
lily hoang : THE MOCKERY OF A CAT
amy guth : (TBD)
mark baumer : MORE INTRODUCTIONS TO A BOOK I WILL NEVER FINISH
ben tanzer : I AM RICHARD SIMMONS
krammer abrahams : BOOTS WALKING IN AMERICA FOUND A TROPHY
joshua cohen : FOUR ART PIECES PLUS TWO
eugene lim : AND THEN SHE WAKES UP
c.l. bledsoe : TEXAS
joanna ruocco : THE BAKER’s DAUGHTER
josh maday : FOR
michael martone : (TBD)

Subscriptions are available for pre-order now. They don't last long, so get on it. This subscription includes the first ever perfect bound ML Press novel(la), Molly Gaudry's WE TAKE ME APART.

My piece is an excerpt from the novella I've been working on (two more pieces of which are forthcoming in the next issue of Lamination Colony). I'm proud to be a part of the MLP chapbook series, and among so many talented writers.

Source of Lit: Taint Magazine archives

2009-03-18T10:39:00.002-04:00

While it's important (though mostly impossible) to keep up with all that is new and fresh and published just-this-minute in the crazy world of print and online literary magazines, there are still many venues either fallen or laid to rest that still have their archives available. I don't think that sneaking through the archives constitutes a looking backward as opposed to forging ahead with the new. All that to say that as I've been gearing up for an interview, I've been reading the archives at Taint Magazine (see, looking at the archives and forging ahead at the same time), an online literary journal formerly mastheaded by Mark Cajigao, Chris Young, Michael Kimball, and Bill Z. Duke. Sure, a new issue hasn't been published since 2004, but the archives generously remain, and my god there's so much good stuff in there. Here are just a few:

Editors Exposed: An Anthropological Investigation of the Editorus rejectionus by Shya Scanlon

Michael Kimball Interviews Dawn Raffel

In the Beginning, There Was ELIMAE: Michael Kimball Interviews Deron Bauman

An Interview with Neal Pollack

So You Wrote a Book? Michael Kimball on getting published

More Kimball: Where The Words Are: An Interview with Sam Lipsyte

Belongings: Items #3, #7, #15 by David Barringer

Burning Up by Peter Markus

Dark Property (An Affliction) by Brian Evenson

Fish Heads: Revisited by Peter Markus

Five Grim Tales by Norman Lock

Guts by Peter Markus

Hammered by Bob Thurber

If You Were Doing Things by Ken Sparling

In a Boat about to Drown by Robert Lopez

Photo Album by Chris Higgs

Provisionally, Steve by Sam Lipsyte

A Vestigial Interest by Derek White

A Real Good Guy by Joseph Young

That's just some of the columns and fiction. I think it might go on forever and ever. Just thought you should know.

* A whining aside: I don't care for the exclusive connotations of the term "literary", which for most people does not include science fiction, absurdist writing, and other "non-realist" writing; for me, "literary" certainly includes those categories.

Also, I used the word "forging" twice, which felt like too much for the space in which it occurred. It's a word of cessation, which is ordinary enough to use in a blog post, but unusual enough to stick when it occurs more than once in a small enough space of text, causing the silent reader in your head to linger on the word for an extra moment. Fortunately, though, that moment is much shorter than the time it takes to plough through an rambling off-topic footnote.

(did you notice the silent but sticky double "ough"?)

Baudrillard's Blender

2009-03-17T14:56:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Ortho for linking to this site I will be spending a lot of time looking at, thinking about, etc. Put your brain through Baudrillard's Blender.

storySouth Million Writers Award nominations

2009-03-12T11:09:00.001-04:00

are open.

Don't forget to nominate your favorite fiction of 2008.

Just saying.

Blog: Best American Nonrequired Reading

2009-03-10T20:23:00.003-04:00

Here is the blog that the Best American Nonrequired Reading committee is keeping this year, which includes excerpted transcripts of the meetings about what the students/committee members are reading. It's interesting and heartening to see high school students so sharp and insightful about contemporary fiction, non-fiction, etc, as well as to see how the 2009 edition is evolving.

Matt Bell's "An Index of How Our Family Was Killed" at Conjunctions

2009-03-06T21:29:00.002-05:00

This is one of my favorite stories of Matt's, and in one of my favorite literary venues. Check it out.

Derek White's words; time and space cracked and inserted into each other's orifices; Gestating in mental disease: The Big Name Drop, Book Porn

2009-03-03T09:14:00.000-05:00

Derek White posted some true/relevant things on his blog:

evidence-based trop-goth twitterings: doing time in the field before putting pen to paper

¢ It's 12°F. Back in Nairobi it's 27°C. Now I remember why I left NYC. Humans were not meant to be above the Tropic of Cancer.

¢ The night sky is glowing and full of snow, I have a belly full of sushi and the internet is fast as lightning. Backing up 17.7 gigs of new data to the Amazon via Jungle Disk. Besides not knowing the difference between coming and going, I'm also confused as to the difference between early and late.

[all italics mine]

Check Sean Lovelace's review of Mary Miller's Big World. Lovelace has the allusive gift of light-splattering schizo.

This is old news, but new news if you haven't heard it yet: Kate Greenstreet's chapbook This is Why I Hurt You is excellent (but what work published by Lame House Press is not superlative?), so excellent in fact that it was named best chapbook of 2008 by small press editors via Black Ocean Press. I liked TiWIHY so much that I bought Greenstreet's book case sensitive, which I'm looking forward to reading, obviously. Greenstreet's work lives at the intersection of prose and poetry, which reminds me of the work I've read by Thalia Field. As far as I know, there are still a very few copies of This is Why I Hurt You remaining for sale from Lame House. Congratulations to Kate Greenstreet and Gina Myers.

I am working on an essay, expanding on the name drop posts I did here awhile back. Gathering material right now from sources like Hegel and Cheerios commercials; but slowly, since I am behind on reviews and reading.

Coming soon: book porn as per the majestic omnipresent Ken Baumann's kind request. For now, here's a short piece, the first piece I ever had published, which is, appropriately, book porn in words.

Keyhole 6, Adam Robinson, Blake Butler, Second Run, Amazon Kindle 2

2009-03-02T11:31:00.002-05:00

[we are going to act as though this blog has not been neglected and sparsely updated at best for the past 6 months]

Approximately 7 out of 5 people snore and/or suffer from sleep apnea and do not purchase enough consumer products in order to remedy their condition. Any products at all: artificial lemon juice, silver helium balloons, Drunken Scratch My Ass Elmo, warm winter mittens, perforated garden hose, etc.

Issue 6 of Keyhole, guest-edited by William Walsh, author of Without Wax and Questionstruck, is now printed and posted. I love the cover for this issue. It is based on Matt Bell's story entitled "Hold On To Your Vacuum", which I had the chance to read on Zoetrope and it is excellent. It secretes a special aura for me, since I recognized the story as taking place in Matt's and my hometown, at our school, specifically, and, most of all, the creeped out feeling I get from both of those places, the feeling of one of those dreams where you keep trying to escape something that will stop at nothing to hunt you down and always seems to find you in whatever crevasse you can manage to hide in, and you always have that one object/person you must absolutely maintain possession of (your vacuum, in this story) that is "bulky, as heavy as a ten-year-old" and slows you down, holds you back. I'm looking forward to reading Matt's story again, as well as the rest of the line-up including Blake Butler, Kim Chinquee, Peter Conners, Brooklyn Copeland, Renee D'Aoust, Darcie Dennigan, John Domini, Cooper Esteban, Sherrie Flick, Margaret Funkhouser, Amelia Gray, Steve Katz, Gillian Kiley, Michael Kimball, Samuel Ligon, Paul Long, Michael Martone, Noam Mor, Davis Schneiderman, Jason Stumpf, and Samuel White. Here is the opening paragraph of "Hold On To Your Vacuum":

According to Teacher, there is only one rule, and it is this: No matter what happens, hold on to your vacuum. We have each been given one, each a different shape and size according to our needs. My vacuum is bright red and bulky, as heavy as a ten-year-old, its thick black cord worn down so that the wires show through in places. Holding it in my hand, the cord feels like the tail of a rodent, thick and rubbery and slightly repugnant. The cord reel is broken off, forcing me to loop the cord around my arms and the vacuum itself, making the whole contraption much harder to carry than seems necessary. I start to complain, but Teacher holds up a hand and silences me. He says, "This is the vacuum that was assigned to you, and the only one you’ll be allowed to play with."

You can order Keyhole 6 and pre-order William Walsh's Questionstruck, both for $20. Meanwhile, check out the new web content with work by Peter Conners, Davis Schneiderman, Gillian Kiley, Samuel White, Noam Mor, Blake Butler, Steve Katz, Paul Long, Sherrie Flick, and new work by me (fiction? poem?) entitled "Parallelogical Circuit". Here are some words contained therein:

"wires" "robot" "lewd" "hard" "dark" "malleable" "powerless" "tickle" "I" "meaningless" "amps"

Yet another outstanding part of Keyhole 6 is that all of the author bios in the print edition were written by Michael Kimball as part of his series of Michael Kimball writes your life story (on a postcard). I don't know what kind of radioactive material that Kimball has driving him, but, man, he gets a lot of good work done. This issue deserves some kind of an award.

Here is a trailer for Adam Robinson and Other Poems. Michael Kimball directed/produced/etc. I am excited for Adam Robinson's poetry book. It is out from Narrow House in June of aught-9. Oh snap.

Blake Butler is making a remix contest to promote his forthcoming novel/story collection SCORCH ATLAS (Featherproof 09/09/09), which has one of my favorite covers ever. Here's the deal as Blake says it:

Basically, we're asking anyone and everyone to download a piece from the book, 'Tour of the Drowned Neighborhood,' in its .doc form, and do whatever you want to it. Scramble it, eat it death, insert a whole other line of story, insert pictures of your mother's anus, throw up into a file and mail it, insert characters, insert symbolist logic, insert fun, eat characters, insert sentences from anywhere, write a whole new story out of the title alone, make it into a nice calm piece about an expatriate who is obsessed with John Irving and loves backrubs, etc. Anything. All ideas are go.

Two winning entries, chosen by myself, will be published in SCORCH ATLAS Remixed, which will be published as an ebook and available on the Featherproof site. The stories will appear alongside some wild other contributions from some very exciting and powerful writers (who will remain a surprise for now, but if it works out as we're hoping, dang), so you will be in good company, etc.

The contest is free to enter, and the two winners will receive publication, plus copies of the actual SCORCH ATLAS. The first place winner will also receive a two year subscription to Paper Egg Books (which equates to four books over those 2 years = awesome).

You can enter as many remixes of 'Tour' as you like, under any title, any word length, etc. It is a fairly open and ambient story, so the gates are guns. Do some wildness. Have some fun. I'm really excited to see what mangling and electrifying can be made. Deadline is May 1.

For full info on the contest, plus where to send your entry electronically, and to download the file containing the text you are to rape, visit the Featherproof contest announcement.

This via Sean Lovelace: Here's a kind of online lit mag that I've never seen before: Second Run runs previously published work, work that you may have had published in what was an excellent print magazine that has gone belly up or a still-excellent print magazine that has published many issues since your work appeared and is now buried in the archives no one will ever find except by accident (I've found many stories by now-big names in old issues of STORY that have been tucked in my library for years, but it was all an accident). Second Run is on its first issue, which includes poetry by Patricia Smith, Ted Kooser, Matt Mason, Heather Knowles, Jim Moore, Deborah Keenan, Ada Limon, Bryonn Bain, plays by Murray Wolfe, Jim Fenn, fiction by Sheryl St. Germain, John Domini, and Michael Martone's fictions entitled "Achilles Speaks of His Deception in the Court of Lykomedes" and "The Sex Life of the Fantastic Four", which I had the pleasure of hearing Martone read a few years ago in Grand Rapids. Part of the submission process is that you tell where the submitted work was previously published and where you were at in life when you wrote them; I wish Martone's pieces came with those tidbits, but then that info would of course change the fictions by becoming part of them. I'm going to find my copy of Martone's book on writing, Unconventions, and eat some. I would sacrifice genitalia to be able to work with Martone.

Um, also, I got the Kindle 2, and it is awesome.

The thing that kept me from even considering buying one for so long is, first, probably the price. But at least as important as the price is that I had never actually seen one, held one, read from one. Sure, the videos and commercials on Amazon are nice, but it's not the same. I know that every photo of a person reading a Kindle on their couch with pretentious foreign pottery on a table in the background and smiling with self-satisfaction is supposed to show me how happy having a kindle makes people, but that stupid fake smile is just not the same as actually being able to see and use one in real life. So, after finally getting a look at one and holding it in my own hands (Matt Bell let me oogle his Kindle; thanks, Matt), I saw that it is nice on the eyes and handles well. So far, I'm happy with my Kindle 2. Converting the files is pretty easy. The only problem I've had is with file sizes that are too large to email to have them converted. Overall, it's worth it. I don't know about the original, but this version also plays MP3's and audio books and can read the text to you (which I have not tried yet). Also, unlike the first version, Kindle 2 does not have a drive for an extra memory card, but it connects to your computer with a USB cable (I'm not sure if the original connects with USB or not). It converts pdf, doc, txt, html, and some other extensions, so, everyone, please email me books and stories and things to read. joshmaday at gmail.com

Thank you.

John Ashbery re: Michel Leiris re: Raymond Roussel

2009-02-13T20:04:00.003-05:00

As Michel Leiris points out, "Roussel never really traveled. It seems likely that the outside world never broke through into the universe he carried within him, and that, in all the countries he visited, he saw only what he had put there in advance, elements which corresponded absolutely with that universe that was peculiar to him . . ."

Blake Butler Reads from EVER at Apostrophe Cast

2009-02-05T13:37:00.002-05:00

The man reads from EVER. Badassness. Listen now, and when you're lying in the dark waiting to fall asleep. And probably, order and read EVER.

Landscape with Fragmented Figures by Jeff Vande Zande

2009-02-05T12:00:00.002-05:00

My good friend Jeff Vande Zande's new novel Landscape with Fragmented Figures was just published by Bottom Dog Press, a press that has been around for 23 years, focusing on literary writing about all things working class/blue collar. I've read the novel twice now, once a couple of years ago right after Jeff finished it, and this past December when I had the privilege of proofreading it. Landscape is a traditional realist novel where the wildly different worlds of blue collar factory work and tenure track academia come together, often with explosive results. The novel was relevant when Jeff first wrote it, but it's amazing how much more it speaks to most people's situation right now. Here are blurb and copy from Bottom Dog:

Betrayed by his art and disillusioned by his job as a professor, Ray Casper finds his long-time girlfriend has just left him. At the death of his estranged father, he links up with his out-of-work brother Sammy, and things really get complicated. Sammy moves in with Ray and needs a job; Ray needs inspiration to paint again, and both have to keep from killing each other.

Landscape with Fragmented Figures unites academia and working class in a tale of brothers, fathers and sons, art and love. It’s a tale of what it means for all of us to live in America in these times.

"Jeff Vande Zande's Landscape with Fragmented Figures is about being lost and searching for truth out of longing. On the way you drink cheap beer and pass through some smoke stacks. You are north of Detroit in a mini-metropolis off the I-75 corridor but not quite to God's country. And you find yourself splattered on an abstract canvas, layered with shallow middle class aspirations and working class failures. Haven't we all been there? It's what makes us human; it's what grounds us. At some point in life we all face ourselves - that is if we are willing to take risks."

-Lolita Hernandez, author of Autopsy of an Engine

“Jeff Vande Zande's new novel is a wonderful contemporary working-class story. This crafted story is an engaging page-turner filled with keen detailing and vivid style. Landscape with Fragmented Figures is the real deal--an intense story about real people involved in day-to-day life experiences that readers will identify with and relate to their own neighborhoods and Midwest houses, not in New York, LA or Chicago. This is a novel full of working-class heart and soul that will appeal to all readers.”

-M.L. Liebler, author of Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream & Director of Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers

Jeff Vande Zande has spent most of his life in Michigan, where the talk is always of jobs, loss of jobs, and the beauty of the landscape. His books include a novel, Into the Desperate Country (March Street Press), a collection, Poems New, Used, and Rebuilds (March Street Press) and, also a short story collection, Emergency Stopping and Other Stories (Bottom Dog Press). He lives in Midland with wife, son, and daughter and teaches English and writing at Delta College.

Light Boxes, Chris Higgs, William Burroughs, novella, AWP, and such

2009-02-05T11:59:00.000-05:00

Got my copy of Shane Jones's new novel Light Boxes the other day (I can't remember which day; time and memory are slippery like watermelon seeds now). I've looked at the book (it is very attractive; the cover image is beautiful and has planetary gravity). People are saying good things about Shane's novel. Shane posted Chris Higgs's notes on his blog.

I want to drive to Ohio this summer and hang out with Chris Higgs and talk about Deleuze and all things avant-garde.

I've been increasingly obsessed with William S. Burroughs. I read Nova Express in a night. I've been reading Naked Lunch and his letters. It's another case of finally reading something and wishing I had read it years ago.

Everything I read lately (for the past year) seems to be the exact thing I need to be reading. It all feels relevant and even reflective of the novella I've been working on. Passages, phrases, images stand out and recontextualize themselves in my own work. Sometimes it's strange and exciting. Sometimes I wonder if I'm writing a rehash. I think part of the novella is going to be a mash-up of all of these things reset in the context of my own work. Burroughs, Beckett, Faulkner, Deleuze & Guattari, Blanchot, Blake Butler, Thalia Field, Johannes Goransson, Nathaniel Mackey, Ben Lerner, J.G. Ballard, Gert Jonke, Robert Pinget, Bataille, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, William H. Gass, David Markson, Carole Maso; any of them, a combination of form and content and perspectives all intertwining and warping with the novella. Things keep changing and opening up and unfolding. I wouldn't have written about this if it was still only an idea, but I've already begun the mash-up, and the main text is almost ready for early readers. I haven't shown any of it to anyone, so I'm interested to see what kind of reaction it gets.

AWP is soon. I thought I would be able to go. I even had a generous carpool/hotel room offer. But, as an outsider (and procrastinator), my registration would cost $205, plus about that much for room/gas/etc and then easily that much for food and drink and wild partying. So, I will not be going to AWP. I was looking forward to the dance and rock-a-bowl.

Butler et Chinquee: Last Names that Begin with Contiguous Letters of the Alphabet

2009-01-16T17:09:00.001-05:00

Kim Chinquee has four new short-shorts live at Guernica. Check 'em. "The Girl" hits right in the gut.

Also, earlier in Guernica: excerpts entitled "The Machine Edda" from Zachary Mason's novel-in-progress, which looks like another synaptic orgasm. The Lost Books of the Odyssey being the other, earlier novel. You can read the Lost Books in its entirety here. Pretty much start with any chapter. It's all good.

Plus, excerpt from Deb Olin Unferth's highly praised novel Vacation.

Blake Butler's novella EVER is out and running and vacuuming out skulls (not without giving something better in return, though). I probably don't have to remind anyone. I shouldn't have to, anyway. Order here and all of your wildest dreams will come true. Blake says things about his child's arrival. This is only the beginning of the torrent of Butler books to run wild in the years ahead.

Blake has new words live at Wigleaf, too. Go on, now. No, please stay. Okay, go.

2009-01-10T18:08:00.002-05:00

"There are babies growing in my every pore"

Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

2009-01-09T19:41:00.001-05:00

If Cormac McCarthy rewrote Oedipus: Except this isn't fiction.

This is interesting, too. The Schizoanalysis Map of Terms. I'm beginning A Thousand Plateaus again. I can't wait to be able to bug Chris Higgs about it. Assemblage and rhizome are gasoline and fire in my brain right now. The internet is crawling with cool commentary and explanations of concepts in Deleuze & Guattari. I enjoy the subtitle: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Still available but in short supply: ML Press subscriptions. Just check out the lineup and you'll see why the chapbooks are selling out so quickly.

forthcoming volumes:

norman lock
kim parko
randall brown
brian evenson
michael stewart
peter markus
ken sparling
david ohle
aaron burch
matthew savoca
p.h. madore
johannes göransson

The price is ridiculously good, too. Just this side of violating free will.

The superfantasticalwaysexcellent Matt Bell's chapbook How the Broken Lead the Blind is, of course, available for pre-order from Willows Wept Press. The cover art HtBLtB is by Christy Call. See Christy and Ryan Call's collaborative chapbook Pocket Finger; you will be looking at the images in your head long after you have finished reading/seeing. In the six or so years I've known Matt, he has always been balls to the wall in everything he does, and this is no exception. This chapbook is blurbed by Steven Gillis, Ryan Call, William Walsh, Michael Kimball, J.A. Tyler, Dan Wickett, Dave Housley, Steven McDermott, Michael Czyzniejewski, and Gary Amdahl, which is by far the most blurbs I've ever seen for a chapbook. I think that may be a record of some sort. Nice work, Matt.

Yeah, so Issue 4 of Baltimore is Reads is now plastered online as well as strategically random places around Baltimore. There is work by:

A and B

Gary Beck

Larry O. Dean

Kendra Grant Malone

Sasa Ibramigov

Matt Jasper

Josh Maday

Nate Pritts

Mike Topp

My piece entitled "The Everyday Juggernaut" is, thanks to Adam Robinson, in an unintentional gathering/loitering place in a place of employment, as well as here, where you can loiter, too, if you'd like. No one will stop you.

That's right, entitled.

2009-01-08T07:28:00.002-05:00

Okay, it's time to get back at this. Things have been slow here, busy, blah blah blah . . . I feel out of the loop, as it were. But I've been around, looking, just not saying.

The latest installment of Apostrophe Cast features a reading from Sam Lipsyte to the Corinthians. Okay, no, not the Corinthians, but there are letters from apes to a researcher. As always, Lipsyte gets it done with “Dear Miss Primatologist Lady in the Bushes Sometimes."

Check out Michael Kimball reading from Dear Everybody at AC. There's an interview with Kimball, too.

It appears that it is better to donate your organs to strangers than to someone close to you like, say, your spouse. You know, just in case things don't work out.

So much stuff going on I don't have time to mention/link to it all. One piece at a time, Johnny Cash style.

Michael Kimball at Apostrophe Cast

2008-12-10T22:47:00.000-05:00

I'm behind on this, but you can hear Michael Kimball reading from Dear Everybody in the latest installment of Apostrophe Cast. Of course, Dear Everybody is an amazing novel that I was fortunate enough to be able to read way before it was released here in the States. Here is my review of DE. And I had the pleasure of being able to interview Kimball and get to know him through emails. In October, I got to hear/see him read at Michigan State University when he came home in support of the novel (similar to the Apostrophe Cast reading, except it was about a 50 minute marathon read), and I had a great time hanging out with Michael and his family after the reading. The MSU reading is archived online as part of The Michigan Writers Series (my friend Jeff Vande Zande participated in the series in 2005).

A reading by Sam Lipsyte is up next at Apostrophe Cast on December 17.

I read an older short story of mine, "Work Release", for Apostrophe Cast in October.

I don't know why I'm such a narcissist and have to keep mentioning myself.

But, seriously, Michael Kimball rocks the house. Listen. Read.

Read the Marquee

2008-12-04T00:09:00.000-05:00

Read "The Solar Anus" by Georges Bataille

Moby Dick

Read "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges

Finnegans Wake

Read The Tapeworm Foundry by Darrin Wershler-Henry

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams

The Communist Manifesto

Read

2008-12-03T15:48:00.002-05:00

In case you somehow don't read HTMLGIANT:

Dalkey Archive has a massive sale going on right now. This deal is too good to pass up. Here's the thing.

Also, Pushcart nominations are coming out. Check your local listings to see if you or your compatriots have been blessed with this fine line for the CV. Congratulations to all the nominees, and good luck.

He has been stricken with a bizarre malady. He has become incapable of reaching his thoughts; he has retained all his lucidity, but no matter what thought occurs to him, he can no longer give it external form, that is, translate it into appropriate gestures and words.

The necessary words desert him, they no longer answer his summons, he is reduced to watching a procession of images without very much connection from one to the next.

Artaud

2008-12-01T00:11:00.000-05:00

My apologies for the nearly-dead blog for the past few months. Thank you to everyone who still checks now and again.

I have not 'thrown in the towel early' as the old adage went/goes. I've been writing in the spare moments I have when not working full time, warming bottles, changing diapers, and generally having an amazing experience being a dad. I seriously never expected how great this would be.

The thing (not sure yet whether it's a series of flash fictions, a short story, a novella, or maybe even a novel) I've been working on and rambling vaguely/annoyingly about in emails to people has me on the edge of excited and anxious with plenty of moments of disgust. It's a schizophrenic thing that is warping and growing nodules and transforming all the time. I have a feeling I'm aiming at and I'm trying to follow my intuition about things, and I think it's going well so far. But that feeling changes by the hour. It keeps growing.

I am behind on my book reviews and emails, but they are a comin'.

I have also been by far the most useless contributor at the illustrious HTMLGIANT, which I will work hard(ly?) to change.

Anyway, lots of stuff is happening elsewhere as always.

I meant to post about this when it came out a week or two ago (time and memory are also shattered for me lately), but Ryan and Christy Call's art/text collaboration entitled Pocket Finger has been released by Publishing Genius. I first saw some of the image/texts on Ryan's blog awhile ago and was blown away by how well the two complemented each other. I love the last drawing where the person is in pieces in the tool shed. Excellent work Ryan and Christy, and Adam Robinson, the Publishing Genius. Check out the interview with Ryan and Christy about PF.

HTMLGIANT has become a big deal in the indie lit world (and beyond?). The aforementioned Ryan Call has put together the first annual HTMLGIANT Secret Santa gift exchange. There's still time to sign up and give the gift of independent literature. This is a fun idea. Good work again, Ryan.

I wonder if maybe another similar kind of thing could be set up where people buy copies of lit mags, chaps and full length books by indie presses and get them into the hands of people who are not necessarily writers. You know, like a variation on Baltimore/Nashville is Reads, to get indie lit out beyond this big loving writer's circle? Indie lit into the hands and before the eyes of the 'general reading public' by leaving lit mags in doctor's offices, sneaking Shane Jones's novel LIGHT BOXES (available for pre-order now from Publishing Genius) onto the public or university library shelves, seeding the shelves at Barnes and Noble and Borders and etc with Blake Butler's novella EVER (forthcoming from Calamari Press, also available for pre-order now). Just an idea. I know lots of other people have had it already, but still.

Seriously, Shane Jones's LIGHT BOXES and Blake Butler's EVER. Can't wait. Blake says he's giving away extra free stuff with pre-ordered copies. There's no telling what you'll get. Maybe a set of chocolate covered eyelashes or a miniature paper door that will release the laughter of small children from inside your couch. Plus, Blake's novel in stories, SCORCH ATLAS, will be published by Featherproof Books on 09/09/09. Git it. Congrats to Blake for the cluster years of success. Couldn't happen to a nicer or more deserving guy.

CM Evans is running his all time favorite cartoons. I've enjoyed CM's cartoons for a few years now. This past spring he was invited by Dave Eggers to show his work in an art exhibit at Apexart in New York City along with the work of artists like Leonard Cohen, Henry Darger, Marcel Duchamp, Kenneth Koch, David Mamet, David Shrigley, Art Spiegelman, Ralph Steadman, Kurt Vonnegut, and more.

Also, Christopher Higgs, who I would like to spend at least twelve years talking to about everything, has a new piece in Abjective entitled "A Mash-Up of Caribou and Faulkner" and it is a language bomb of beats and rhythms that weaves its own potent web of movement. Chris also has a novel entitled Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously forthcoming from Publishing Genius. PG is quickly building a staggering catalog of chapbooks and full length work. I am very anxious to get my eyes on this novel. Higgs's brain is an iceberg, a spiderweb, a byzantine schizophrenic interconnected supercomputer. I am reading Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus right now and will move on to A Thousand Plateaus, and I am going to ask Chris Higgs to lecture me at his leisure. And if you want to know anything avant-garde, see Christopher Higgs.

Johannes Göransson and Joyelle McSweeney on "Soft Surrealism"

The Guardian did a piece on Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard). Kimball is still getting rave reviews for Dear Everybody. No surprise here.

I know, I missed a ton of stuff.

2008-11-14T10:41:00.008-05:00

The end of politics.

Politics tries to create a space where life can be lived.

That space never opens.

No more politics on this blog.

Things are happening

Reinvention: Keanu Reeves

2008-11-05T12:31:00.002-05:00

Very nice, but that bring-it-on beckon isn’t the whole of Kung Fu. Take a seat and we’ll get started.

Why are you eyeing my spoon like that? If it turns up missing, I’m going to be pissed. It’s pure platinum, not to mention my favorite spoon. Stir my tea with it, see?

I know you were trying to bend it. Now, please, sit.

Damn it, I’ll take both pills if it makes you sit down and stop moving. In fact, give me all your pills. Empty your pockets. The office staff loves pills. You’ll be a big hit. Come on.

That all? Good. Now let’s play a game. You sit down and pretend I’m someone who can be nice and save your career.

That’s excellent. You’re very good at games. Now let’s see if we can apply that to your acting.

As always, let’s start with a positive. You’re a very consistent actor. Whether it’s action, romance, comedy, sci-fi, you’re the same in every movie. We hate to ruin that for you, but we must.

Thing is, the Bill and Ted movies are done. Speed, too. We’ve seen them. Some people even liked them. However, it’s time to stretch for something new. You are the only one who can save us from any more still-born dialogue.

This is where we can make it a game.

Okay, now try it. Strike up a conversation with that chair next to you.

Go ahead. Improvise. Just regular old human conversation. Like people do.

Well, I suppose there is a certain complexity to the chair. So let’s get a feel for the emotion the chair emits. What kind of vibes are you getting?

Right, good, and now you try to one-up it, take the emotion to the next level. It’s a game, remember?

Yeah, sure, that was okay, I guess. Next time maybe a little more inflection. This is where tone of voice goes up or down, sometimes both in the same line. It gives the illusion of emotion. Go home and work on that.

Any old chair will do. Or a lamp, that might work. Feel free to mix it up. Don't be afraid to try new things.

Right. As far as work goes, something will come up, I’m sure. We’ll call you.

And something else that might help, Mr. Reeves—don’t rehearse lines with Stephen Hawking anymore. The voice synthesizer is fun, but it’s not doing you any good.

first published at Opium.com, November 4, 2005

2008-11-05T00:06:00.004-05:00

The coin has flipped. And it is still the same coin.

2008-11-02T14:21:00.002-05:00

For the record: renaming yourself [First Name] Hussein [Last Name] on Facebook is now boring and unclever.

2008-11-01T14:22:00.001-04:00

a convenient fiction

Work Release at Apostrophe Cast

2008-10-23T10:59:00.005-04:00

Yeah, I'm still here.

You can hear me read my short story "Work Release" at Apostrophe Cast. Work Release was originally published by Thieves Jargon in 2005. Next week's reader at Apostrophe Cast is Ben Tanzer, whose poetry has also been in TJ, and whose book Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine is available from Orange Alert Press, like, right now. Randall Brown read one of his flash fictions for AC recently as well. Readings by Sheila Heti, Celeste Ng, Richard Siken, and many more can be found in the archives.

Here I answer some questions in an interview, where you can learn some things about me that you did not know before.

Thanks to John Dermot Woods for his help and for putting this together. He also took my fiction that appeared in the latest issue of Action, Yes. Check out John's work in the first issue of No Colony while you're looking into things.

Spending Time with Dad While Waiting for the Apocalypse on CNN

2008-10-20T23:24:00.000-04:00

Dad’s head is on the coffee table. All of us kids are sitting around, keeping him company while he adjusts to his new Medusa docking station. We’re all getting used to this, really.

While we watch TV, he spends most of the day asking Stacey to take him to work or complaining about phantom aches and pains. Then the breaker blows and he loses power. His eyes close and we pause for a moment to admire our dad, our father, noting the iconic dignity of a Che or a Nietzsche as seen on our t-shirts: an immortal, postmodern quality. Then, smirking, Avery says he looks more like Lenin with that bullet-clean scalp—those wrinkles on his forehead are for the revolution, not the people.

Our eyes roll and we find that someone has pulled the plug. Avery says he didn’t do it. Yeah right, we say, you’re the only one always saying you wish he would have died.

He says: Actually, I’d prefer to let his whole generation go. Don’t get me wrong, the docking gadget is really cool, and it’s comforting that dad’s body parts are right up in the attic, nicely vacuum-sealed in case we want to get nostalgic, but the whole living forever business, though it looks fun and all, it’s not doing anyone any good. If the Baby Boomers really care, they’ll move on so we can too. Then Avery turns to dad’s head and tells him, Just say the word, pops, and I’ll set us all free from this nightmare.

Stacey squeaks. She’s crying and glaring at Avery. We’re lucky to get this last little bit with him. It’s called making up for lost time, you asshole.

It’s a little late now, Avery snorts. He had a choice just like everyone else. And he chose to spend every moment of his life at work, Stacey, remember? He chose work and not you. Does it sound like he wants to be here when he’s always begging you to take him to the shop?

We gang up and explain that dad wants to go to the shop because it’s all he knows. He’ll get used to this. Give him some time. Besides, look around at all the nice things we have. Things we wouldn’t have if he hadn’t cared enough to spend his life at work. True, we shouldn’t have had him docked without his consent, but it’s better this way. Really.

Avery tells us where to put our nice things, and asks how many hours of dad’s life are packed in the closets and sealed in Tupperware.

How can you say no to a second chance like this?

Fine, he says, I’d like to trade in 10 or 12 of those video game systems rotting in the basement for a fishing trip, or maybe a game of catch. Fuck it, let’s rob a bank for all I care. He pounds the coffee table and sits down.

Dad’s head is still rebooting, so he misses all this. His eyes open and he asks Stacey to take him to work. Her eyes grow glossy again and she bites her lip, looking between us and him.

No, dad, you’re not going to work, Avery says. Your job at the plant still requires a body and you haven’t got one. That’s how you ruined it in the first place, remember? So, no. Just watch TV with us, your loving children.

We actually agree with Avery and encourage dad to watch TV with us. Besides, we say, consumption is the new labor, and you’ve instilled us with a great work ethic, dad. When we watch the new Tom Cruise movie, it’s just like working. We don’t always want to, but we do it anyway, just like you did. Watching TV is good for the economy.

Fine, he says, then turn me so I can see.

Stacey cranks him in fine adjustment toward the TV wall.

And now the TV doesn’t work. We troubleshoot by aiming the remote control at different angles, beating it against our palm like a pack of cigarettes. When we get up to inspect the cable connection, we see that the TV is unplugged. Avery gets the evil eye while we plug it back in, making sure he doesn’t cut dad’s juice again.

Whatever, you guys. We’ve got a choice, Medusa or TV. You know the circuit can’t handle both. He settles into the couch with a scowl.

Stop being an idiot, we say. We’re trying to make dad feel more comfortable, more at-home, so we turn on the Revisionist History Channel. Another documentary is about to start. The RHC voice recites the slogan: “History of the Boomers, by the Boomers, and for the Boomers.” Avery joins on queue, “Who shall not perish from the Earth,” changing ‘shall’ to ‘will’. The next three hours of programming look like this:

1 pm The New Greatest Generation
2 pm Death is the New Twenty
3 pm Baby Boomers: The Hub of Human History

More mockery from Avery, but no one pays attention to him. Instead, we watch grainy protest footage and shots of topless women with pointy breasts flailing about during outdoor concerts.

Avery says this is bullshit. Dad died a little to pay for that video camera in the closet, so let’s go out and make some footage of our own. If we really wanted to honor him, we would use it.

Shut up, Avery, they’re talking about the Cultural Revolution. If you’d listen once, maybe you’d recognize progress staring you in the face and be a little more thankful instead of whining about everything.

Still, we toss around the idea of reenacting a march or a protest. But then there’s the issue of looking after dad, so we scrap that.

Reenactment? What about doing something of our own? Don’t we have anything to say?

There’s nothing left to say that’s new, Avery, haven’t you been listening?

Whatever. Solomon declared the end of the new like 5,000 years ago. Clever way of demanding the last word.

It’s just easier to ignore him, so we do. Halfway through the summary of vast social upheaval, dad sniffles and the lights go out. His eyes are closed. His cheeks glisten with sunlight from the window.

At first he liked watching footage from his youth, but lately it just makes him cry. His streaking tears short out the docking station, which of course trips the hyper-sensitive breaker, leaving us in the dark with no TV and no dad. It’s Stacey’s job to dry dad’s tears when we watch this stuff. But she was moved by the documentary, too, and forgot about him. We’re always afraid that this time will be the last.

After we admire his silhouette, she cleans him up. Everyone is quiet while we find flashlights to go downstairs and restore power. The air is thick with the same feeling we had at the hospital when the doctor told us we had lost our dad.

Meanwhile, Avery stands up and looks at dad’s inanimate head on the coffee table. He sighs and says, You know, it did seem like a good idea at the time.

first published in Rivet Magazine, The Power Issue, July 2007

Name Drop 2.2 [bereft of the burden

2008-10-10T15:52:00.001-04:00

"I don't know -- there were more, but I don't remember all of their names, or what order they came in." --Michael Kimball, Dear Everybody

"It's such a small thing to remember someone's name." --J.D. Riso

"One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name." First line of a forwarded email from my mother.

"Listen--is there anything more useful as a means of control than names? Names aren't hopes--they're commands. Don't you see the danger in your calling it? In your giving names?" --Peter Orner

"But I passed away along with my name nearly two decades ago." --Mia Cuoto

"47. Dear god, make this list reflect the names of prayers I couldn’t fit. Include the prayers that have no name." --Blake Butler, List Prayer

"CLICK ON THESE NAMES AND FEEL SOMETHING" --Prathna Lor

"The most powerful person is he who is able to do least himself and burden others most with the things for which he lends his name and pockets the credit." --Theodor Adorno

"I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now." --Ann Beattie

"It's not name dropping . . ." --Jeffrey Bernard

" . . . her dead father, after whom the baby is named . . ." --copywriter for back cover of Hélène Cixous's book The Day I Wasn't There

"Her names were Beatrice, Margaret and Jane. Margaret was the feisty one." --Richard Froude, The Margaret Thatcher Trilogy

"There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name . . ." --Beck

"Far from calling things up and bringing them to us, names seem to alienate us from things by negating their singularity. Names only repeat the incurable fracture, the laceration, the death that separates us from the world. Indeed, could they be the cause of death itself?" --Stefano Franchi

"He won't get far. He's got no mummy, he's got no names, he's got nothing. What happens to a bum like that, a nameless, mummyless asshole? Why, demons will swarm all over him at the first check point. He will be dismembered and thrown into a flaming pit, where his soul will be utterly consumed and destroyed forever. While others, with sound mummies and the right names to drop in the right places, sail through to the Western Lands." --William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

". . . a name . . . itself is always already a homage to the namelessness or anonymity that makes all names both necessary and unnecessary, possible and impossible as such." --Leslie Hill, ""An outstretched hand . . ." From Fragment to Fragmentary", p. 2

"All the characters in this tale are given [OF COURSE] false names.

"All places have their true names but could [INDEED] be given other names." --Raymond Federman, Take It or Leave It

"Can he smell that new name they give him? Can he smell bad luck?" -- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

". . . she claimed not to know any names." -- Brian Evenson, "The Sanza Affair", Altmann's Tongue

"That the name also expresses one speaker's phonic fantasies is made apparent by another coined word . . . in which the same phonemes are obsessionally disseminated." --Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy of Nonsense

". . . it was perhaps not entirely frivolous to consider the question of naming with some care." --Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Television

for godot: Issue 1

2008-10-04T23:48:00.007-04:00

The name drop of name drops. 3,785 page PDF of something of nothing. People have cartoon shiver lines at their temples.

UPDATE: check out the comment thread on Silliman's blog; for the predictably binary reactions, but also the discussions of the notion of "name". Interesting.

HTMLGIANT

2008-10-03T17:53:00.002-04:00

New things are being born and spanked.

HTMLGIANT