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.
Amelia Gray’s Museum of the Weird
This is one for the decade, and came out today. You are going to need at least 1-3 copies. I’d say more but you probably already know. Or here are blurbs.
“Amelia Gray’s Museum of the Weird is a cabinet of curiosities—a talking armadillo, a serial killer named God, a woman who amputates her toes for dinner, a man married to a paring knife—this collection of stories is so good and funny and wondrous that I couldn’t look away from her dark and curious imagination.”—Michael Kimball
“To say Amelia Gray belongs in the hilariously inventive hallows of Ann Quin and Rikki Ducornet would be to miss her light. This book is gleaming evidence of the author as a trophy case unto herself, wrought of magic equally surprising, wicked, giddy, and loaded with a megaton of Boom.”—Blake Butler
[Here is a sample text from the book: There Will Be Sense.]
Get get now. Do the get. Get the real: straight from FC2.
Or also available here.
Paragraphs of Paragraphs (8): Pierre Guyotat
Death to the officers! O my latrine, hug me stronger. I give you my wife. Throw my babies into the fire, to the dunghill, trample them under the foot of the marriage bed heavy with your intermingled bodies. She caresses, she kisses your worried muscles. Tear with your teeth rotten by the black meat and the bromided wine, tear with your tanned cock the linen hanging in the toilets, the linen fragrant with the talc and the vomit of the new-born. Ransack my furniture. The room exhales, you erect naked and wearing wool up to the knees, a fragrance of snow and grease. Strangle, knock senseless in their bed my father and my mother. Slaughter on his exercise books my brother dozing at the table. The bites of the native whores reopen on the lower part of your belly under the hair. Dig with your dagger, ear cutter, the polished flooring and free the spring singing for my child in the foundations. Lie down in its water and the cuttings and the earth and the cement powder covering your jaw, fuck my wife to death and, standing up again, squash her head in the stream blocked by sperm. And feeling light, rifle hanging from the shoulder and the mosquito net tied around your loins, push the door and, once you reached the border, throw yourself into our arms laden with dying game. O ear cutter, hoist yourself up with us in the hollow between the branches warmed up by our turds. The smell of the married men’s blood is shrouding the city. To it we prefer the fragrance of the bugs gorged with our blood.
Werner Herzog answers Qs from Twitter
Many more here. [Via Susan Tomaselli]
Blake Butler—
Is opening a writer’s archives to the public after his or her death wrong, even if the author’s estate approves?
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McNorway: An Interview with John Erik Riley by Audun Mortensen
[The latest issue of McSweeney’s features a section on Norwegian writing, edited by John Erik Riley and Mikkel Bugge. One of the featured authors, Audun Mortensen, author of the newly released novel Roman, recently conducted an interview with Mr. Riley (whose own novel Heimdal, California is forthcoming soon) in which they discussed: “sly stallone, per petterson’s personal brand, mcsweeney’s, ‘norwegian lit scene’, celebrity chef breakdown.” – BB]
AM: we attended a ‘corporate literary party’ in oslo last week and got alcohol for free. could you outline some american equivalents, in terms of commercial success and literary style, to five of the most ‘prominent’ norwegian authors you spotted at this party?
JER: Hm. Erm. If by prominent you mean interesting and/or awesome, I spotted the following five writers:
Erlend Loe (= Douglas Coupland + Andy Warhol + Dave Eggers)
Roy Jacobsen (= Jonathan Franzen + Jack London + John Irving)
Anna Fiske (= Charles M. Schulz + Chris Ware + Dr. Seuss)
Stig Sæterbakken (= Edgar Allen Poe + Antony Hegarty + William T. Vollmann)
Audun Mortensen (= Stephen Malkmus + Facebook + Ramona Flowers)
16 Comments
September 3rd, 2010 / 10:29 am
September 3rd, 2010 / 10:29 am
First Book Interview with Keith Montesano
Keith Montesano is the author of the newly released and stunningly black and bracing Ghost Lights, his debut from Dream Horse Press. At his First Book Interviews blog, he conducts a series of interviews with writers upon the publication of their first book, detailing the experience and the feeling of the completion of a first work, and I asked him to do the same with his own questions.
How often had you sent out Ghost Lights before it was selected for publication by Dream Horse Press?
I sent the book out 60 times before I received an email from J.P. Dancing Bear telling me that I was a finalist for the Orphic Prize and that the press was able to publish the finalists that year.
Was the title always Ghost Lights? Did it go through any other changes?
A good chunk of the book was my MFA thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University, when it was called About Ravishment. I remember sitting with some friends at a bar near VCU, and when I told them the title of the manuscript I was sending out, which they knew was the title of my thesis, I got some weird looks. I was asked if other titles were kicking around, and I told them I’d been thinking about Ghost Lights. Then I got the looks that said, “I think you found your title.”
6 Comments
September 2nd, 2010 / 11:49 am
September 2nd, 2010 / 11:49 am
Harmony Korine’s Act Da Fool
While we’re on the Harmony Korine again, there is a new short film called Act Da Fool by him on the Proenza Schoulder site. It is retarded gorgeous. In a related Q&A on the site he refers to it as his version of The Ten Commandments. [Thanks to Mike Kitchell for the point.]
Creeps Future Korine
1. Also officially out today, the amazing The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich, which truly lives up to its hype: it’s enormous and insane + magic. Full review forthcoming.
2. @ Not Coming, a 3 part review of the Back to the Future series. (1) (2) (3)
3. @ the Guardian, Harmony Korine has a list of things he knows, including: “When I hear the song “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” by Three 6 Mafia, it’s like listening to the gospels…” & “I didn’t really research anything for my film Trash Humpers, I just did it – just lived like a homeless person and it was great.”