A D Jameson | HTMLGIANT

A D Jameson

http://adjameson.com

A D Jameson is the author of two books: the prose collection Amazing Adult Fantasy (Mutable Sound, 2011), in which he tries to come to terms with having been raised on '80s pop culture, and the novel Giant Slugs (Lawrence and Gibson, 2011), an absurdist retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh. He has taught classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lake Forest College, DePaul University, Facets Multimedia, and StoryStudio Chicago. He is also the nonfiction / reviews editor of the online journal Requited and a contributor to the group blog Big Other. He recently started the PhD program in Creative Writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Viktor Shklovsky wants to make you a better writer, part 1: device & defamiliarization

When I was finishing up my Master’s degree at ISU, I worried that I still didn’t know much about writing—like, how to actually do it. My mentor Curtis White told me, “Just read Viktor Shklovsky; it’s all in there.” So I moved to Thailand and spent the next two years poring over Theory of Prose. When I returned to the US in the summer of 2005, I sat down and started really writing.

I’ve already put up one post about what, specifically I learned from Theory of Prose, but it occurs to me now that I can be even more specific. So this will be the first in a series of posts in which I try to boil ToP down into a kind of “notes on craft,” as well as reiterate some of the more theoretical arguments that I’ve been making both here and at Big Other over the past 2+ years. Of course if this interests you, then I most fervently recommend that you actually read the Shklovsky—and not just ToP but his other critical texts as well as his fiction, which is marvelous. (Indeed, Curt has since told me that he didn’t mean for me to focus so much on ToP! But I still find it extraordinarily useful.)

Let’s talk first about where Viktor Shklovsky himself started: the concepts of device and defamiliarization.

Craft Notes / 31 Comments
May 21st, 2012 / 8:01 am

A D Jameson—

R.I.P. Carlos Fuentes. I just found out. He was one of the greats. Places to start if you haven’t read him: Where the Air Is Clear (1958), The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Terra Nostra (1975). & here he is on the BBC (audio), and here are various YouTube videos.

Godspeed, good sir.

Another way to generate text: “Backmasking” (now with bonus Batman/Beatles content)

As I mentioned in my last post (“The Spell Check Technique”), I’ve played around with more than a few means for generating text. Another one that I used when writing Giant Slugs is a trick that I somewhat jokingly called “backmasking.” Here’s how it works:

Write a sentence or the start of a sentence.

Craft Notes / 12 Comments
May 17th, 2012 / 8:01 am

“The Spell Check Technique” (a way to generate text)

When I was younger and wanted to write but was less sure of my own inspiration, I liked inventing processes that would generate text for me. The most useful technique I devised was something I called “the Spell Check Technique.” These days I don’t really use it anymore, so I thought I’d set it down here in case others would like to pick it up.

For this technique you need a text editor with spell check capacity (I’ll demonstrate it using Microsoft Word 2003), plus some text. It doesn’t really matter what the text is.

Let’s start with a good chunk of lorem ipsum (generated through this website). (Note that you can use any starting text you like; I’m using lorem ipsum just for this example.)

Craft Notes / 33 Comments
May 14th, 2012 / 8:01 am

Watching, owning, looking at, listening to, thinking about, and at last finally reading Solaris

I adore Stanisław Lem. And for ages I’ve wanted to read his masterpiece Solaris (1961), but haven’t, even though I own a couple of beat-up mass paperback copies, because the only English translation available has been the Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox 1970 adaptation, which they “translated from the French”—from Jean-Michel Jasiensko’s 1966 translation—and which Lem himself purportedly disliked, and which my Polish friends have repeatedly told me is terrible, and which I’ve nonetheless tried to read on a number of occasions, but was never able to get more than a few pages into before I’d give up and instead rewatch Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 cinematic adaptation (which Lem also openly disliked; the man wasn’t afraid to voice his opinions). (And even with that film, it wasn’t until I saw Criterion’s 2002 DVD release that I realized how magnificent it was; the 1997 VHS release was washed out and split across two tapes, and I think even pan-and-scanned, rendering it pretty underwhelming.)

Today I noticed that there’s a new and direct translation of Solaris available, albeit only electronically (and as an audio book). It’s by Bill Johnston, “a professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University.” (The audio book version is read by Alessandro Juliani, who I see played Lt. Felix Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica.) … So has anyone out there read it, or listened to it? (This new Solaris, not BG.) From what I can see online, it certainly looks more promising. Here’s Kilmartin/Cox:

At 19.00 hours, ship’s time, I made my way to the launching bay. The men around the shaft stood aside to let me pass, and I climbed down into the capsule. Inside the narrow cockpit, there was scarcely room to move. I attached the hose to the valve on my space suit and inflated it rapidly. From then on, I was incapable of making the smallest movement. There I stood, or rather hung suspended, enveloped in my pneumatic suit and yoke to the metal hull.

And here, by way of contrast, is the start of Johnston’s new edition:

At nineteen hundred hours ship’s time I climbed down the metal ladder past the bays on either side into the capsule. Inside, there was just enough room to raise my elbows. After I attached the end of the cables into the port jutting from the side of the capsule, my space suit filled with air and from that point on I couldn’t make the slightest movement. I stood, or rather hung suspended, in a bed of air, all of one piece with my metal shell.

Finally, while on the subject of Solaris, has anyone out there seen that other movie version that got made? You know—the one by Lidiya Ishimbayeva and Boris Nirenburg?

Thinking about all these different editions of Solaris got me wondering what the original Polish movie poster for Solaris looked like. If you’ve become curious as well, then wonder no longer:

Author News & Film / 6 Comments
May 9th, 2012 / 12:58 pm

Only the Hulk could have attempted it! Only the Hulk would have been capable of it! Only the Hulk could have done it!!

Pretty much my favorite two pages in comics, ever:

I Like __ A Lot / 5 Comments
May 7th, 2012 / 4:36 pm

A Pan-English Dictionary (for readers of Harry Mathews’s The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium)

And while on the subject of reposting literary resources: here’s a Pan-English dictionary I made for the benefit of anyone reading Harry Mathews‘s early masterpiece, the epistolary novel The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium.

Odradek presents the correspondence of newlyweds and amateur sleuths Zachary McCaltex and Twang Panattapam. Separated by the Atlantic, they exchange letters in which they “try to trace the whereabouts of a treasure supposedly lost off the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century, while navigating a relationship separated by an ocean as well as their different cultures.”

Twang, who hails “from the Southeast-Asian country of Pan-Nam,” peppers her letters with snatches of her native language, “Pan.” Fortunately for her husband and the reader, she also translates it on the spot. I’ve collected all of the Pan and its English equivalents and presented them below.

I Like __ A Lot / 3 Comments
May 3rd, 2012 / 8:01 am

Wittgenstein’s Mistress: An Index

A while back, I published an index for Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Blake’s recent post about WM got me thinking that I should repost it here. Please feel free to copy/distribute it/whatever; my goal is to assist anyone reading or doing research on the book, which I think one of the two greatest novels of the past 25 years.

Notes:

Be warned! I’m sure there are errors. (If you find any, please let me know, as well as any other revisions, comments, or suggestions.)
Underlined entries are incomplete; underlined page numbers are uncertain. (If you can expand/confirm any of these in the comments, I’ll update the index, thanks!)

The Index

I Like __ A Lot / 22 Comments
April 30th, 2012 / 8:01 am

Black Thorns in the Black Box is coming to Brooklyn

… being “a touring screening of experimental film and video by eleven contemporary artists whose work resonates with the heavy, dark, and mystic obscurity of Black Metal music.” I caught it in Chicago and thought it pretty awesome; you should go:

When: Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 7:30pm [please note the correction!]
Admission: $5
Location: Spectacle Theater (124 South 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY)

Artists included: Annie Feldmeier Adams & Locrian (Chicago), Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert (Brussels, Belgium), Una Hamilton Helle (London, England), Devin Horan (Brooklyn), Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (Brooklyn), Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt of Semiconductor (Brighton, England), Chris Kennedy (Toronto, Canada), Marianna Milhorat (Chicago), Jimmy Joe Roche (Baltimore), Shazzula & Cultus Sabbati (Brussels, Belgium), and Michaël Sellam (Paris, France).

About the curator: Amelia Ishmael is an artist whose practice includes critiquing, historicising, teaching, and curating. Her recent projects include the traveling art exhibition “Black Thorns in the White Cube” and the academic journal Helvete. She studied studio art and art history at the Kansas City Art Institute and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has published articles on contemporary art with The WIRE, Art21.com, ArtSlant Chicago, and Art Papers.

Events & Film & Music / No Comments
April 26th, 2012 / 8:01 am

The Mystery of the Mysterious Elephant Bird Xmas Post-Punk Song (Now Solved)

Many years ago (like, way back in the mid-to-late-90s), a friend of mine gave me a tape of a radio program, which included a song I fell head-over-heels in love with. But no one I played it for had heard it before, or knew who the band was, or where it had come from.

For years I’d play it for self-professed music connoisseurs; no one was able to identify it. (I tried contacting the DJ without any luck.) Here’s a digitized copy of my ultra-degraded cassette copy, including a few seconds I accidentally taped over one day:

unknown artist – elephant bird song

Meanwhile, I transcribed the lyrics as best I could, Google-searching occasionally for them, to no avail.

I started writing this post to see if you could help me ID the piece—but now there’s no need. Let 2012 be remembered as the year that Jeremy M. Davies solved the Mystery of the Mysterious Elephant Bird Xmas Post-Punk Song!

Music / 4 Comments
April 24th, 2012 / 11:52 am

A D Jameson—

Reconcile the following two thoughts:

The only market for poetry today is other poets.
There are too many MFA programs, and too many poets.

Call for Submissions

This is a call for submissions for the -1^st issue of decent-er(r)ed.

ABOUT US, BRIEFLY:

Mean / 19 Comments
April 9th, 2012 / 8:01 am

Maryanne Amacher and Thurston Moore

That’s nice.

Film & Music / 1 Comment
April 4th, 2012 / 8:01 am

I made a video that critiques the opening three scenes of “Inception”

I’m trying out different ways of doing film criticism. In addition to writing articles, I think it makes sense to record commentaries (like the one I just did for Drive) and make critical videos. (My inspirations here are Mike Stoklasa and Jim Emerson.)

So here’s my own foray into the latter:

Film / 12 Comments
April 2nd, 2012 / 8:01 am

I recorded a commentary track for “Drive”

Hey, HTMLGiant. I recorded a commentary track for Drive; you can download it here. It’s an mp3, 42 MB, 104 minutes long.

Of course I made it so brilliant that you can just listen to it on its own. But if you watch it with Drive (recommended!), it’s all synced up, so cue it to start when the Universal logo starts.

Related posts:

Next, I’ll record commentary for Inception.

And Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

And The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

And Southland Tales.

Update: I forgot to include a link to Scorpio Rising. Here’s a clip:

And here’s the full film.

Film / 27 Comments
March 28th, 2012 / 8:01 am

The Best Recent Stories: The Results

A little while ago, I asked you all to name “the best story that you’ve read in the past few years.” I deliberately didn’t define “best.” After the jump, I’ve compiled what you said …

Vicarious MFA / 10 Comments
March 26th, 2012 / 8:01 am

R.I.P. Christine Brooke-Rose

I just heard that Christine Brooke-Rose passed away.

I first came across her work thanks to Brian McHale’s Postmodernist Fiction (1987), where he wrote about her 1975 novel Thru.

At the time, I was deeply into concrete poetry, in particular novelists who used concrete poetry techniques (Kenneth Patchen, B.S. Johnson, Ann Quin). So I was hooked. I picked up the 1986 Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus, which contains Thru as well as its three “companion” novels: Out (1964), Such (1966), and Between (1968). All of them are decidedly unusual; like Johnson and Quin, Brooke-Rose was heavily inspired by the French New Novel of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, and Nathalie Sarraute. (She translated Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth.) Like all of those authors, Brooke-Rose was a brilliant maker of contemporary fiction who deserves to be more widely read.

Author News / 19 Comments
March 22nd, 2012 / 12:40 pm

Looking for Brassneck, Looking for Significance

The Wedding Present

Little by little I’m trying to get at a deep concern I have, some means of responding to what I consider to be a common and pressing situation …

A few years back, I stumbled across the music video for the Wedding Present’s song “Brassneck.” This was that band’s first US hit (well, the version that Steve Albini rerecorded was), and a song I’d always liked well enough, whenever I happened to hear it. (It’s from their second studio album, Bizarro [1989].)

This was my first time seeing the video. I spent a great deal of the late ’80s / early ’90s watching MTV, and YouTube has helped me catch up on what I missed. And what struck me about this one is its dance choreography, which reminded me a great deal of Michael Clark’s work. You’ll recall that I’m a tremendous fan of his, in particular his work in Prospero’s Books and Hail the New Puritan. The more that I watched it, the more I became convinced that Clark had somehow been behind it. And so I emailed the Michael Clark Company, asking them whether I was right.

A Company representative graciously wrote me back:

Film & Music / 8 Comments
March 19th, 2012 / 8:01 am

Cinema x 3: Melancholia, The Tree of Life, Feature Friday

1.

You no doubt read Greg Gerke’s deeply critical post about Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Curtis White has now posted his own much more positive impressions of the film. I’ve tried convincing the two of them to go at it like me and Chris Higgs—I even introduced them during AWP—but they’re being too polite. Chime in in the comments section, demanding blood!

2.

Martin Seay is currently posting a series on Tree of Life; the first part went up yesterday, and part 2 is supposedly forthcoming today. (Meanwhile, don’t miss Martin’s meditations on Anonymous.)

(My own thoughts on Tree are here. I have nothing to say about Anonymous.)

3.

Every Friday at Big Other, I’m posting links to feature-length films that are up at YouTube. And I’m doing it for you!

Film & Roundup / 8 Comments
March 15th, 2012 / 8:01 am

100 things to do when you have the time

“There are people who say, ‘If music’s that easy to write, I could do it.’ Of course they could, but they don’t. I find [Morton] Feldman’s own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, ‘Now that things are so simple, there’s so much to do.’”
—John Cage, Indeterminacy

100 things to do when you have the time

Doodle. Look for new styles, new approaches.
Draw a picture of a friend. See how many different ways you can do it, such as how few lines you can use.
Recite something you once memorized: a poem, a song, a story, a monologue.
Memorize something new.
Write a review of something you like.
Go over the steps in a procedure or a process.
Explain to a friend a thing you know, or think you know.
Write a song, or cover a song.
List the projects you’re working on, or want to work on. Set a deadline for completing one of them.
Review every thing that you’ve done in the past week, the past month, the past year, the past five years, the past decade.
Reread your diary or journal. If you don’t keep one, reread old sent emails.
Describe something in as many words as possible, then as briefly as possible.
Make up a riddle or joke.
Make a puzzle for others to solve.
Play a Dadaist/Surrealist/Oulipian writing game, such as automatic writing, the Exquisite Corpse, the Cut-Up Technique, homophonic translation, lipograms, …
Write a story or poem entirely in your head.
Observe whoever is around you. Note what they’re doing.
Observe how the energy levels in a room change over time.
Perform John Cage’s “silent piece” (4’33”). Pay attention to both the aural and the visual.
Perform random FLUXUS pieces, then try inventing new ones.
List all of your interests. Prioritize them.
Compose a view.
Explore a texture (a fabric, a liquid).
Examine a nearby text. Why is it the way that it is?
Explore a space: a room, a building, a street, a city.

Random / 9 Comments
March 12th, 2012 / 8:01 am