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.

MEAN WEEK: ‘The Editor/Multi-Book/Duh Named Effect’

I like new journals. I like journals with their own aesthetic and who invent themselves primarily because they want to put words in the world: words that likely would not have found a way to get read if that journal hadn’t existed. There can never be too many high quality journals. A node is a node.

Though not all new journals, or even existing things, seem bent for these reasons. It seems semi-frequent, and perhaps most pointed to the world of poetry publishing, where you see a tendency to publish well-known names and no one else. Scanning the contributor notes of certain journals you can often see what I now will call the EDITOR / MULTI-BOOK / DUH NAMED EFFECT.

When this effect is applied, it means the journal has been infected wherein all the words published in their particular nook are 90-100% consisting of writers who are themselves the editor of a journal, who already have one or several full length books out at indie presses, or are a combo of both, being a name that literally most everybody in the publishing world is already very familiar with. They don’t both with searching for new voices, with including some people as yet unexposed who can then be read as others can to the journal seeking the ‘bigger names,’ no, everyone in the journal is someone who likely would have little to no trouble getting their work in almost any existing poetry journal already out there.

So then the question is: Why do you exist?

READ MORE >

Mean & Web Hype / 22 Comments
October 12th, 2008 / 9:28 pm

Peter Markus is a monk I think

Brother Markus’s interview on Detroit radio WDET is now posted in its entirely with a backup photo montage have now been posted on Youtube for our enjoyment.

Peter talks a lot about writing his new novel BOB, OR MAN ON BOAT from Dzanc Books, including inspiration, rejection, and an excerpt read in Peter’s highly incantatory speech.

“Nothing’s conscious for me, Greg.”

I really enjoy listening to Peter talk, on paper on from the mouth, I think he would be capable of hypnotizing babies in a way that made them smarter, if I ever have a baby I will ask Peter to come down and make the child’s head fattened in the good way.

Author News & Author Spotlight / 2 Comments
October 11th, 2008 / 12:58 pm

Boobs Friday for Internet Literature

Friday. I think Friday is okay? Friday actually kind of sucks for internet land because it’s the beginning of the weekend and during the weekend people aren’t at work all day jacking off on the internet not doing their real job and they are actually out like talking to people and being with real life friends. Fuck all that. The weekend is like my reverse weekend. I have a weekend through the week and the weekend feels like the week.

Internet literature definitely suffers on the weekends, there are less emails, less updates, stop being real people, mmk?

To combat the weekend slump of weekend, HTML Giant is pleased to present some tits.

As a gift to internet literature from our very own Kendra Grant Malone, here are Kendra Grant Malone’s boobs.

This hopefully will be the beginning of what I’d like to think of as Boobs Friday for Internet Literature.

Submit your boobs for future Fridays, get an acceptance to like elimae or Wigleaf via karmic booyah.

Web Hype / 32 Comments
October 10th, 2008 / 3:42 pm

Next week is MEAN WEEK

In the face of all our current praising and cataloging of the good, HTML GIANT is proud to announce now that next week in our hands will be known as Mean Week. I mean, yeah, it’s fun to praise a lot of things, but sometimes you should be mean.

So all next week, we’re being mean. We might be mean even if we like you. We might be mean in a rotting hatred of your mother. We might expect you to be mean back.

It can’t be all lambs and roses. Mean Week is real.

Ryan Call, you’re going to have to find a way to be mean.

Sam Pink, let’s fight.

Web Hype / 23 Comments
October 10th, 2008 / 2:51 pm

fc2 Blog

In the world of blog competitors, fuck, we might have one here now: FC2 is blogging live live. Mostly about their authors and new releases and the like, all of which remain good news in my book. Worth a bookmark? Fo sho.

It also seems a brother to the Now What blog, run by similar company, Lance Olsen and crew.

If someone can convince Gary Lutz to start blogging, I will cry a baby doll that will stand on America.

Please?

Presses / Comments Off on fc2 Blog
October 9th, 2008 / 6:49 pm

2 Online Journals I like that I never see talked about

There are all kinds of little weird journals tucked around the internet that no one talks about really, I don’t know why some get talked about and some don’t, some get talked about even though they kind of suck and some that do some really interesting stuff don’t get talked about probably because they just like words and don’t care about showing people, that’s good, maybe I shouldn’t show anybody, I am going to anyway.

The first journal I like that I never see talked about is Mustachioed, which features really cool bizarre, hip-ish art and nice and strange little snippets of absurdist-like poems. The current issue has more known people like The Pines and Nate Pritts alongside several other people I’ve never heard of, which is my favorite way to see a journal: a few semi-knowns, and some new(s). I haven’t read much of this new issue yet, it seems more ‘modern’ than previous issues, but in issue three it had Sean Kilpatrick, who I nominate as the king of something good. Really, it is nice to see journals that clearly make consideration to give a chance to make the work look good, no matter what the words are: the design of the site is clean and nice.

The second journal I like that I never see talked about is COUPREMINE. They do really deconstructionist type stuff with weird graphs and found objects, or at least language that feels as such, as well as seeming erasures of weird mechanical texts. The design of the site is appropriately minimalist to match the structure and reflection of texts, like this excerpt from Maurice Oliver’s piece in the current issue:

Then finally, I make a list of the things we won’t need:

-Hula honey in the airplane propeller.

-A stand-in knot of arsenal bondage.

-Any spittish trail that pours out of chance.

-Straw bales from your marooned pelvic purse.

-Any trifle act of a same-sex drought.

It goes on a little further like that, and the whole site is stuffed with this kind of peculiar disconnection, which makes the fact that is buried that much cooler, so tuck this thing in your computer and shhh don’t tell anybody.

Uncategorized / 7 Comments
October 9th, 2008 / 1:53 am

Muumuu House

Tao Lin had been talking about making a press for a long time, he had a post once discussing the name, what should he name it, one of the names then was Muumuu House, and now MUUMUU HOUSE has sneakily snuck a website onto the web.

The site, sneakily snuck onto the web, is pretty chock full of stuff already, featuring new fiction, poetry, and Tao’s favorite-artform Gchats, featuring many of the likely suspects from a Tao-run press.

Most awesomely, the press has also announced their first two titles to be published in perfect bound print next year, Ellen Kennedy’s SOMETIMES MY HEART PUSHES MY RIBS in March 09 and Brandon Scott Gorrell’s DURING MY NERVOUS BREAKDOWN I WANT TO HAVE A BIOGRAPHER PRESENT in June 09.

This was all discovered in a post on Brandon’s blog, in which Brandon announced his retraction of the book from its previous acceptance at Greying Ghost press, which may or may not result in a promotional snafu for the book, if people decide to fuss about the switch or not.

Here is the very Tao-like ‘submission policy’:

To submit to Muumuu House find a person who has been published by or is associated with Muumuu House and read their blog. If you like their blog make a comment in their comments section in a sincere and natural manner, expressing your feelings. Eventually someone associated with Muumuu House will probably read your comment and click your name and find your blog. If that person likes your blog, to a certain degree, then they will probably tell other people in emails or in real life and then at some point you will probably be emailed, not necessarily about Muumuu House, but maybe about Muumuu House. I think this is more natural. It supports a ‘there is no good or bad in art’ mentality, is probably much faster and more efficient than emailing submissions and having people read them and respond to them, and I think it decreases loneliness, boredom, and despair more effectively than with ‘normal’ submissions, based on my experiences with the internet, I believe.

The MUUMUU HOUSE site is nice and calming to look at, the blue/black/white no photos feel is pleasant, it seems a very good thing.

Presses & Web Hype / 14 Comments
October 8th, 2008 / 2:02 pm

2 Titles from the new PistolPress

The new indie press PistolPress out of Canada, who earlier this year debuted with their beautiful litmag full of weird lit work, has now announced their first two titles as a press, BUTCHER’S BLOCK by Deanna Fong and WE WILL BE FISH by Jp King.

Both are print books of poetry with covers so nice that they alone make me want to buy the books. And from the quality of the PistolPress issue, I would feel safe doing so even know very little about the authors, as the quality they have exhibited already is quite high.

It’s nice to see new presses of this quality with an obvious eye for art and design, as too often it seems presses are just willing to slop a name and a picture on a book without thinking about the necessity of making a reader cross that bridge on faith.

Publishing: it’s a faith game, it really is, and luckily there are still things to have faith in.

Presses / Comments Off on 2 Titles from the new PistolPress
October 8th, 2008 / 1:32 pm

Michael Kimball, Postcard Genius et al

If you haven’t heard by now, Michael Kimball, who I also like to think of as a genie who broke through his own bottle, was recently inducted into the Guinness Book for International King of Postcards.

Over the past few months, Kimball has been working on a series of postcards in which, after speaking to his subject for a while, he condenses their life story into a text small enough to fit on the back of a postcard. Then he mails them the postcard. It’s a pretty peculiar experience, to receive this little piece of paper that encapsulates you into these amazing microwords, lanced by Kimball’s stellar, steady eye. Me, I can’t even draw a decent sketch of a dude’s head.

The results, besides being in the mail, have been cataloged online at his postcard life stories blog. Among others, you can read, in less than a couple minutes, the lives of folks like Kim Chinquee, Adam Robinson, Myfanwy Collins, Josh Maday, Jen Michalski, and a wide range of people from out of nowhere. The scope of the thing is just kind of flabbergasting: Kimball as a filter for all these people’s years. I can’t imagine anyone else capable of such an undertaking.

Oh, and besides all that, he just so happens to have also published one of the hottest, most innovative books of the year.

Author Spotlight / 7 Comments
October 7th, 2008 / 8:08 pm

3 New FC2

There are three new titles just out from FC2 for summer: LA MEDUSA by Vanessa Place, LEDFEATHER by Stephen Graham Jones, and THE BRUISE by Magdalena Zurawski, all of which look incredible and make me want to order order order.

I really like when FC2 updates their new books as they always supply lots of info to troll around in. Each title has excerpts from the book, info on the the author, press, and so on. It seems pretty easy to get an idea of what the books are like and whether you will want them, and I usually do. You can also always dig around in their excellent archives for same sorts of info on all the great books they’ve done over the years.

They are also still accepting subs for this year’s Ronald Sukenik Innovative Fiction prize throughout the end of the month.

Presses / 6 Comments
October 7th, 2008 / 1:30 pm