Keith Montesano is the author of the newly released and stunningly black and bracing Ghost Lights, his debut from Dream Horse Press. At his First Book Interviews blog, he conducts a series of interviews with writers upon the publication of their first book, detailing the experience and the feeling of the completion of a first work, and I asked him to do the same with his own questions.

How often had you sent out Ghost Lights before it was selected for publication by Dream Horse Press?

I sent the book out 60 times before I received an email from J.P. Dancing Bear telling me that I was a finalist for the Orphic Prize and that the press was able to publish the finalists that year.

Was the title always Ghost Lights? Did it go through any other changes?

A good chunk of the book was my MFA thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University, when it was called About Ravishment. I remember sitting with some friends at a bar near VCU, and when I told them the title of the manuscript I was sending out, which they knew was the title of my thesis, I got some weird looks. I was asked if other titles were kicking around, and I told them I’d been thinking about Ghost Lights. Then I got the looks that said, “I think you found your title.”

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Did you read these two pieces at the Poetry Foundation about the prize-winning poet whose prize-winning poems about Hurricane Katrina were mostly stolen verbatim from narratives by the non-prize-winning people who actually suffered through the storm and its aftermath? The first piece is by Abe Louise Young, proprietor of Alive in Truth, the site from which the narratives were taken. The second piece is by Raymond McDaniel, the poet who made use of them, and in it he discusses his process of composing the book and attempts to contextualize and justify said use. Both pieces are interesting, though I think that McDaniel’s is most notable for its defensive tone and refusal to deal directly with the concerns raised about his work. I’d be interested to hear what people think about this, though I want to offer the following caveat: anyone who types the words “Kathy Acker” or “David Shields” in re this is a fucking asshole. There I said it.

Another good piece on the late lamented Frank Kermode- “The Literary Critic as Humanist” at Slate.

There’s a new William Deresiewicz piece at The Nation. It’s about Javier Marias.

Franz Nicolay and Peter Bognanni talking to each other. That’s good.

Tao talks dirty at Thought Catalog. “I remember focusing on doing things with my fingers in a manner I felt would be conducive to her orgasming.” Me too, ‘bro.’

David Backer on Shane Jones: It made me write this in the margin on page 26: “it’s as if we can occupy a fantasy world of two-dimensional humanity hoping that truth will come to us. we sit and read literature like this as if we’re eunuchs in some feudal court, prancing around with velvet clothes and bells attached to our shoes trying out-somersault one another while beyond the windowless walls of the castle billions of people live dynamic and variegated lives, in many cases suffering at our expense.”

Paste magazine has suspended print subscription (read=folded) but their website seems to still exist, and may continue to exist. Fingers crossed.

Oh and hey, did you hear the one about the lunatic who took people hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters? Well, he’s dead now, but his website lives on. Apparently his main demand is for “daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.” Wow. Anything that starts with Daniel Quinn is going to end poorly; just saying. Read the rest savetheplanetprotest.com.

This Saturday at 10am EASTERN we’re going to try a Re-Do of the Mairéad Byrne Live Giants Reading. Drink coffee. Present at the reading, all in the same Rhode Island house (so no speakerphone), will be Mairéad, Stephanie Barber (cover designer) and me (publisher). We’ll read from the book and discuss our roles as author, designer, publisher. RSVP on the Facebook event thing. And the new New Pages is out with a review of Mairéad’s book by Gina Myers.

While we’re on the Harmony Korine again, there is a new short film called Act Da Fool by him on the Proenza Schoulder site. It is retarded gorgeous. In a related Q&A on the site he refers to it as his version of The Ten Commandments. [Thanks to Mike Kitchell for the point.]

Hey, let’s just do this once, okay? This picture was emailed to me by the journalist and photographer Alberto Riva, a man I’ve never met.  It came with this note- “Hi Justin – I just read your book on a beach in Corsica, and I thought you might like to see a photo.” You thought right, Alberto, and thanks! Alberto’s got a website, and there’s some great stuff on there, including these images of New York, and a talk about photography with Lou Reed.

Matthew Simmons invited me to talk Apocalypse for Hobart. Our conversation is now live (and has been for a while, but I’ve been lazy/away).

I wrote an essay for the “Selling Shorts” series at Beatrice.com on “The Crazy Thought” by David Gates.

I gave this reading list to InDigest magazine.

I participated in a series called “The Great American Novel: An Honor Roll of Fallen Genres.” This is is in the new issue of Canteen (#6) which is available now or very soon. My response is not online, though Tao Lin’s is. Speaking of which, keep an eye peeled for the September Bookforum, which will feature a review of Lin’s latest by local favorite Joshua Cohen. Worlds collide! I’ve got a piece on Matthew Sharpe’s You Were Wrong in the same issue.

And last but not least, all of Brooklyn hails the return of Drew Toal, former Time Out (New York) books guy, erstwhile contributor to this blog, once and future roommate of yours truly–all his shit is in the living room and he is nowhere to be found. Now I am going to go and drink his beer. (UPDATE: That turned out to not be Drew’s beer.) Welcome home!

And to everyone else, thanks for bearing with. We won’t be doing this again anytime soon.

Sorry to be picking on my hometown blog commenters here, but seriously, does no one understand meter?

I mean, I know I’m just a fiction writer and all, but I at least sort of get it. I think. Maybe I shouldn’t let this get to me, but we’re only talking about a couple of syllables here. And it’s not like the limerick is a sestina or something. It’s really not that complicated.

There once was a man with a stein,
Who thought Coors Light was just fine,
‘Till his friend said “fuck it,
just drink out of the Honey Bucket
you’ll think that shit is wine.”
Posted by Skip on August 25, 2010 at 11:29 am

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1. Also officially out today, the amazing The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich, which truly lives up to its hype: it’s enormous and insane + magic. Full review forthcoming.

2. @ Not Coming, a 3 part review of the Back to the Future series. (1) (2) (3)

3. @ the Guardian, Harmony Korine has a list of things he knows, including: “When I hear the song “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” by Three 6 Mafia, it’s like listening to the gospels…” & “I didn’t really research anything for my film Trash Humpers, I just did it – just lived like a homeless person and it was great.”

Today marks the release of a book I’ve been waiting for itchingly for a good long while now: Lindsay Hunter’s could-not-be-better-titled collection Daddy’s, new from Featherproof. If you’ve ever seen Lindsay read live, you already are probably pressing buy: she slams heads. The book is shaped like a tackle box and guaranteed to be stuffed full of more freak than you might be able to handle in one read. She kind of makes Harry Crews and Angela Carter look like Jerry Seinfeld.

“In Daddy’s, babies mean blood, and nipples are like “lit match heads.” Lindsay Hunter transgresses where others fear to tread.” —Terese Svoboda, author of Pirate Talk or Mermalade

“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation

“Lindsay Hunter won’t be caught lie-telling in the name of nice. The miniature stories in Daddy’s are fierce and unapologetic. When the We’s she voices say the axblade was bloody with dirt, what they mean is the neighbor’s swingset creaked and moaned next door and we heard a child’s voice say Never ever. When I’m looking again for my next undoing, I’ll crack open Daddy’s, and get the true news they tell us we’d be better off not hearing.”—Kyle Minor, author of In the Devil’s Territory

For a taste, here’s one of the stories from the book, about a messed up baby: That One.

Get a further peek inside and place your order here.

Folks at Google are probably not giving us a hint with “ex pat,” short for expatriate, but I wish they were. Yes, the example provided is of Pat, or Patrick, who, like most of us, want to venture off east- or west-ward over seas to more exotic places — as critique of America, or simply for better food — but simply stayed, for a mortgage, career, relationship, or other thing one is supposed to have. The big bros Google and Facebook know your IP location at all times, and should those vectors point to your office, living room, or bedroom, then let’s say it’s not your fault, but the fault of this internet who re-wired us into thinking that 4 hrs offline is some venture into dark mysterious non-connected places. A text that isn’t answered in 5 minutes is symbolic dust in the shape of a middle finger. True, the expatriate wouldn’t be so free were it not for ongoing travel logistics one attends to over email, but the inadvertent “ex pat” username is a good reminder of the tethers to which we are bound by carpal tunnelled wrists. I went canoeing yesterday with co-workers who were freaking out because they hadn’t checked their email in over 4 hours; some of us flipped, our cell phones and wallets floating down stream in neurotically sealed zip-lock bags. We came across a deer carcass who, from the degree of its decomposition, hadn’t checked its email in like 14 days. Holy shit, the river went.

This just in: Fairy Tale Review Press books are now available at Weightless Books for a staggering $2.99 a pop. You’d be silly not to get one. You could get the venerable Johannes Goransson’s Pilot or the stunning Ashley McWater’s Whitework, or heck, since I’m cravenly self-promoting, that’s what the tag below says, you could even get my book.

And wait! There’s more! Next week, all issues of Fairy Tale Review will be there, just one little click away from your satisfaction.

More incredible work at Kier’s blog.

In an attic in Riverwest, a Milwaukee neighborhood that is my favorite neighborhood anywhere, brothers John and Joe Riepenhoff founded the Green Gallery. At its start, the gallery was a regular-sized room where they showcased their friends’ work. That was around 2001. Now the Green Gallery has expanded to two buildings, and John is active with art happenings across the globe, with Milwaukee International.

Recently the Green Gallery bros have started putting out books, with their recent offerings: Nicholas Frank’s The Sound of the Horn and Paul Druecke and Claire Readig’s The Last Days of John Budgen, Jr. I read Frank’s short novella in one sitting and loved it. At first I wondered if perhaps the tone was overly-formal, or too “Kafka-esque,” but there aren’t any holes in Frank’s serious prose. It’s a good story (about an accident that results in a car horn that won’t shut off) and it has stayed with me. I recommend grabbing one – if you can find a copy. That isn’t easy because the books are meant to accompany art exhibitions and there’s no web presence (remember that?).

Are these the only two books? Are there more in the pipe? READ MORE >

Check out Spine Road –
I like it

here’s Issue One
here’s Issue Two

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I have a new minibook. You can order a copy now. If you want.

There’s some black metal in it. And three short stories.

UPDATE: Can I just point out how awesome my name looks as a black metal band logo?

Ben Marcus Rhett Faber Gabe Durham on Jonathan Safran Foer Franzen the other Mary James Robison:

“The Time I Tried to Defend Jonathan Franzen on the Internet”

In Madness & Civilization, Michel Foucault says:

The novel constitutes the milieu of perversion, par excellence, of all sensibility; it detaches the soul from all that is immediate and natural in feeling and leads it into an imaginary world of sentiments violent in proportion to their unreality, and less controlled by the gentle laws of nature. (219)

If Foucault says this about readers of novels, just think about what it means for writers of novels.