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.
Brandon Shimoda’s THE INLAND SEA
Now available for preorder from Tarpaulin Sky Books is Brandon Shimoda’s THE INLAND SEA, which is 40 pages of poem with a killer cover (covers, like teeth blood, do matter). I’ve always liked Brandon’s work I’ve seen around, and so am interested to see how this one comes together in palpable form.
Here’s the jacket description:
In remembrance of and in thinking through the grand and generative compromises of birth, migration, dementia, sacrifice and ancestor worship, The Inland Sea is a raveling entreaty for the life of both a family departed and a family spectrally present in both complex breath and body. Spiritually addressed to Midori Shimoda, as well as factually to the inland seascapes of his birth (Hiroshima, Japan, thrice, in 1909, 1910 and 1911) and death (Lake Norman, North Carolina, the United States, once, 1996), The Inland Sea navigates the substance between origination and departure, in an attempt to find a relic of responsible and radiant life outside of benighted time. Composed of doubts, dissolutions, laments and a widening circumference of water and hope, The Inland Sea is a soft, yet urgent, ceremony, through which the ruptures of the past might find celebratory echo, and keep—
I like TSky’s books, this should be no exception.
Next post is mean, promise.
Elimae for October
There is a new issue of Elimae up for October, and it is pretty huge and sexy.
It has work from people I know like Stacy Kidd, Kim Chinquee, Angela Woodward, Brandon Gorrell, Mike Topp, Forrest Roth, Kyle Minor, Brian Beatty (no mean week posts yet on Beatty, for or against, I need to make some assignments?), Sean Patrick Hill, Ravi Mangla, Ben Segal, J.A. Tyler (aka the exploder, how does he do it?), Noah Falck, and Jamie Iredell (Atlanta represent).
There are also a lot of others I don’t recognize the names of, which is great.
I like how elimae’s size varies each month depending on how much stuff Cooper got that he liked. There is no size limitations, the issue does not ‘fill up’ and there’s no ‘good work gets turned down.’
Elimae is a role model like my dad except I think Elimae sometimes smokes pot, and it probably goes with hookers.
Elimae is a great example of minimalist design making the language look really good, there is just something clean about it, despite the hookers.
Read em up.
Uncategorized / 22 Comments
October 15th, 2008 / 2:18 pm
October 15th, 2008 / 2:18 pm
How Not To Design an Online Lit Mag
It’s not hard to design a nice website. Even if you know dick-all about HTML or builders, it’s pretty easy to find someone who does, and pretty easy to build a minimal site, or a weird and compelling on, that compliments the words. With all the crap against lit journals in the world, the last thing we need is when someone is actually interested enough to have a look, that they come see some cookie-cutter eye-sore that looks like it was designed by a ‘special’ 8th grader in 1995 (in a bad way).
Take a site like DIAGRAM: this site looks so nice sometimes I just sit and stare.
Other sites, though, well, they’re still on training wheels, and those wheels are made of Jell-O.
(1) Expanded Horizons: What in the shit is this? First of all, when I come to your page, the first thing I see, the VERY FIRST THING, is you asking for donations through Amazon. Not a table of contents, not even some bitmapped image of a goat with a lily flower. Just begging for money. First of all, we all know it costs money to run a journal (even though with an web journal it is little to none) but if you are going to build your site with that bit of info up front, you’re making it hard for anybody to even get interested in what you’re supposedly promoting enough to want to give you money to ‘keep you afloat.’ I mean, it actually took me a minute to find the link to your first ‘issue’ so that I could even read what you are ‘publishing.’
This is a pretty long post, so if you’re interested, we’ll continue after the jump.
Uncategorized / 22 Comments
October 15th, 2008 / 12:09 am
October 15th, 2008 / 12:09 am
CNF’s Best of the Blogosphere
Right now Creative Nonfiction Magazine is putting together their next volume of Best American Creative Nonfiction, which is a print annual honoring, well, creative nonfiction.
This year they are looking to include a series of ‘best blog writing,’ which seems like a cool idea, and they are seeking nominations for good posts for their consideration, which anyone can nominate with a small amount of effort by putting in a couple of lines of info at their website.
If you are interested in nominating, here is some info, I nominated the best recent post I could remember from a friend’s blog, you should as well:
BEST OF THE BLOGOSPHERE
This may come as a surprise to some, but here at CNF, we consider
narrative blogs an extension of the creative nonfiction
genre–they’re innovative, exciting, honest, and popular. Blogs are
so popular, in fact, that it seems as if everyone has one:
politicians, movie stars, even the Godfather behind Creative
Nonfiction <http://www.leegutkind.com/blogs/>
.
As some of you may know, CNF has been collecting and publishing the
best of the blogosphere since the the inception of our annual The
Best Creative Nonfiction series. And while Volume 2
<http://www.creativenonfiction.org/cnfshop/product_info.php?products_id=122>
makes its way to bookstores and subscribers, CNF is already fast at
work compiling blogs for Volume 3–due out Summer 2009. But this
time, we’re doing things a bit differently.We want you, the reader, to nominate the blogs you love.
We re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories
to tell. Narrative, narrative, narrative. Posts that can stand alone,
2000 words max, from 2008. Something from your own blog, from a
friend s blog, from a strangers blog.The small print: We will contact individual bloggers before
publication; we pay a flat $50 fee for one-time reprint rights.
Deadline: October 31, 2008.To nominate, click here
<http://www.creativenonfiction.org/blog_nomination.html>
Internet Writing Advice
1. Don’t do anything. Don’t send stuff to people. Don’t write. Don’t think there are words. Don’t say words. Guess what about what you typed? Ieurnadbussum. I have $50,000,000 in my anus if I could just get it out, tomorrow we’re getting in the Wheat Thins. Don’t type to me if you’re just going to type.
2. Don’t type to me if you’re just going to type. Do you have a forehead? Are you sad? Yeah, that’s sad. I am hungry. If you can feed me, feed me. Look at the internet screen. How many times a day do you refresh your browser looking at Duotrope, or the website of that place that is running that contest that you paid $35 to get into. You could win. Did you know you could win? I am tired. Are you going to mail me the raisins soon? There are a fucklot of books. Masturbation done right takes at least an hour. Don’t type to me if you’re just going to type.
3. ‘Oh you have a story at Tom-n-Jerry Monthly? That’s cool. I have a story at Publish Barn, it’s sick, it’s about the universe. I write a lot and I like beer. Beer costs $4.50 a pint a lot of places, maybe if I write the bartender a poem he can give his girlfriend he’ll let me drink one free. No, he doesn’t give his girlfriend poems, his girlfriend doesn’t want a poem, his girlfriend wants to get beamed up the B, and he’ll give it to her. When is the new Night Train coming out?’
4. Vanna White turned the lit up letter and found a full-fledged character development decision wedged in between the light and the box turn space, she snuck it into her pocket between her alter-tits, and turned the letter and smiled really white, and after the show she went home and hid in the closet and vibrated the developed character into an arc against her systematically decimated hymen.
5. All my best friends are people I don’t see enough to hate.
6. ‘Oh you’re a writer? What’s your novel about? Have you read Christopher Moore? Have you read All the Sad Young Literary Men? Are you sad? Dude you are just so sad and jealous.’
7. ** HTML GIANT IS CURRENTLY RUNNING OPEN CASTING CALL FOR REALITY TV SHOW BASED ON THE LIVES OF INTERNET WRITERS, THE SHOW IS UNDER CONTRACT ALREADY WITH MTV, THIS IS NOT A JOKE, YOU MUST HAVE PUBLISHED ON ELIMAE, DOGZPLOT, BACON BEEP, LAMINATION COLONY AND ANAL DESIGN MAP TO BE CONSIDERED. FWD YOUR RESUME TO SOME EMAIL SOMEWHERE, WE’VE GOT IT SET UP TO FALL INTO OUR LAP AT THE DINNER TABLE, GENE’S GOTS A KID, I HAVE AN IMPENDING GOITER. **
8. ‘Will there be free booze?’
9. Suntrust Mortgage. Bye stock market. Part time work. Grading papers. Word count. Cover letter. New book day. Grease buffet. Dong farm. ‘Shark Sandwich? Shit Sandwich.’ Anal mission. Zachary German.
10. Bye.
Memory Genre Sidenote
In relation to my rant on ‘memory loss trauma’ books that spoil the beef by wrapping it all together in kitsch and with a ribbon on top, if you want to see an example of a book that pulls off this kind of narrative in a way that feels authentic, new, and more valuable even than the sum of its parts, check out Robert Lopez’s PART OF THE WORLD, which is not only fun and entirely readable, but also does something new with language and sentence formation, which, if you aren’t paying attention to in writing, I’d say, you might as well be writing for the screen.
And for further reading, pretty much anything by Brian Evenson, especially in this case, THE OPEN CURTAIN, is so far beyond what the scope of the Galchen and McCarthy are going for, might as well just skip the training wheels and hit the big ride.
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
October 14th, 2008 / 5:35 pm
October 14th, 2008 / 5:35 pm
Mean Mondays & Sleepingfish Online
So, Mean Week is one day in and I had so much fun already we’ve decided to make Mean days an institution here. In an attempt to keep the spurs on, Monday from here on out at HTML Giant will be known as Mean Monday. So you got Mean Monday and Boobs Friday (which, in other news, Kendra Grant Malone has now been upgraded to official Tits Editor, a round of applause please…), and as further things progress further things will progress.
That doesn’t mean Mean Week is being cut short: hardly so, we’re just getting started.
That means Lieutenants Malone and Maday and Call and Jones (upon his return) need to come out from behind their mother’s skirt and talk some mess, all damn it. You can talk about me mean if you want, but spit some fire for shit’s sake!
In the meantime as well, good things should be continued to be pointed out in the midst of the mean, so while I’m at it let me point you toward the firsts nodes in the most recent incarnation of the newly digital SLEEPINGFISH from Calamari Press, which is now operating in web content format with its head relocated to finer shores (and is currently seeking submissions, which you can find info on at their site).
The first update of the e-Fish contains two excellent pieces of fiction, SNOW by J.A. Tyler, which is an excerpt from a novel that will be coming out in the near future, as well as SUGAR by James Reich from the band Venus Bogardus, each of which set the bar for the high promise that the new electronic zzzFish will be sure to entail.
Shit, I feel weird being totally nice during Mean Week.
Derek, I hope you get bit on the ass by a tumored goat.
The Inclusion of ME
In the comments of an earlier post today, Justin Taylor referred to the concept of people commenting over and getting upset about things in relation to ‘the inclusion of ME,’ which he is dead-on right, is often a big reason anyone whines about anything in writing. Writers, by nature, are often a very self-obsessed and self-aware bunch (‘Oh cool, nice on your story coming out, I have one coming out too…’) and probably somewhat in many cases by sheer means of survival, in that it’s such a slim game already. But I also think that this phenomenon, while perhaps at least in some way bent in their own mind to keep them afloat, is not only often troublesome and awkward, but part of the reason why in the end many writers give up.
There’s no argument that to get work published over time, no matter who you are, really, (unless you’re like Salman Rushdie’s son) takes a hell of a struggle. There are a limited number of venues out there and definitely limitless folks with things they want to say, so the idea that someone should get upset or angry about receiving, say, a form rejection letter ignoring their work (no matter what the reasons they feel this happened are) is ludicrous. Sure, it stings some, but in the end, we’re really all just people in the same boat and things happen for a reason. It’s an achingly cringe-worthy thing when people take it as a personal affront, or believe there is a conspiracy against them wherein the editors only publish their friends (which, yeah, definitely happens, and probably a lot, but there are reasons for this, which I will head into after the jump…)
Narrative Magazine is edited by George W. Bush
It seems a lot harder for an online literary journal to be smarmy in the way of Zoetrope: All Story: since it’s the web, usually there’s a bit more wide of a perspective, and you tend to get a better grab bag of unusual work.
Narrative Magazine is near the top of my list of online journals that feel like they are edited by George W. Bush.
First off, you have to ‘join’ the site so you can even read the posts. It’s a free website, but in order to have ‘backstage access’ (is this Guns N Roses?) you have to sign up and let them spam you, which honestly is probably too much hassle for a lot of people. Geesh.
Moreso, though, it’s the content. Right now on the site they are featuring a story by Kate Chopin…
Yes, that Kate Chopin, and no I am not kidding. I mean, in case you didn’t feel claustrophobic enough reading the Awakening in high school, they figured they should give you a chance to catch up with the new new shit. MMM.
For the most part, also, Narrative is known as a place where ‘slush pile’ is a thing that curdles in the whey.
Which is weird, considering their TWENTY DOLLAR SUBMISSION FEE, which I will discuss more after the jump.
Uncategorized / 114 Comments
October 13th, 2008 / 1:37 am
October 13th, 2008 / 1:37 am
Everyone That Writes for This Site is Shit
Hi. It’s Mean Week. We are going to be mean to people. We are going to say things. We’re just being honest, and really we’re all a bunch of pieces of shit. We couldn’t write our way out of a paper bag (see, I can’t even make it a few sentences without cliche).. Here’s more reasons why we suck behind the jump: