Jesse Ball has retired to the country
Author websites that are not blogs are often a much maligned thing: people get these things built and don’t know a lot about html or don’t really know what to do with their page other than update when they get a new thing in a magazine. For the most part the author website is a consistently boring venture.
Jesse Ball, on the other hand, seems to always be a little bit further out there. Jesse’s website, affectionately titled ‘Jesse Ball was a SPY, but has retired to the country,’ is cryptically arranged and full of all kinds of weird literary and visual projects, which seem to span the long hidden career of the author of SAMEDI THE DEAFNESS, among other things.
You could probably spend quite a while clicking around amongst the layerings here, as depending on how you approach different pages of the site, the offerings seem to vary. Among the more interesting things, outside the weird artworks and art projects, are the nested series of all of Ball’s past manuscripts, which he has kept compiled and archived here, with various amounts available to be read by the willing web traveler. The negotiation of the site itself seems to change sporadically also: depending on when you arrive, you may find all sorts of other things. For instance, when I arrived just now to cull more examples of things to talk about, I got caught in a picture loop promoting Ball’s new forthcoming book.
So let’s say this: Ball’s new novel, THE WAY THROUGH DOORS, is coming out in early 2009 from Vintage, which I for one am quite excited about.
DANIEL BAILEY CONTINUES TO RULE AND BE A TOTALLY HOT DUDE
yesterday i looked at daniel bailey’s blog. you may know daniel bailey as the most up and coming internet poet/totally hot dude on the web. on his blog he said he had finished a collection of poems. so i was like, “prove it man”. he then sent me the collection. it is called EAST CENTRAL INDIANA. i read it. it fucking rules. it rules like when you do a really good job coloring a page in a coloring book. it rules like when you think there is no more pudding in your fridge and then you move aside an old thing of jelly and there is another pudding cup. it rules like when you find a nest of baby birds and the mom isn’t there and you push a fast food straw into each of the baby bird’s skulls and blow air into their skulls until they expand and burst. here is a quote from EAST CENTRAL INDIANA:
“you looked
at the boney gravel as you said it and then you laid down
and made a bone angel and said, ‘it’s finally starting
to feel like winter is over.’ i said, ‘yeah’
and then i looked up at the sky and it wasn’t there“
Contests
Here’s a useful link to folks who don’t think they pay enough entry fees:
Go out there and win some contests, people. And remember to thank <htmlgiant> when you do.
The Art of…
I guess I could preface this recommendation with a short essay on whether or not a person can learn to be a writer. I guess I could.
I won’t, though. Not now. Not in the mood.
I don’t, though, have a lot of interest in books on how to write. Not usually. Not many. Gardner’s book, sure. Some of Kundera’s essays. Some of Nabokov’s lectures. Borges’. Barthelme’s. Calvino’s.
And one more: Charles Baxter. Both Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext have been invaluable to me. Not in that his books offer blueprints, or prescriptive advice. Baxter just thinks about his writing, and the writing of others, in really interesting ways. And reading an essay that he has written about one aspect of, say, Chekhov’s writing, invariably does the triple duty of not simply making you see an element in Chekhov’s writing in a new way, or getting you to find similar tactics in the writing of others, but his work rearranges the way you read, rearranges your brain, and you start finding new and interesting things that have nothing to do with Baxter’s essays whenever you read.
That’s what I’ve noticed, anyway.
He’s editing a series called The Art of…for Graywolf Press. His book is pretty damn good.
Hobart Oct ’08
Those always massive kids over at Hobart have once again proven their ability to stay on target despite supposed ‘slacker’ status. In addition to the brand new Games issue, which just came out and made me renew my subscription (which also has a series of deleted scenes style stuff on the web for your perusal, if you haven’t already, here), they continue in their monthly reams of goodness today for October with a new update featuring work by Tai Dong Huai, Ed Meek, Jill Widner, and Glen Pourciau, as well as an interview by the always ferocious Matt Simmons with Leni Zumas, which by the second paragraph had me wanting to buy her book.
Their other web feature, the always fun likes/dislikes section, well, I gotta disagree with this month’s dislikes. What’s wrong with BURN AFTER READING? And who doesn’t like watching a couple break up in public?
I am excited, though, about the new Hobart minibook forthcoming, Mary Miller’s BIG WORLD. Not mini at all.
Checking In On Jason Bredle
Pain Fantasy by Jason Bredle is one of the most enjoyable books of poetry I’ve read this year. Strange, funny, dark, heartbreaking, mixing in sports and wordplay (yes, sports), there was a lot to like about this collection. Bredle has also been hitting the online journals – most recently three solid pieces in the latest issue of No Posit.
Some writers you just want to know what they are working on. At least I have a list in my head like this. I emailed Jason Bredle and asked him to talk a little about what he’s working on. What follows is the response I got:
Basically I decided to divide up all my poems from the past two years and make two chapbooks out of them, but I haven’t even made the chapbooks, and I don’t know how to get them published even if I do make them. I’m thinking maybe instead I’ll let them fall in love with each other and make a baby. I don’t think this is really newsworthy, though. I thought I was going to finish a manuscript in June and I put all this time into revising and reordering poems and then I went to LA and decided while I was there that I was going to scrap the whole thing, so I came home and rewrote a lot of things all over again. Did you ever see Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story? It’s very much like the part where John C. Reilly is doing all this acid and working on the same song for six months. I didn’t love that movie as much as I’d hoped I would, but it was worth seeing just for that scene. I’ve only written two poems in the past three months. One I wrote a week before I was hospitalized, and then I was sick for a little while, and then I wrote another, and then I started working a lot of extra hours and haven’t had time to sit down and write, or when I do I go back to this poem called Caspian Sea, which is essentially a blank page I spend hours looking at with Caspian Sea written at the top.
I also asked who he was reading, what writers he likes:
Mark Halliday has a new book out, which I’m reading. He’s my favorite poet. I was going to try to find this one particular poem of his on the internet and send it to a friend of mine so if I can find it I’ll also send it to you. Okay, I just looked around and I couldn’t find it, but it doesn’t help that I don’t really remember the title.
For those who haven’t read Jason Bredle, I suggest doing a google search and picking up his books.
Improbable Object
From Matthew Kirkpatrick, that guy who works for FC2 and, last I checked, coedits Barrelhouse, comes a new online journal: Improbable Object. In the first issue there is work by Blake Butler, Justin Taylor, Davis Schneiderman, and art by Bill Dunlap: Blake Butler wants to sell his face on Ebay, Justin Taylor writes “the truth about cemeteries is they only / exist because we all keep clapping,” and Davis Schneiderman takes us to the Island of Lost Souls and the Island of Blessed Sheep.
Good things happen.
I enjoyed the contents of this issue. I read each piece several times after drinking two glasses of scotch and three glasses of wine. It was a good experience overall. Matthew Kirkpatrick is doing something very interesting, and I want to watch him keep doing it. As I read Improbable Object, I thought of other online journals. DIAGRAM came to mind. So did Lamination Colony.
Improbable Object is a very clean-looking online journal, and one, I suspect, that needs more submissions. So if you’ve got awesome stuff lying around, send away; the submission guidelines suggest that you “submit something short” if you’d like your work to be considered.
I recommend this journal to everyone, sober and drunk.
Starcherone Books Open Subs
For the next 10 days (until Oct 15), Starcherone Books has opened their gates for open submission of queries regarding book length works. With fantastic releases in the past year from Johannes Goransson, Joshua Cohen, Zachary Mason, and more, this is a great opportunity for those who are looking to send out their innovative fiction manuscripts.
In addition to the open subs, they’ve also announced their yearly book competition, which should answer the question in many mouths, that being: What’s up with Ben Marcus? as he’s been announced the final judge for the competition. Booyah.
Here’s specific words:
Effective immediately, Starcherone Books will be accepting manuscripts under the following guidelines:
1. Writers may query until October 15, 2008, at starcherone@gmail.com. Please tell us about your book project and about your writing accomplishments to date. DO NOT SEND YOUR MANUSCRIPT; UNLESS WE HAVE ASKED FOR IT, IT WILL BE RETURNED.
2. We will be resuming our manuscript contest this winter, with Ben Marcus as our 2009 Final Judge. See our CONTEST PAGE. Our contest will serve as the preferred method for writers who have not established a track record through prior awards and/or publications to have their manuscripts considered by Starcherone Books. This contest is designed to discover new writing talent, and has been the method by which we have discovered six writers (five winners and a published runner-up) since 2004.
Brandi Wells is a dream person
There’s a new issue of THE DREAM PEOPLE now live, I like the Dream People, it is a surrealist/absurdist journal that’s been kicking for quite some time now, run by the good man D. Harlan Wilson. It seems there aren’t enough surreal-related venues out there by far and often when places claim surrealism they mean ‘goofy,’ but The Dream People seems to be on point with the view, and at the very least is a great read, all -isms aside.
I particularly enjoyed in this issue, Brandi Wells’s BABY. Brandi Wells has been doing a lot of interesting work lately, publishing weird, tight and image-ripping short things all around, I really like what she’s got her hands in. She also seems to be able to write about ridiculous things in a way that makes them seem sensible, which is harder than making sensible things ridiculous.
Lines like this: “She followed me to the bathroom and watched me piss, told me I wasn’t pissing right and I ought to piss better if I was going to be a mother.”
I want a Brandi Wells novel.
Farewell RIVET
Yes, it’s over. RIVET, one of the super slick Seattle indie magazines, is publishing its last issue. The good news is that they’re not folding, but editor Leah Baltus and company feel that it’s time to move on.
I’m sad to see RIVET’s run ending, as it was the first real print magazine to publish my fiction, but I also know that it’s for the best when it’s time to move on with other projects. With the financial support of The Shunpike, the staff at RIVET was able to fully use their talent to produce a fine magazine. Here’s what Leah had to say on RIVET’s blog:
Yes, friends, it’s true. After seven amazing years and 21 issues of RIVET, the RIVET gang is moving on to new adventures. We cannot begin to express the full magnitude of this experience nor the gratitude we feel toward the many hundreds people who have contributed work, time, energy and money to this project over the years. Together, we have defied the odds of publishing and connected thousands of readers with new work and new ideas from writers, artists and designers of all kinds.
It has been a tremendous privilege to make this magazine and we are proud of the work we’re leaving behind on your bookshelves.
Thank you, Leah. Best wishes.
Uncategorized / 4 Comments
October 5th, 2008 / 1:39 pm
October 5th, 2008 / 1:39 pm