Adam Robinson
http://www.publishinggenius.com
Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he operates Publishing Genius Press. His book of poems, Adam Robison and other poems, will be published by Narrow House Books this year.
Why Did Mud Luscious Close? Getting busy with JA Tyler
Hello, here is an interview that I did with J.A. Tyler. We started it via email soon after the announcement that his press, Mud Luscious, would have to close down. It’s fairly long. First we talk about all the things he did with MLP, then we get into the nitty gritty of what happened that caused its demise. I really appreciate that he would do this. I’ve asked other presses to do a similar post mortem but they’ve declined. It’s not easy, I know. You run a press, you feel an almost paralyzing responsibility to the people you publish. You have a book that does well, you’re fucked because your responsibilities seem to increase. It’s not a thankless job, art — not by any means — but it’s a tough one. And the place where art intersects with business IS thankless unless your strength is on the business end of things. Anyway. Get into this interview. Remember MLP for its growth and its commitment and its problems.
Hi, J. A. How are you feeling? Would it be an understatement to say you’re sad?
Yes: Sad, overwhelmed, frustrated, sick. A million things all at once.
Well, we started this interview back in April, so it’s been a while. How are you feeling about things now? Is the remorse turning to relief? Have you started to get a glimpse of what a normal life can be yet?
Normal life, probably not. There is this residual layer of guilt that I presume will take much longer to unwind from wherever it is in me. I do see how much time I spent doing MLP related things, both on the “free time” I’m now allotted and in the size of the hole it left.
Shanna Compton, Designer
I just got the new Peter Davis book in the mail, Tina, published by Bloof Books.
I haven’t read it yet. This is just to say that Shanna Compton is one of my new favorite designers for poetry books. Her own book, Brink, is also wicked handsome. She has successfully rethought every element of a good book design. Why put what where? The advance praise is at the end. The copyright data gets a line at the bottom of the Table of Contents because that stuff is ugly.
Also, I love Peter Davis’s poetry. Get this for your summer shelf, silly. Review it for HTMLGiant, whydoncha? Watch the trailer, which is better than your average book trailer:
WTF Is Happening In My Shower?
Even if you’ve never showered with me (hey ladies!) you know some weird things are going on in there. READ MORE >
Baltimore Book Club on Joe Hall
Discussed: The Devotional Poems by Joe Hall
Present: Joseph Young, Amanda McCormick, Tracy Dimond, Caryn Lazzuri, Laura van den Berg, Linda Franklin, Matthew Zingg, Jamie GP, Chris Mason, Dave K, Adam Robinson
Tardy: Megan McShea
Jamie GP: Don’t read anything, don’t read anything about Star Trek, just go see it.
Adam: Chris, I just told everyone we are going to take notes and put them on HTMLGiant like a review, is that okay?
Chris: Cool.
Adam: With all our names.
Chris: Cool.
Joe: All right. Do people like this book? I mean I want to call this guy Joe Hallmark because it’s so sappy.
Dave K: Oh!
Linda: I actually didn’t like it at all. I liked about 8 lines. READ MORE >
[in Just-]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
I Don’t Know Should Matthew Savoca Get a Dog
HTMLGiant fave Matthew Savoca just came out with his novel yesterday, improbably titled I Don’t Know I Said. Laura van den Berg said it’s a book for anyone who has ever been bored. Michael Kimball said it’s got more charm than it should ever have. Scott McClanahan said it’s like eating baby food with a loved one. Chris Killen said he’d recommend it to anybody. The book is about Arthur and Carolina, youths in love, trying to do it right. Here’s an interview with Matthew, if you’re bored. On Friday evening Matthew will read the entire novel and broadcast it at Everyday Genius.
Hi Matthew.
Hi Sarah.
Tell me about the most exciting thing you’ve experienced in the past month.
The first thing that came to my mind is the other day when I thought about getting a dog. I was on a 2 hour drive and I just sat there and thought for a long time about having a dog again and about where I would take it and all those kinds of things. What toys I would get, would it be the kind of dog I could let off the leash when we took a walk? Stuff like that.
Oh, also, I went to see Harry Houdini’s grave a couple weeks ago. It’s great. There’s a cool inscription that says, “He went about doing good.” And people leave all this cool stuff there like eye glasses and lighters and playing cards and pictures of their children. I left a broken zipper that I had in my pocket and asked Harry to fix it for me. I gotta pick it up next week.
What’s going to be inscribed on your tombstone?
Wish you were here.
Adam Robinson—
Hahaha, “Ask a Mid-List Author,” good one J. Robert Lennon. AND the new Graywolf site is nice.
Quick Thoughts on the Penguin Random House Merger
Hi, this post was in my drafts. For some reason I was too shy to post it. So it’s old news as of like February 20. So sue me.
Naturally Dennis Johnson has some dreadful things to say about the Penguin Random House merger, calling it “one of the most important publishing and cultural stories of our lifetime.” He points to the lack of coverage in the news as a big downplay, and the scandalous lack of government oversight as something that’s hard not to see as a conspiracy.
The first page of André Schiffrin’s The Business of Books discusses how, when Random House acquired AA Knopf in 1960, the DOJ started looking into the merger—until they realized that the combined companies would be worth only $15 million. Why’d they take an interest? Because it was front page news, which isn’t the case anymore (though the combined value of Penguin Random is $3 billion). Why is this Times article, about the US regulator’s approval of the merger, so short? READ MORE >
25 Points: The Man Who Noticed Everything [UPDATED]
The Man Who Noticed Everything
by Adrian Van Young
Black Lawrence Press, 2013
200 pages / $16.00 buy from Black Lawrence Press
[Update]“The Sub-Leaser,” discussed here, is now available to read in Electric Literature’s “Recommended Reading” [End Update]
1. I first met Adrian Van Young at 2012 AWP, when he was hanging out at the Gigantic table. I remembered him as an engaging person to talk to. That’s saying a lot, cuz, you know, AWP.
2. Six months later he emailed me about reading in Baltimore. That’s when I remembered what a nice guy he was.
3. His email was cordial but also professional, and he attached a press release about his book, The Man Who Noticed Everything, and a headshot. The color scheme in the photo matched the colors on his book jacket: black and dark green.
4. Ben Marcus said “you’d think this book was an anthology collecting the work of the best young writers of the new generation”—talking about The Man Who Noticed Everything.
5. So we set up a reading for January, even though I hadn’t read his book and even though the main provision for the series that Stephanie Barber and I run is that we’ll only host writers whose work we really admire. I guess the thinking was, this guy has his act together.
6. And he does. I’m not just saying that because he brought a fresh bottle of Jameson to the reading.
7. At the reading, Adrian read a short story. Sometimes I have a hard time listening to fiction. It can be so boring.
8. But while Adrian read, I laughed and laughed. The story was called “The Sub-Leaser,” and listening to it, I felt like it was full of jokes. Or, actually, it struck me as a better kind of funny writing, in which there aren’t actually jokes, but the whole concept (and the way the concept is delivered) is meant to be funny.
9. What’s more, the funniness happens within the prose, which is primarily descriptive, and that is a really hard and precarious thing to do. The story’s narrator is describing his apartment. He says, “My apartment is a standard one for the part of the city where I live. It begins at the door, which opens, like so, to show the splintered wooden hallway that I mentioned before. On the right is a bathroom, ill-sequenced of tile, with a sink built onto the wall and a bathtub, where a thin and mildewed curtain hangs, clad in a pattern of green and white plaid. To the left of the curtain, an insolent toilet, coated with a film of brown.”
10. “ill-sequenced of tile”? “an insolent toilet”? You see what I mean. The whole story is like that. READ MORE >
4 Comments
March 19th, 2013 / 11:09 am
March 19th, 2013 / 11:09 am
A Mountain City of Toad Splendor by Megan McShea
Yeah but come on, that’s the title of a book right there.
As Blake put it, it’s as if Megan studied at the Harvard for Ooh, and as Jeff Jackson said nicely, “You’re never sure what’s around the next comma.”
Lucy Corin said she remembers Megan’s dreams as if they were her own.
This book comes out today. It’s poetry and microfiction. It’s just $9 at PGP. And there are videos about it. Cool.
Jen Michalski’s first new book of 2013
First new book of 2013? Yep. Jen Michalski has three books coming out this year—one each from Dzanc, Black Lawrence and Aqueous Books. The first, Could You Be With Her Now, is itself sort of like two books, because it’s made up of two novellas. They’re both comprised of short chapters. “I Can Make it to California Before it’s Time for Dinner” is a story about a mentally, uh, diminished kid who kills somebody within the first 1000 words, then goes on an adventure by getting kidnapped. It’s really great, reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates in a good way. The second novella, “May – December,” is about a young woman helping an older one do a blog. I heard her read from it on Saturday and was struck by the way she braids memories around each other. Jen is an astonishingly sensitive writer. Could You Be With Her Now makes me want to yell GOAL! and celebrate the first part of Jen’s 2013 hat trick.
Adam Robinson—
The 2013 award for sheer chutzpah, for hope, goes to Lorem Ipsum books in Cambridge, MA. The innovative bookstore fell on rocky shores and, in two days, is trying to raise $30,000 so they can stay afloat. They seem cool. Do ‘em five bucks? Oh and then read this short thing about losing your job at a bookstore that I saw via Hobart’s Tumblr.
Adam Robinson—
Brian Allen Carr, from Texas, is awesome. Somebody gave his book Short Bus a 1-star review at Amazon, but he says it’s a crappy review. So he’s doing a “Lone Star” contest: write the best 1-star review of the book by the end of February, and he’ll give you all three of his books, including the newest, Edie and the Low-Hung Hands (Small Doggies Press).
Books or whatever
Orwell said, “It hardly needs pointing out that at this moment the prestige of the novel is extremely low, so low that the words ‘I never read novels’, which even a dozen years ago were generally uttered with a hint of apology, are now always uttered in a tone of conscious pride.” This, he says, is because novels are over hyped, due to the commercial aspects of book reviews:
On the face of it, the book-ramp is a quite simple and cynical swindle. Z writes a book which is published by Y and reviewed by X in the Weekly W. If the review is a bad one Y will remove his advertisement, so X has to hand out ‘unforgettable masterpiece’ or get the sack. Essentially that is the position, and novel reviewing has sunk to its present depth largely because every reviewer has some publisher of publishers twisting his tail by proxy.
This was 1936, before the WordPress “Publish” button, otherwise I think he would add to the equation a few other ulterior motives (which we’ve hauled out so much: writing reviews to climb the publishing ladder, writing reviews to boost our pals, to promote our own books or our reading series). Orwell does allow that there is no big conspiracy here, and the bigger problem is that people think all novels even deserve reviewing. In the essay, which is worth another look (turn on Clearly), Orwell talks a lot about blurbs, too, as part of the reason no one takes novels seriously anymore.
He overstates his case, of course, and 77 years later the novel is alive and well—at least among we literates. Set up an account at Zoosk, though, and try to find a match with an interest in books, and things are a bit different. How right was Orwell? Could his concern about reviews be extended to the surfeit of published books? More interesting question: is the recent “swarming” of that new Michael Jackson book, which haters killed with negative Amazon reviews, somehow a continuance of Orwellian fear?
In the comments, please discuss Clearly and Zoosk.
Mirror Poems by Polly Bresnick is a helluva thing
Polly Bresnick’s new book is here, Mirror Poems, from O’Clock Press. The book is beautiful and handmade and hefty (and has drawings from Bianca Stone, who is everywhere these days, good job), and the concept is hefty too and fun, and the poems themselves ain’t too bad, it bears saying.
What the book is is first of all a translation from the Spanish of Patricia Serra Delmar’s Poemario Rouge, and those translations appear on the lefthand page, but then Polly does a feint and provides an antonymic translation on the righthand page. So she’s translated every poem twice, and it’s fun to cross reference her ideas of antonyms. Like, Delmar has a poem called “Red and Green” but Polly changes it to its opposite, “Green or Red,” and then there’s one called “Brazil” that she changes to “Texas.” I laugh audibly sometimes as I scan the pages back and forth. Polly’s figured out a fun way to read.
From the translator’s note: “A “mirror poem” is an act of mimicry distilled into the shape of a shadow on a page. It is a compliment of the original, like a color added to another collor to dazzle the eyes.”
Gods, Men and Howard Cosell
In the summer of 1962, Howard Cosell found himself lying on his back at the side of the road, the joe-pye weed squaring off in the sun above him as he woke from his stupor. “That’s when I knew I had to make changes,” Cosell says, “those weeds bending over me like God’s many heads. It was my high, purple clarion call.”
Cosell rushed home then—a place he spent precious little time in—kissed his four children on the head as they sat on the floor watching TV, and went straight up to the bathroom. Taped to the underside of the sink was his stash, 6 brown cubes of the sweetest chat Eritrea had to offer. READ MORE >
So Say the Waiters
I hope Justin Sirois gets back to work soon. He’s written five installments of a really fun serial novel called So Say the Waiters. It’s as gripping as 24 or whatever your favorite TV show is these days. Each episode, which takes like an hour to read, ends with a cliffhanger.
I hope he gets back to work because I really want know what happens in episode 6.
Since the beginning of autumn, Justin has been releasing the episodes separately as eBooks for like $.99. Now he’s bundled what I guess would be the “first season” in a printed book, and he’s doing a contest to promote it. To win the contest, you have to send in a kidnapping scenario. The best idea, as judged by Michael Kimball and Ken Baumann, will have their submission written into a future section of the book. That’s neat.
It might seem weird that the contest is based on writing a kidnapping situation, but it wouldn’t if you’re familiar with So Say the Waiters. It’s all about this smartphone app/social network through which people can sign up to be kidnapped. It’s actually not that farfetched, the way Justin handles it. The characters seem like real people. They just want to escape for a while.
When I want to escape, I read a book like this one. I read it on my iPhone.
Adam Robinson—
They’re going to make the National Book Awards dinner a flashy thing, like the Oscars/Man Booker: The goal is to add more sex appeal to an industry that’s not exactly known for it — but not, the organizers insist, just for its own sake. “It’s not about being glitzy,” said David Steinberger, the chief executive of Perseus Books and chairman of the foundation. “It’s about increasing the impact great books have on the culture.”
