Ellis on Wallace
Everybody’s innovator-buddy Bret Easton Ellis, during a q/a in Hackney:
Question: David Foster Wallace – as an American writer, what is your opinion now that he has died?Answer: Is it too soon? It’s too soon right? Well i don’t rate him. The journalism is pedestrian, the stories scattered and full of that Mid-Western faux-sentimentality and Infinite Jest is unreadable. His life story and his battle with depression however is really quite touching…
[via The Howling Fantods]
Frances Bean’s Art + Polish Prison Tattoos
1. Gawker analyzes Nirvana baby Frances Bean’s art (which you can see more of here):
2. Polish prison tattoos preserved in formaldehyde [via 5cense]
“Galco holsters, specializing in gun holsters, including, pistol holsters, western holsters, concealed carry holsters, shoulder holsters”
I feel like I’m wired for clutter. The apartment I grew up in was crammed and overstocked. My bedroom looked like a garage. There was a giant wooden cabinet in the middle of the room—way larger than my bed if you’d set it flat—full of things like paint thinner, power drills, broken toys, empty old tins of Danish cookies and Slim Jim boxes stuffed with expired coupons. This was not my stuff. This was being stored. READ MORE >
What is a Long Poem?
Seems like a strange genre. Is it a genre? How can the term “Long Poem” apply to both Eliot’s Wasteland and Zukofsky’s A, when the former is 434 lines and the latter is over 800 pages? How come everybody’s always yapping about Pound’s Cantos, when they should be yapping about Stanford’s The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You? Does Chelsey Minnis’s Poemland count as a Long Poem? What about Ben Lerner’s Angle of Yaw?
Edgar Allen Poe says: “I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.”
Peter Middleton asks: “What significance does the adjective ‘long’ carry when we talk about the long poem? Is it literal or metaphorical, or a more or less implicit proper name?”
Rachel Blau DuPlessis says: “[W]e could say that the lyric/short poem haunts the long poem even as the long poem surrounds it, trumps it, smashes it, and envelops it. Even when it is made to disappear, or to become untenable, perhaps the ghost of lyric/shortness does variously haunt the long poem.”
Review This
I don’t write reviews. I don’t write reviews because I don’t like writing reviews. Maybe if I got paid to write reviews I would write them and eventually enjoy myself. But in general I’d rather write fan mail or get drunk with my friends and talk about the books I love or the ones that disappointed me. The process of writing a review feels a little like having sex with someone you barely know under the glare of a bare bulb on a hot afternoon in an apartment with no AC after having scarfed a bunch of Mexican food. You know, gross! Embarrassing. READ MORE >
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July 15th, 2010 / 7:17 pm
July 15th, 2010 / 7:17 pm
Big Shoes
Has anyone else been reading Greg Oden’s webpage/blog? (“Greg Oden’s Recent Activity is empty!”) It’s like poetry of the clinically depressed. It’s so honest as to be beautiful.
Well to start, I woke up this morning with an itchy throat and a runny nose.
After media training, I went out to dinner with the little white guy, the really quick one and I think he told me he played soccer all summer.
The second half i went up to the press box because i was getting cold and was tired of standing.
I usually hate it when there is fruit with my meal.
The next night when i woke up i had a puddle of blood where i was sleeping. It was in the spot where my puddle of slobber is usually at.
No one really looks at me as a 19 year old kid, and no one has for a while now.
I never get a chance to just come out and be here to go see the sights and walk around.
Im actually here in Portland right now visiting Nike and on the way here I saw mountains with snow on it, I thought to myself its May.
I sucked worse then anybody who ever played golf, i didnt even have one decent shot.
Its so bad that i watch Cold Case up to 4 in the morning every week night, because it comes on TNT starting at 12 and they play 4 episodes back to back.
When i got back here and i was going to move in i didnt have anything in my room.
I get lost just about everytime I step out my room.
I don’t think I was supposed to do it anyway.
I saw a guy with a Ohio State shirt and I got hype I was like thats amazing someone who loves Ohio State then once i saw 30 more people with the same shirt I was like hold up not all these people like Ohio State, but its ok.
I was quiet most of the time, and when I did talk they told me to speak up.
After that i hung out at home with my dog who i havent seen in over a month.
I can keep going and going but mostly im thankful just to wake up each morning.
Memes Will Be Memes
In this here book, Richard Dawkins coined the term meme.
I heard he doesn’t believe in gawd or something. I dunno,
THE FACEBOOK MOVIE
I actually think this looks great.
This and That
1. If you like zombies, and really, who doesn’t, check out Zombie Summer at xTx’s blog, where you will find zombie tales from many familiar writers.
2. Dark Sky Magazine is holding a chapbook contest. Each entry is only $5 which seems quite reasonable.
3. Necessary Fiction has launched a Writer in Residence program. This month, it is William Walsh who is posting these amazing fictions. Last month, was my month, and you can find writing from Giant contributors like Ryan Call, Amy McDaniel and Ken Baumann among others.
4. Janet Fitch offers Ten Rules for Writers.
5. Brevity Magazine asks if they should charge for submissions.
6. Our Island of Epidemics by Matthew Salesses is available for pre-order with gorgeous cover art by Luca DiPierro to be unveiled very soon.
7. Forthcoming from me, here, once I finish unpacking: two posts on sex, one on learning to love submissions, and a love letter to depressing literary fiction.
Matthew Simmons—
Amelia Gray threatened an audience at a reading. The New Republic wrote about it.
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