Well, there are two ways to look at having a career. One way to look at it is as though there’s a finite amount of attention and praise in this world to be earned and enjoyed, and thus look upon other writers as enemies or Darwinian competitors. The other way is to imagine you’re one of a bunch of lucky people riding a cosmic wave into the shore. Writing is hard. Writing out of anger and resentment is even harder. The best reason to help other writers is to remind yourself why you’re writing anything in the first place: to share something.
Tom Bissell
DeAtHbOoK rEvIeWs: Reviews of Books with Death in the Title that We’ve Never Read
The following are REVIEWS OF BOOKS WITH DEATH IN THE TITLE THAT WE’VE NEVER READ. We’ve done our best to highlight some of the best classic and contemporary books with death in the title that we’ve never read for your very own reading pleasure. Please enjoy (while you still can)!
THE DEATH OF PRINGLE by Justin Katko
The Death of Pringle is a journey through the infinitely depressing matrix of trying to eat less than 10 grams of carbs a day for the rest of your fucking life.
DEATH IN A BOX by Alta Ilfland
Who hasn’t dreamt, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of starting a tumblr? Tumblrs entice, but is it really all a golden road to viral? Alta Ilfland answers that question with wit, warmth and wicked candor in the chronicle of her own foray into tumblr. Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year’s Day with a divine idea, Ilfland sets the scene and pits her poetic sensibilities against tumblr. “I had talked about it / during the long gray winters / and the damp green summers…” she writes, “looked / with an addict’s longing / at film stills, dreamed / of waking up in the middle of the night / to reblog.” Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict when no one follows her. In verse that skips along lightly, Ilfland records the highlights of each month, from no followers in February to one follower in March to the loss of that follower at Christmas—all the while trading her irl existence for the glow of the screen.
Selection from Q.E.D. – Part 1, “Things Unsaid”
The MAK Center Schindler House, Los Angeles
11 April 2012
Compiled by Chris Hershey-Van Horn
Context Note: In April, May, and June of this year, Les Figues Press hosted a short series of long conversations on queer art and literature. Titled Q.E.D., in honor of Gertrude Stein’s novel by the same name (and one of the earliest coming-out stories), each Q.E.D. event explored the constructions of speech, art, literature, materiality, and sex. The conversations were moderated by Vanessa Place at the historic MAK-Schindler House, L.A.’s original nod to green architecture.
Q.E.D. Part One featured Melissa Buzzeo, Patrick Greaney, and Simon Leung.
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“What happens in a work of art when it seems like the artist does nothing?”—(Patrick)
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July 2nd, 2012 / 12:00 pm
July 2nd, 2012 / 12:00 pm
fetal 9
Robert grew a beard and long hair and grew a fetus in his girlfriend and grew tomatoes in the backyard and let his girlfriend grow flowers in little boxes and let his gut grow to fit the pants that had belonged to his father. (Catherine Lacy)
I don’t like too much social life anyway. It is gossip and bad white wine. It’s a waste. Writing is like carrying a fetus. I get up in the morning, have a cup of tea, and come into this room to work. (Edna O’Brien)
He breaks a watermelon over his knee to show somebody, a melon-red fetus curled up inside the rind. Don’t swallow them bones, Grandpa laughs, I don’t know what would happen if you swallowed them bones. (Micah Dean Hicks)
“This,” I think to myself, “Must be what vegans feel when they see a calf with no dancing room.” I think to myself, “This is what the Christians must feel when they see a fetus with no living womb.” (Steven Miller)
9kms rips out the fetus with the fingernails of his hot fingers
13kms lifts it up like a torch
1km opening his mouth the soldier screams
(Juan Felipe Herrera)
By the fifth month, you will likely feel the fetus moving. (Bruce Holland Rogers)
He collects our broken pieces. He gathers our abusive fathers, our esophageal tears, our peanut fetuses. (Tia Prouhet)
With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle, (Sylvia Plath)
They put people on the floor, each fetal-positioned in a three-foot cube, for money. (Nicolle Elizabeth)
Also, come to think of it, being pregnant. The fetus nestling against your intestines, bending her ear to the music of digestion…. (Kirstin Scott)
Catching up with comics and cartooning maestro Tom Eaton
Tom and I both attended Penn State in the mid-to-late 1990s. After graduation we became friends, then gradually lost touch in the circus that is life. I recently decided to catch up with him again by interviewing him. Read on to learn about his collaborations with Sufjan Stevens, Danielson, Shara Worden, and Rosie Thomas, as well as his work for Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and the Cartoon Network; and above all else to see many examples of his mighty cartooning art. —Adam
A D JAMESON: If I remember correctly, we met in 1998 or 1999. I had just graduated from Penn State, where I’d found some of your minicomics at Comic Swap. I enjoyed them tremendously!
TOM EATON: I’m so glad you enjoyed them. You must have been the target audience. I put them out at Comic Swap, and some of the record stores.
ADJ: I remember specifically finding the Valentine’s Day one, right around Valentine’s Day.
TE: Good! I was proud of that one…
Mike Young—
“The bad word and the bad word and
The word which glamours me with some
Quick face it pulls to make me let
It leave me to go across
In roughly your direction, hates
To go out maybe so completely
On another silence not its own.”
from “Approaches to How They Behave” — W.S. Graham (thanks to Heather Christle for the spot)
Comments Off on “The words are mine. The thoughts are all / Yours”
Summer Semester Reading List: Gertrude Stein
For those of you who might be interested, click through for the reading list I’ve assigned the students taking my “Major Figures in American Literature: Gertrude Stein, The Mother of Invention” course this summer.