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.
Featherproof Mini-Books
Featherproof Books has been in fantastic habit of releasing free mini books for quite a while, featuring a line up of fully downloadable and print-friendly short PDF-based chapbook like things from people such as Amelia Gray, Paul Fattaruso, Kevin Sampsell, and tons of excellent others. There have them archived on the site there for free along with their regular print books, including the brand new and very excellent design-masterpiece BORING BORING BORING BORING BORING BORING BORING by Zach Plague, which in itself is a thing to stare at and behold.
As of this week there are two brand new minibooks: THE STORK by John Griswold and MAGIC by Malread Case, which are both queued up in my printer. It’s a great e-lit companion to their print press.. so if you haven’t done so already, drop by and check some out, and when their submission window opens again, send them something.
Black Clock open to web subs
Black Clock has always been abysmally slow in their return of reading: last week I got a response from them for stuff I’d sent over a year before, and had since retracted, though this was better than the two other times I submitted, in which I received no response at all.
Hopefully that will take a swing for the better now that they’ve switched their submission policy over to include electronic subs via their website, though we’ll see.
Even despite the long slur, Black Clock has long been one of my favorite to look at lit mags, they make beautiful issues that feature really strong language and image based work, plus its edited by the masterful Steve Erickson. Give it a roll of the dice.
Uncategorized / 14 Comments
October 2nd, 2008 / 12:25 pm
October 2nd, 2008 / 12:25 pm
I will not say anything smarmy about the fact I like Sam Pink’s writing
I don’t think it’s unethical to say some words about Sam Pink’s forthcoming first book on here, even though Sam writes for the site. I have been salivating for someone to release a Sam Pink book for a while now, and finally the newly fashioned and surely balls out Paper Hero Press, run by Barry Graham and Peter Schwartz.
I mention it now because they just put up a preorder link for the book. It is $12 worth spending. I would say more about what I think of Sam’s writing but my blurb on the book I think says it all:
“Sam Pink exists in all things. Sam Pink’s tremor is threaded through the dark sections of scenes in the first Back to the Future, the sections we generally think of as ‘night.’ Sam Pink gored his way to the center of the child Russell Edson and ate all the beautiful / smart / wicked / fucked / riotous / smarmy / unconditional parts about him, then went to incubate and redouble. Sam Pink absorbed the passing souls of Andy Kaufman, Anton LaVey, Klaus Kinski and Shel Silverstein and fried them in his mother’s blood. When Sam Pink emerged he wasn’t crying, but everyone in the hospital was, tears of whiskey, liquid gold and smegma, and within seconds of his first breath, all our Bibles were ripped in half, prefiguring this book here, this tumor, this thing that should not have a name. It is no exaggeration to say now, with a mouth full of blood, that Sam Pink is dire, is hilarious, is chewing up our future.”
Do yourself a favor and go prebuy the book. You will enjoy. If you know Sam’s writing, you already know this. If you don’t know Sam’s writing, go to his blog and find out.
The cover itself is worth jacking off on. As is the title of the book: I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF THEN KILL THE CLONE AND EAT IT.
He is also a bastard, don’t you like bastards?
NewPages Book Reviews & Waste
This month’s crop of new book review are live at NewPages. NewPages does a pretty slammin’ ass job of bringing a boatload of good indie press reviews every month, once again headed up by the ever present Matt Bell.
Salvation :: The End of the Straight and Narrow :: Based on a True Story :: The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli :: The Waitress Was New :: The Cosmopolitan :: Signs of Life :: Of Kids & Parents :: Waste :: Keep This Forever :: Mind Games
Among these reviews, Mr. Bell himself pens a review of one of my favorite new discoveries of the year as far as writers I needed to find, Eugene Marten, whose WASTE, new from Ellipsis Press, ate my head alive, not even shitting. That book is incredible, and Matt does it justice. You should seriously go buy the book right now, it’s about a fucked up janitor, case closed.
Uncategorized / Comments Off on NewPages Book Reviews & Waste
October 1st, 2008 / 11:50 pm
October 1st, 2008 / 11:50 pm
Online Lit Spotlight in the Believer Oct 08
There’s a new issue of the Believer out for October, and while the magazine is always a great read, this month is particularly good for two sects of people: those who like Gordon Lish, and fans of online lit.
I’m not sure if it was an editorial schematic or chance, but there’s more Lish related stuff in this issue than seems coincidental: an interview with Diane Williams by Kevin Sampsell, an interview with Will Eno by Patricia Mulgraw, a review of David Ohle’s The Pisstown Chaos by Benjamin Strong, and a review of Normal Lock’s Grim Tales, by, well, me.
Of course you could probably take just about any literary magazine with big names in it and somehow Kevin Bacon it right back to Lish, but this one seems most close to home.
On the online lit side, I am excited about my Lock review mainly because it’s primarily an eBook that I reviewed, published online by Elimae and readable here, and also because I got to talk about other online lit sites and eBooks in as awesome a spot as the Believer. The review is also replicated in full online and you can read it here.
Uncategorized / 6 Comments
October 1st, 2008 / 1:31 pm
October 1st, 2008 / 1:31 pm
EWN Indie Publisher E-Panel
Dan Wickett of Dzanc Books and the EWN once again rips shit up with a nice new epanel discussion on independent publishing, with a Q&A among publishers from several indies, including Underland Press, Ellipsis Press, Keyhole Books, Tyrant Press, Hobart Short Flight Long Drive, Rose Metal Press and Hotel St. George Press. They discuss all matters of what running a small press entails, from searching through submissions to marketing the books to sales and promo, just about everything you could want to know.
A great, great interview, and a fascinating read, esp. if you are in the market of trying to place your own book or start your own press.
As a particular favorite moment, here’s Eugene Lim of Ellipsis Press on the future of Indie publishing:
I’d like to think an indie movement is going on. Twelve years ago there was an issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction, titled “The Future of Fiction,” and edited by none other than David Foster Wallace. In it, there’s a hilarious and dead-on piece by Dalkey head John O’Brien, which stated among other things that the “end of literary books in commercial publishing is a historical inevitability.” And so it has come to pass. The bigger houses will cease (have ceased!) to publish literary fiction. It is not profitable for them to market and produce a title that will sell to 5000 people (even if Rick Moody strong-arms a National Book Award for them). S’okay though. The old publishing joke goes, How do you make a small fortune in publishing? Answer: Start with a large one. And then you and your crony get to laugh bitterly together. But it’s the wrong question. A small and lively (and one hopes resurging) group of people care about the novel as art. And with the new methods of production and distribution, it’s getting easier for writers to connect with readers. The truth is there’s never been any money in publishing innovative writers (at least before canonization—for those lucky few). But now what’s being revealed is it doesn’t matter that there isn’t. This is parallel with the digital revolution in filmmaking, which Francis Ford Coppola famously predicted by saying, “One day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart and make a beautiful film with her father’s camcorder and the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever.” Similarly and importantly, the means of production and marketing for books have become much more affordable.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Fence is inside the house
Fence just announced a new fiction and poetry contest run in correlation with the Summer Literary Seminars, with publication and cash prizes for best poems and short stories which can be submitted through their website: here. No stamps or printing = nice.
The fiction side is to be judged by the badass Lynne Tillman, whose last novel AMERICAN GENIUS, is one of the most original and brilliant things I’ve read in years: about the Manson family and a woman in an asylum and encyclopedic recall and other beyond Pynchon shit. In the house.
In addition to being in Fence, winners get free tuition at the SLS, which looks pretty interesting, and includes a trip to either Italy, Lithuania, or Kenya. Jesus xox.
Lily Hoang’s PARABOLA
Lily Hoang’s new novella, PARABOLA, which won the Chiasmus Press Undoing the Novel Contest last year, is finally out and available for consumption. From the looks of it, this thing has got to be incredible. From what I’ve read of Lily’s work (including an ebook I put out by her earlier this year THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL) she is quite on top of the semi-surrealist mash up of fairy tale and Lynchian narrative, in a way not quite captured by anyone else I’ve seen.
PARABOLA is definitely worth checking out, and is the first in a slew of novels forthcoming from Lily, you can buy it from the press’s site above.
Bonus Lily links:
An awesome short fiction on Alice Blue Review
An interview with Lily about the novella and her writing process.
Tao Lin’s 2nd Novel will be a Historical Memoir
Ok, yeah, not really, but at least the title will get some people to think so, as Tao Lin announced a couple days ago on his blog that his second novel will be titled RICHARD YATES, author of REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and THE EASTER PARADE, among other things. The novel, scheduled out from Melville House in the Fall of ’09, features as two of its main characters, Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning.
Tao also answered some more questions about his writing process and the future of, um, stuff, in a nice interview with NYU Local.
If you’re just itching to get a read on the novel, a section that is supposedly included in the novel was published in the 2008 edition of NOON.
Sleepingfish Goes Sliced
Reading period is now open for the next issue of Sleepingfish, which in its new African incarnation will be web-based, a nice node on the face of internet’s reading life.
From editor Derek White:
Having relocated recently to Nairobi, the next issue might have more of a Kenyan or African slant, but not necessarily so. I do however encourage international writers, and writing that takes place outside of the contemporary American psyche, or in fictional places altogether. Despite this skew, Sleepingfish will still retain it’s same skewed aesthetic. If you are not familiar with this aesthetic, please browse some back issues or the recent print issue.
It will be nice to see how the translation occurs, and hopefully we will develop ex-American scourge from the new bruise. Yummy. Send some words, etc.
Uncategorized / Comments Off on Sleepingfish Goes Sliced
September 28th, 2008 / 2:50 pm
September 28th, 2008 / 2:50 pm