Genre followup, here and at Tin House blog
Christopher Higgs’ post from the other day, “Tin House & Genre Fiction,” has broken 100 comments. One of those comments is from Tonaya Thompson, the author of the Tin House blog post, “To Genre or Not to Genre,” that Higgs was posting about. Thompson has also written a followup post on the Tin House blog, “Genre Redux.”
Anyone who read my original post as saying that we will discount any piece of writing out of hand is willfully misreading it. And I think that’s because my attack on “lazy” writing put a lot of people on the defensive, especially since I equated that with genre writing.
It’s a good piece, and if you’ve been following the thread, you should definitely read this new post. She seems rather generous to me, in terms of treating her detractors with credulity. She’s certainly more conciliatory than I’d ever dream of being, if similarly treated. (Ironically enough I have an obligation to disclose that I am published in the current issue of Tin House: an essay celebrating Needful Things by Stephen King, the very existence of which would seem to put the lie to a whole raft of commenter claims about TH’s–and my–genre-related biases.)
Anyway, for ease of access, after the jump find a copy of Thompson’s comment in the Higgs thread. It’s worth reading the comment before proceeding to the followup post, and you’ll notice that she asks for recommendations of genre writing to read, so feel free to leave those on her blog or on ours. You–or she–could also do much worse, I’d just like to mention, than by reading the Michael Moorcock book pictured above.
Justin Taylor—
Yale University Press is publishing a book about the Danish Mohammed political cartoon controversy from a few years back. But, for fear of violence, this academic study of a dozen political cartoons is being published without the cartoons it is studying. Assholes. But don’t let me get all pissed about this. Here’s Hitch at Slate, pissed enough for all of us.
i like “paradise lost” a whole lot and “paradise regained” a little a lot and i haven’t read “samson agonistes”
this is a picture of john milton. he looks like if you asked him if he wanted to just rent a super nintendo and chill he would nod once and say, "indeed."
for real though, i like milton. there is no manifest point to this article. i just wanted to tell people that yes, i really like milton. i like milton. i also like that he was blind. i don’t mean that i like blindness is general. but it makes me want to be his friend more (he’s dead though). i think he had his daughters write down his poems as he spoke them. i wonder if he was mean to his daughters or nice. if i was one of his daughters and he was mean i would just write down random shit instead of the actual poems. to recap, i enjoy milton. he makes satan seem really lovable. and in “paradise lost” i liked the war in heaven. he was writing slayer song titles centuries in advance. i like milton.
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
August 17th, 2009 / 11:41 pm
August 17th, 2009 / 11:41 pm
On Hating Thomas Pynchon…
Over at New York Magazine, Sam Anderson expresses all my major feelings re Thomas Pynchon, more or less exactly as I feel them. (link via Rumpus.)
I should not, probably, hate Thomas Pynchon. He is an indisputably, uniquely gifted genius who shares artistic DNA with almost all my favorite writers (Joyce, Barthelme, DeLillo, et al). Basic demographics and taste-algorithms suggest, in fact, that I should be a full-fledged Pynchon groupie, the kind of guy who names all his hamsters Slothrop and slaps W.A.S.T.E. stickers on the windows of his local post office. But I can’t help it. My distaste is visceral, involuntary, and preconscious—a spasm of my aesthetic immune system. While I fully appreciate Pynchon in the abstract, as a literary-historical juggernaut—a necessary bridge from, say, Nabokov (with whom he studied at Cornell) to David Foster Wallace—sitting down with one of his actual books makes my eyebrows start to smolder. I find him tedious, shallow, monotonous, flippant, self-satisfied, and screamingly unfunny. I hate his aesthetic from floor to ceiling…
Hey, Blake! How’s Paris?
Hey, Blake! How’s Paris? How’s Dennis Cooper?
spentmostoftoday with him, walking aroundparis, et.
he is simply put, the shit.
idsay more but thiskeyboard blows big ass
Cool. Can I put this up on the Giant?
Suregive t a ring. Thi s keys got wores sincelasttime , fuk
(I’m actually not sure what Blake meant about the keyboard. This is what all my email from Blake looks like. This is pretty much what EVER reads like, too, isn’t it?)
Trickhouse | TSky
The New TSky is the New Trickhouse
Tarpaulin Sky #16
Summer 09:
TrickhouseThe current issue of Tarpaulin Sky is the current issue of Trickhouse; i.e., the current issue of Trickhouse is the current issue of Tarpaulin Sky. Think of it as Trick Sky or Tarp House. Or just don’t worry about all that, and instead proceed directly to the goods:.
Trickhouse Vol. 5 / Tarpaulin Sky #16
Curated by Noah Saterstrom
- texts by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Thalia Field, and Joanna Howard (from Heide Hatry’s Heads and Tales)
- video by Anne Waldman and Lisa Jarnot
- sound by Caroline Bergvall
- correspondence from Lisa Birman
- an experiment conducted by Brandon Shimoda & Lisa Schumaier
- an interview with Gordon Massman, conducted by Ana Božičević, Blake Butler, Elena Georgiou, Amy King, and Selah Saterstrom
- visual art by Josh Friedman
- and guest curator, Verbobala’s “Hex-ologram”
Uncategorized / 4 Comments
August 17th, 2009 / 5:48 pm
August 17th, 2009 / 5:48 pm
Sam Pink—
kari freitag showed me this website. scroll through it. it’s really great. here are three of the pictures i really liked (click on them once to make them full size):
the whole website is filled with them. they are nice to look at and also seem to mean a lot when you think about them.
RILEY MICHAEL PARKER’S CHAPBOOK “BOYS”
is really fun to read. it uses a tonal device that is kind of like a discovery channel show, or something on the nature channel but “boys” are the subject, not animals. the language is usually, “some boys are like this…these boys can be seen…etc.” it’s like a typology of boys. i like the way it moves from funny things to serious observations. here is an example:
“some men hate women and only sleep with them to stop other men from having them.
some men do their best to destroy every relationship they come across.
a lot of these men eventually learn to play the guitar.”
i think another aspect i liked was that, even though it is using language that objectifies the topic, and makes each example so transparent, it also does things to complicate these ideas and then make them clearly about the narrator. the book looks really nice too and it only costs two dollars. email wonderlustzine@yahoo.com
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
August 17th, 2009 / 4:34 pm
August 17th, 2009 / 4:34 pm
Matthew Simmons—
I know our globe-trotting fearless leader will appreciate this link. The most recent Stones Throw record podcast is a mixtape by Madlib celebrating the 10th anniversary of Lootpack’s seminal Soundpieces.
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