Blake Butler
http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/
Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.
Youtube teaches me something about America
I came to this video in the related videos YouTube attached to the one in Matthew’s post yesterday on tone and Diff’rent Strokes, and originally was interested in watching it mainly for the choice rap performance from Gary Coleman and his self-proclaimed “very different from Michael Jackson” buddy laying a hip-hop smackdown on the Will Shriner show. Dang.
It was in the interview after the performance, though, that the thing that really stood out about the video for me hit. Scroll to 5:08, right near the end, and observe the crowd and host’s reaction when the child star expresses his interest in becoming a short story writer.
He wants to write stories??? How funny! How absurd!
Will’s cheese-eating giggle quip, “Now Gary, all you gotta do is write a story…,” shaking his little hand like he’s got a pen.
Good job, America. Instead he turned into a crackhead or something, right?
Really, though, I can understand the punchline. Fucking writers. I’d laugh at a child too.
Gary, if you’re out there man, our submissions are closed right now, but you can consider yourself ‘solicited’ any day of any week.
Keyhole Lifetime Subscription on Ebay
Um, wow… here’s a rad one:
Keyhole Lifetime Subscription
The starting bid is 99¢
*U.S. bidders only*
Subscription includes all past releases that are still in print and everything we release in the future.
What you’ll get now:
Keyhole 5 (handwritten issue)
Keyhole 6
Questionstruck by William Walsh
Spill by Curtis Crisler
Later this year you’ll get:
- Phantasmagoria by Thomas Cooper (May)
- One of These Things Is Not Like the Others by Stephanie Johnson (June)
- Now Playing by Shellie Zacharia (September)
- How to Predict the Weather by Aaron Burch (December)
- Plus 3 new issues of Keyhole, a quarterly, perfect bound journal (May, August, November)
That’s 11 books this year aloneWe’re lining up some good stuff for next year too, including William Walsh’s collection of stories, Ampersand, Mass.
And we’ll throw in a free one-year subscription for a friend
I think you’re going to have to fight me for this. Let’s go.
NewVillager + Fantastic Information
NY by way of CA strange-pop band NewVillager, self-proclaimed into the “Chinese Pop | Dutch Pop | Spanish Pop” markets, is a music for the meat inside your hair. Consisiting of super pal Ross Simonini, plus the magic brother in Ben Bromley, these lads are making post-Peter Gabriel past-Animal Collective way-past-Beck wildness.
As a man quite tired of most new music, the sounds here are nice in that they are both new sounding in their layers and yet not so gone that they need to appear only on hipster iPods stuffed next to Sunn O)))) snore. Sounds new, and they can actually sing? Dang.
Anyway, you can do a listen to their first two tracks, ‘Rich Doors’ and ‘Genghis On’ for free on the myspace. Go peek. If you dig, tracks are available for download from iTunes, and on vinyl, both findable through the myspace profile.
Even more germane to the forum is the band’s vast repertoire of profile and press information, including band history, reviews, and other, supplied by a motley crew of sources, which I will excerpt after the break: READ MORE >
Big Ken Baumann News: ‘Unguentine’ the film
The most amibitious and awesome news update I’ve had the pleasure to divulge in a while, from none other than our own Ken Baumann. I’ll let his own words do the talkin’:
So I’m finally in the clear in a legal sense to divulge the promised information: I’ve optioned the film rights to Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford, and will be writing the screenplay.
A little back story: On recommendation of Blake Butler and others, I bought the book. As soon as it arrived in the mail I sat with it. I read it in two (unfortunately two — it would have been one if not for having to drive somewhere) sittings, and from really what was the fifth page in it began to percolate and pool within me. I was viscerally struck. Less than halfway inside I began to think ‘This would make a beautiful film.’ A few moments after I finished reading I felt I had to bring the story to a wide audience and a new medium. Patrick Welborn, my friend and agent, read the book and agreed. And now I, with the help of many many others, will do just that.
Ungeuntine on film? A story on a boat in a blur world where time is flesh and language is flesh and each page is fever sleep meshed with weird acid and a gloaming sense of death?
A huge undertaking, and an exciting one. In Ken’s hands, I feel ready to be eaten alive. Here’s to good luck in power and light, brother.
If you haven’t yet consumed this masterpiece, it is available in new edition from Dalkey Archive. Do yourself a favor.
Action Yes is open & eating
From Action Yes editors:
For the rest of the month of April, Action,Yes is open to submissions. So please send your art, sounds, words and ideas to submissions@actionyes.org. Include the word ‘Submission’ in the subject line.
This is our first open submissions period. We apologize to those of you who’ve sent us work in the past who we’ve not been able to respond too. It doesn’t mean we weren’t impressed with your work; it just means that we didn’t know how pick through the prodigious spam of our (old) inboxes to find it. So please send again.
Looking forward to seeing your work.
Meanwhile, if you have not yet dug into the new issue, holy shit. Probably one of my favorite all-time issues of a magazine, only or no. Too much good from 2x the freaks, including Dodie Bellamy, Lily Hoang, Angela Genusa, Elizabeth Ellen, Aaron Kunin, Lara Glenum, FLUXCONCERT, Matt Kirkpatrick, Rauan Klassnik, Mark Leidner, Sabrina Oren Mark, Christian Peet, Evan Willner, Girjia Tropp, a whole lot of other madness.
Uncategorized / 2 Comments
April 10th, 2009 / 12:09 pm
April 10th, 2009 / 12:09 pm
Birkensnake!!!
Birkensnake, a primarily print journal out of Providence, has just released the contents of their now mostly sold out first issue to the WWW. Which means you can read new words by David Ohle, Joanna Howard, Tina Connolly, Matthew Pendelton, Sam Roberts, Aaaron Kovalchik, and Elizabeth Hall, which were previously only available in paper.
A little birdie also told me included in the full PDF version of the magazine is an introduction by one Bjorn Verenson, which might just be a close name alteration of one Brian Evenson.
Check it out! They are also currently looking for new work for the upcoming second issue.
I might mention here that both editors Joanna Ruocco and Brian Conn have their debut books coming out this year or next. Joanna’s ‘The Mothering Coven’ has been announced as one of the two next titles from the amazing Ellipsis Press (along with the equally amazing Norman Lock) for fall, and Brian will release his debut novel ‘The Fixed Stars’ in Spring 2010 with FC2! Talk about power. Massive wonder.
Now then, in the spirit of fun, let’s see this thread get as many comments based on the brilliant content of the Birkensnake issue as the silly riot-inducer on Toni a few below this. No? Ya’ll just love the drama, I swear. But this is where it’s at.
Uncategorized / 14 Comments
April 8th, 2009 / 12:19 pm
April 8th, 2009 / 12:19 pm
I’ve been trying to figure this out all day…
Is there an Asian equivalent of Toni Morrison?
I really can’t think of any.
All I know is they made us read ‘Beloved’ in 10th grade. I did a real good job pretending I got past page 8. Our teacher was very pale and was trying very hard to grow a Stalin beard. He looked like winter.
There is the rumor that Toni Morrison is actually an elderly Indian man.
Could Toni Morrison also be A.M. Homes?
There’s a lot of noise today, and every record I’ve downloaded sucks.
Bye.
“‘Charlie Rose’ by Samuel Beckett”
I feel like I just lived a week inside myself.
BONUS: Beckett on Beckett
On Influence: ‘DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!’
I was at a reading end of last year or sometime, this guy, reading words on paper, talked between the things he’d written previously, to explain the things he’d written previously, though in a way so that the lead-ins were way better than the things themselves, making me huddle in the head some for the idea of making words, at least in there.
Word schools. “My father was a steel man: me, I’m in syllables, ones that don’t quite say.”
Me too, me too, I’m sure.
Regardless, during one of these monologues between glossies the dude said something about how when he teaches fresh writing students, the first thing he tells ’em is how they have to get out of the mode of imitating what they love. How they needed to stop trying to mimic other writers in the mind of ‘using their own voice.’
I seriously had to grab my pitching arm from grabbing a book off the shelf of the store the reading was in and lobbing it at dude’s head.
I bit my mouth and forgot about it for a while, so I could get out without hemorrhage.
All this acting as a lead-in for the real post I wanted to post, my current favorite viral video of the month:
Mos Def in admiration for his man the MF Doom
Magic begets magic, like how I get up any day at all, maybe.
Those ones that make you glow.
Tattoo Madness (a guest missive from the Tyrant)
A report on the way in from way out from Master Giancarlo DiTrapano:
Ah ha ha ha ha. You have GOT to be kidding me. After smoking a joint with my coffee this morning, I began to cruise around Facebook (I feel like less of a loser when I Facebook stoned). That’s when I came across this absolute JEWEL of a tattoo. Just look at it. Behold it….
First, I thought it was a joke. Not only is it the title (altered slightly) of a David Eggers book, but it is the title of his absolute worst one. Now, Eggers has written a cool thing or two, I will admit. And he helps all the kids learn to write with irony and stuff at those 666 places. I even once read a nice paragraph that Eggers wrote. The thing is, just never two in a row. I think that’s his style though. Modulation sells. Wait, back to the tattoo: Is this tattoo supposed to be funny? I’m going to go out on a limb here and recommend that we all think to ourselves that it is. For if the reality is that it is not supposed to be funny, then the sad marring of this heavenly sculpted back is certain to overtake me on this first real beautiful day of spring in New York City.
To be fair, here are my tattoos. Laugh away.
So who else has the lit tattoo or whatnot? Let’s have a hear at it?
Anyone who happens to be a part of Shelley Jackson’s SKIN who emails me gets both issues of No Colony free.