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.
Blake Butler—
Lee Klein’s Eyeshot’s REJECTION LETTERS FROM THE EYESHOT OUTBOX v.9, which for me have always been an instructive and hilarious example of internet tone, and ‘real talk.’ Hopefully it is not truly the last.
“1. There’s a reason that Eyeshot’s sub guidelines say no “write” or “writer” e-mail addresses unless you’re very young. It suggests an aesthetic, a “writer” type who owns a Moleskine journal, whose work mostly disrespects the maturity, patience, and literary knowledge/expectations of readers, and who refers to journals and sites as “markets.” These writers live for those glorious days when Duotrope posts “congratulations, writer name!” next to the silly name of some obscure lit site that’ll be abandoned by 2010. 2012 the latest. “
62
Blake Butler—
Some say Thomas Pynchon got nabbed of the 1974 Pulitzer for Gravity’s Rainbow due to a majority of the presiding panel’s distaste for his scene where our hero eats feces out of the ass of a prostitute (not to mention a very particular description of what sort of whose anatomy the protruding waste reminds our hero of). Indeed, it’s a pretty hard scene to shake after reading. What are some of the scenes in books that are most indelibly in your mind, and what do you think it is about them that makes them stick there?
Blake Butler—
It’s okay to talk about anything you want, including talking about not wanting to hear certain people talk. I mean, I’m okay with all of that. Imagine sometimes someone is just seeing whatup. I don’t like the word ethos. Dead Prez.
Blake Butler—
Should I ban the commenter ‘Mather Schneider’? Is it worthwhile to have all venues open for commenting, or is sometimes enough enough? Is it possible to be so dense or ‘dense acting’ that you turn discussions in circles simply by continuing to stick snarky comments in every possible hole that you can fill? Is the argument good for a community, or is it sometimes just time to rub out the blah blah? Your thoughts are appreciated.
Michael Kimball interviews Robert Lopez
Another excellent Michael Kimball interview at the Faster Times, this time with Robert Lopez, whose Kamby Bolongo Mean River should be on each and every Best of the Year list that knows anything about anything. Seriously had a more visceral emotional response to this book than any in recent memory, in the strangest of ways, such that I ended up just staring off between each sentence, feeling it bump around inside my head. An incredible example of how voice and sentences alone can create a heavy, gorgeous, multivalent whole. I’m giving a copy to my mom for Christmas this year.
Authotrope
There should be a Duotrope-like thing for editors, where editors can report info on their submitters, like how many times each author submits work that shows they’ve completely ignored the guidelines and/or even the general tastelines of the magazine, how many submissions and follow up emails they’ve sent within a certain period, the average rate at which those submitters are rejected, and how many issues of the magazine that submitter has actually bought, and some other bonus crud. “Man, Joey Larfdensen is so irresponsible! Another 40 second period between one rejection and the next submission? Another vampiric baby-biting neo-noir story to our parenting magazine? A personal response to our personal response saying what a bunch of ‘tasteless bongdicks’ we are? He’s just not treating us editors fairly, I say!” Democracy! Peeyawww!
Some Jews are OK?
Thanks to Tony O’Neill for the tip off: christwire.org calls Jonathan Safran Foer “A Jewish Star Christians Really Can Follow!”.
Some direct quotes from the article:
John Updike crowned Foer the genius voice of his generation, but sadly, the rest of that generation was off growing goatees and clicking around MySpace.
His soaring words put cruel and negative Jewish writers like Gary Shteyngart, Sam Lipsyte and Michael Chabon to shame. All they write about is chasing homely girls and how they lack the jocky virility to open a mayonnaise jar. Pathetic!
Snap! Take that Lipsyte, ya hack!
Conjunctions 53
is out now, the Hybrid Histories issue, and as always full of magic power. Among those: Andrew Ervin, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Robert Coover, William Gass, Tim Horvath, Peter Gizzi, Francise Prose, Paul La Farge.
Matt Bell’s incredible long story His Last Great Gift is also included, and can be read online here. It’s a brain eater, as we’ve come to expect on the regular from Mr. Bell.
Its first graph:
SPEAR HAS ALREADY BEEN living in the cabin overlooking High Rock for two weeks when the Electricizers speak of the New Motor for the first time. Awakened by their voices, Spear feels his way down the hallway from the dark and still unfamiliar bedroom to his small office. He lights a lamp and sits down at the desk. Scanning the press of ghastly faces around him, he sees they’re all here tonight: Jefferson and Rush and Franklin, plus his own namesake, John Murray. They wait impatiently for him to prepare his papers, to dip a pen in ink and shake it free of the excess. When he’s ready, they begin speaking, stopping occasionally to listen to other spirits that Spear can’t quite see, that he doesn’t yet have the skills to hear. These hidden spirits are far more ancient, and Spear intuits that they guide the Electricizers in the same way that the Electricizers guide him.
There aren’t that many magazines you can count on to be provocative and powerful from end to end most every time. Conjunctions is one of those. And you can subscribe for a year for $18 in the US. You will wish you had earlier, I can pretty much promise.
Uncategorized / 33 Comments
November 18th, 2009 / 4:24 pm
November 18th, 2009 / 4:24 pm
Blake Butler—
Dennis Cooper has posted his 1998 interview with Brad Renfro, where he uses his DC powers to get the kid talking about satanism, Stryper, punk, and other. He also drops the title of his next forthcoming book, a collection of nonfiction, Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, Obituaries, forthcoming July 2010 from Harper Perennial.