Author Spotlight
7 cracks in the spleen cushion
23. Your Spirit Guide to Indie AWP.
1. New lit mag wants your words to glow: ‘pider.
2. Don’t forget about the Diagram Chapbook contest. Lots of $$, hipness, gravitas, and New Michigan Press makes a chapbook so lovely like large meadows/strobe light.
3. CreateSpace versus Lightning Source.
1. Henry Review video Q&A with Sam Lipsyte.
7. These aren’t new but this Lydia Davis interview and this Lydia Davis interview are damn good. I feel both the interviewer and interviewee respected the interview as a genre, as creating something.
10 point bulletin on David Shields
6. Good sex in literature is hard to find.
7. How much money do you take to AWP book fair? I take $100 in cash but not sure if that’s weak or strong or just OK.
Tags: coffee and cheese I guess
re: David Shields/Bookslut
I’m really sick and tired of this notion that “fragmentary writing” is somehow a radical departure from linear writing invented by Postmodernists. Fragmentary writing has existed as long as linear writing, if not longer. The linear novel is “traditional” if you mark the beginning of all literature with the Victorian Novel.
Shields is such a wanker.
that photo so glow
Not sure Shields himself ever argues he rediscovered or invented or whatnot fragmented form. As a teacher, I like him. He makes my students discuss the nature of appropriation. Is a collage “written” in the way other works are “written”? Etc. So I don’t think he’s all that, and I don’t think he’s a wanker, either.
In Reality Hunger, he argues that the linear novel is dead, “traditional,” and that fragmented narrative–esp. the fragmented essay–better reflects our contemporary experience. It’s a really, really dumb argument.
“the createspace versus lightning space” link was pretty disappointing in comparison to the words surrounding it being set to battle. which is to say i like those words together. meow.