Brooks Sterritt
http://twitter.com/brookssterritt
Writing by Brooks Sterritt appears or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, LIT, TRNSFR, The Madison Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Boston.
25 Points: Old Gus Eats
Old Gus Eats
by Polly Duff Bresnick
Publishing Genius Press, 2012
28 pages / $4 buy from PGP
[The Translator's Note accompanying Old Gus Eats begins: "To visually mistranslate The Odyssey while not knowing the language, I looked for familiar shapes in the Greek symbols that could form English words. This has been termed eye-rhyming, bad lip reading, and Rorschach writing." Similarly, I wrote a 25 point review of Old Gus Eats, translated it into Greek using Google Translate, and attempted to visually mistranslate the Greek back into English.]
1. Paprika Pad Thai mojo draws the attention of asphyxiating ukulele slatherers, forming a tautology.
2. Yogurt induces food observations.
3. Ventrical self-serving pie charts can and will increase avoirdupois noontime chestnut old betsy emissions. Otto enters the ether.
4. An echo purges me nightly, biting my journal of Hellenistic studies, kumquats, eureka, mazeltov, orange pod.
5. O.J. Simpson as maker of P.T. Barnum bone structures: not only cornucopia but 88 tote bags of ayahuasca doctors. Madeleine Albright goes deep.
6. Negative herpes icon resembling Tristan Tzara’s dressmaker dummy applies milk mask to mule, nods vigorously, becomes spurter, engages in tantric AYO ALMIGHTY KAPOW verses, pierces epilogue.
7. Aztecs not mentioned.
8. Aflac peen dongler appears as vat paddler. Oval apertures and vellum vulvas elongated to vast dimensions of fatwa flavors.
9. Otto triangle ensnares kava plant with Diplo audio, followed by frequent kevlar didacticism. Ottawa nixed from frontal bouche/gouge, and trumpeted into era of revisionist tapioca pap smears.
10. Mystic River references unencumbering, pie frequent, epoxy pleasant. READ MORE >
6 Comments
November 20th, 2012 / 9:09 am
November 20th, 2012 / 9:09 am
Krazy Kat: Herriman, Cantor, von Heyl
from Krazy Kat, 1913-1944 by George Herriman
So drop the bomb!
The sun on her carpet was swirling up into a fire of magnesium blues and sulfurous browns, a mushroom cloud of flame and smoke, with little Ignatz and his metal necktie rising serenely on top. Top o’ the World, Ma! Once more she was watching a fire storm that she had somehow caused, and it was shaking her apart! She felt like she had a snake coiling inside her, yet the snake was her, and she was inside it. The snake was made of blackness and stars. And every star in the snake was another smaller snake that was made of blackness and stars, and those stars were snakes made of blackness and stars. The snake was the beginning and end of things: death biting the tail of love, every yes that became no that became love become hate become yes again. The snake would kill her but it would give birth to her, too, over and over, if only she could keep the snake together. And the only way to do that was to get the tail of it into her own mouth, to bite the beginning and end of things and be the circle.
from Krazy Kat: a novel in five panels, 1988, by Jay Cantor
It’s Vot’s Behind Me That I Am (Krazy Kat), 2010, acrylic and oil on linen and canvas, by Charline von Heyl
Brooks Sterritt—
Why does 99.9999999999999999% of political writing seem to have such a short shelf life?
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Reviews Section Update: 25 Points
HTMLGiant is now accepting submissions for a new category of book review. “25 Points” will feature reviews consisting of numbered series: 25 facts and/or opinions about a single work. Tangential list items, variations of length, and other deviations are encouraged. Reviews and queries can be sent to brooks [at] htmlgiant [dot] com.
Brooks Sterritt—
Is Cormac McCarthy the rural Don DeLillo or is Don DeLillo the urban Cormac McCarthy?
This Isn’t Really an Interview: Robert Alan Wendeborn Talks to Dan Magers and Carrie Murphy About Their New Books
Robert Alan Wendeborn: So, first I guess I want you two to say something about yourselves, intro or whatever…
Dan Magers: Carrie do you want to go first?
Carrie Murphy: haha sure
what do you mean, robbie?
like a mini bio or like a funny fact or something?
RW: um, introduce yourself
mini bio
on the fly
CM: ok, i’m carrie murphy, i wrote a book called Pretty Tilt, from keyhole press, i’m from Baltimore, MD, i got my MFA (with robbie) at nmsu in las cruces NM
Henry Kissinger on Writing
“Power is the great aphrodisiac.”
“Even a paranoid can have enemies.”
“Universal rule, to last, needs to translate force into obligation.”
“Multiple contests take place simultaneously in different regions of the board.”
“There are no isolated events.”
“Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.”
“The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mold reality in the light of their purposes.”
“Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.”
“It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.”
“I’ve always acted alone. Americans like that immensely.”
“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”
“If you believe that their real intention is to kill you, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that they would lie to you.”
“Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means defines both the challenge and the limits of diplomacy.”
“Given the pace of technology, patience can easily turn into evasion.”
“Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy.”
List of Artworks Destroyed in the 9/11 World Trade Center Attack
(via @PierreMenard (via biblioklept (via Wikipedia)))
Brooks Sterritt—
Do you want literature? Are you interested in liturgical vestments? Ever experience hemotoxicity? Want to stroke maple musical instruments? Did you know that ‘zero’ is in? |||||| NNATAN 0 / THE FIDDLEBACK 2.4 ||||||
Cover to Cover: The Coffin Factory
The Coffin Factory is a magazine. I mean: you will read it and say “that was a MAGAZINE” and also you can fold it in half and not damage it. They are having a contest. I read most of the third issue on a bus, the rest on a porch. I read the whole thing then carried it around in my book bag or backpack, wanting to write about the issue but not doing so and instead opening the issue to take notes and simply enjoying the contents again and then sometimes researching the authors therein. I have read every issue (all 3) of The Coffin Factory to date. READ MORE >
GOOD OLD NEON
I know that you know as well as I do how fast thoughts and associations can fly through your head. You can be in the middle of a creative meeting at your job or something, and enough material can rush through your head just in the little silences when people are looking over their notes and waiting for the next presentation that it would take exponentially longer than the whole meeting just to try to put a few seconds’ silence’s flood of thoughts into words. This is another paradox, that many of the most important impressions and thoughts in a person’s life are ones that flash through your head so fast that fast isn’t even the right word, they seem totally different from or outside of the regular sequential clock time we all live by, and they have so little relation to the sort of linear, one-word-after-another-word English we all communicate with each other with that it could easily take a whole lifetime just to spell out the contents of one split-second’s flash of thoughts and connections, etc.—and yet we all seem to go around trying to use English (or whatever language our native country happens to use, it goes without saying) to try to convey to other people what we’re thinking and to find out what they’re thinking, when in fact deep down everybody knows it’s a charade and they’re just going through the motions. What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant.
Forty Stories from Harper Perennial
Fifty-Two Stories, as you might know, has dropped forty at once (downloadable now as a free PDF, and as a free ebook on July 17). The forty include sick fictions from Lindsay Hunter, Shane Jones, Scott McClanahan, Catherine Lacey, Kayden Kross, Blake Butler, Brandon Hobson, Roxane Gay, Adam Wilson, Kyle Minor, +30 more![!!] Somewhat related: has anyone ever walked into a physical bookstore to acquire a free ebook? Did you get your free Slurpee on 7/11/12?
An Attempt at an Unedited Transcript of Thought Processes Preceding the Purchase of Grow Up by Ben Brooks
KRAMERBOOKS
1517 CONNECTICUT AVE NW
WASHINGTON DC 20036
05/29/12
10:34:54 A.M.
what is that? that is eye-catching. what is this cover? i like this cover. oh. ben brooks. i know ben brooks. this is a great cover. the skull + clown makeup + clown nose + Xed out eyes + Clockwork Orangey hat. i think. “cross out the eyes.” someone had posters of tom morello and britney spears and he Xed out both their sets of eyes and it was funny, and ironic in the case of tom morello because he actually admired him. oh. dennis cooper. good vibes. this blurb is punchy. one single solid blurb. a novel. a novel. white on black. grow up. hmmmm. little penguin in the corner. is the font for “Ben Brooks” the same for “Dennis Cooper” and do they differ from the red of the clown nose. little penguin in the corner. black and white on orange. $14.00. damn. independent bookstore though. $14.00. damn. square author photo. “careens.” “teenage debauchery.” the design here, the package. “Ben Brooks is a magical imp…” that is a bad-ass cover. $14.00. “Ben Brooks is a magical imp who pumps out dark nuggets…” “get high with friends, finish his novel [this novel?], alleviate his best friend’s suicidal depression, seduce…” “…dark nuggets of poetry…” wait a second. i think i actually met ben brooks. pretty sure i met him at the pop serial party at AWP chicago and said “aren’t we facebook friends” and he was like “i wouldn’t know, i have over 1000!” what the fuck. gloucestershire? fuck this shit. maybe that was someone else. actually, pretty sure that was someone else. oh, a quote from Los Campesinos! is that like Against Me! or something? pretty sure i saw them at Warped Tour as a child. hmmmmm, checking phone:
READ MORE >
The Weaklings Library
An impressive compilation of Books Dennis Cooper Loved appears at The Weaklings Library.
Brooks Sterritt—
Those interested in the Oulipo should peep Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature by Daniel Levin Becker, out today from Harvard University Press. [addendum: excerpt of an excerpt from The Believer]
Brooks Sterritt—
HTMLGIANT is seeking anonymous reviews, which can be sent to brooks [at] htmlgiant [dot] com. Guidelines and previous reviews are here; questions are welcome.
