http://www.christopherhiggs.org/
Christopher Higgs recommends Tierra Whack's WHACK WORLD, Otomo Yoshihide's ANODE, Marlon James's BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF, and a lunch of cucumber, tomato, red onion, feta, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Welcome to the first installment of my new series: Reading Comics. I’m excited to report that I’ve got a bunch of great contributors lined up, and am myself working on a few entries. If you haven’t contacted me yet, but would like to participate, email me and let me know! Without further ado….here’s Greg Hunter…
Daredevil #4 (Story by Mark Waid, Art by Marcos Martin)
Shortly before the arrival of DC Comics’ New 52, DC’s competitor Marvel released the first issue of a new series starring its blind crimefighter Daredevil. In light of the timing, the new Daredevil serves as a parallel study in what makes a relaunch succeed or fail. And, if the first few issues are any indication, a master class.
Now is an exciting time for comic book lovers and newbies alike, in part because DC comics has decided to restart their entire catalog. “The New 52” they’re calling it. A complete reboot: new writers, new artists, new storylines, and a reset to issue #1 for everything. I’ve decided to use this event as a motivator to get myself more involved with comic books. Over the past few years my interest in them has grown, but it’s still an unfamiliar world and I have a lot to learn, which is both exciting and a little intimidating. On that note, I thought perhaps I’d share with you some ideas, reactions, commentary about the comic books I’m reading — maybe make this an ongoing thing, a new series: “Reading Comics.” Perhaps I’ll also ask a few writers that I know of who are into comics to contribute to the series. (If you’re interested in contributing a few words about reading comics, email me at higgs dot chris at gmail.)
To begin, new comics come out on Wednesday. Here’s what I got today:
Swamp Thing #1
Animal Man #1
Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
Severed #1 & #2
After the jump, I’ll share a bit about my history with comic books in order to contextualize my perspective. Then, in the not too distant future, I’ll offer a few thoughts about the comics on that list. So far I’ve read the Animal Man and Severed #1. Both are really good!
Geoffrey Gatza, the editor of BlazeVOX, has issued a statement. In it he writes:
BlazeVOX is not closing its doors.
That said, I feel like I should explain a bit further the co-operative nature of our business model. I am not going to change what we do, but I do acknowledge that perhaps I could communicate what we do a little better.
I, for one, am glad to hear that BlazeVox will not be closing down, and that Gatza has decided to work toward a more transparent policy.
Conversation abounds: Johannes Göransson, Shanna Compton, Michael Kelleher, Craig Santos Perez, Reb Livingston, Collin Kelley, Justin Evans, and Christopher Janke are among the voices to have weighed in on the subject.
I saw on Facebook where Matt Bell had written:
A really disheartening post at Bark about BlazeVOX’s new “acceptance” letter for book manuscripts, where they require a $250 donation from the author before publishing. BlazeVOX has published a couple books I’ve really loved, which makes me sorry and disappointed and angry to read this. I know times are tough, but preying on writers isn’t the solution.
I clicked on the link and read the article written by Brett Ortler, which outlines his exchange with BlazeVOX editor Geoffrey Gatza.
I echo Matt’s response: this is troubling and disheartening. For those of you out there who are new to creative writing, who are currently in the process of learning the ropes of publishing, it is considered unethical for a publisher to ask you to pay to have your work published. Back in the day, before the internet, there used to be this thing called The Writer’s Market (maybe it still exists?), which was this huge brick of a book that helped writers find places to send their work. It also included helpful essays about publishing. One of the first rules you would learn by reading The Writer’s Market is that anyone who asks you for money to publish your work should not be trusted.
Like Matt, I admit that BlazeVOX has published a few books I’ve loved (and written about or run promos for here), but this sort of pay-to-publish policy seriously threatens to diminish the press’s legitimacy in my eyes.
Dear Panty Wearer,
Having read the new issue of Action, Yes while listening to Slayer’s Reign in Blood — except for when I got to “sounds for soloists” by Sebastian Eskildsen and Cia Rinne, which required me to pause Slayer — I continue to return to the final line of “Winter Diary” by Lidija Praizovic, translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson. The conjunction of the profane with the rhythmic beauty of its iambic tetrameter (da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM) really appeals to me. I back up and re-read the second half of the final stanza:
Starting next week, I’ll be teaching two sections of an undergraduate course in Postmodern American Literature. For those who might be interested in what we’re reading, here’s the list:
John Barth – Lost in the Funhouse (1968)
+ excerpts from Metafiction by Patricia Waugh
+ “Mapping the Postmodern” by Andreas Huyssen
Joanna Russ – The Female Man (1975)
+ “A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway
+ “Change of Dominant from Modernist to Postmodernist Writing” by Brian McHale
Clarence Major – My Amputations (1986)
+ “Postmodern Blackness” by bell hooks
+ “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” by Jacques Derrida
David Markson – Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988)
+ “The Precession of the Simulacra” by Jean Baudrillard
+ “Poetics of Postmodernism” by Linda Hutcheon
Lara Glenum & Arielle Greenberg, eds. – Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics (2010)
+ “The Laugh of the Medusa” by Hélène Cixous
+ “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” by Frederic Jameson
I’m pleased to present the following interview I conducted with Mathias Svalina, author of one book of poems, Destruction Myth (Cleveland State University Poetry Center), & one book of prose, the newly released I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur (Mud Luscious Press).
To celebrate the release of I.A.A.V.P.E., Mathias has decided to give away money.
One dollar to be exact, but a very special dollar…
To win, post a word from the dictionary in the comment box below. Mathias will randomly select one of the words as the winning word. To the writer of the winning word, Mathias will write a unique business plan on a dollar bill, which the winner can then showcase (or spend) to commemorate their first dollar earned.
Contest ends Friday at noon.
In traditional bourgeois culture the avantgarde was successful in sustaining difference. Within the project of modernity it launched a successful assault on 19th-century aestheticism, which insisted on the absolute autonomy of art, and on traditional realism, which remained locked into the dogma of mimetic representation and referentiality. Postmodernism has lost that capacity to gain shock value from difference, except perhaps in relation to forms of a very traditional aesthetic conservatism. The counter-measures the historical avantgarde proposed to break the grip of bourgeois institutionalized culture are no longer effective. The reasons that avantgardism is no longer viable today can be located not only in the culture industry’s capacity to co-opt, reproduce, and comodify, but, more interestingly, in the avantgarde itself. Despite the power and integrity of its attacks against traditional bourgeois culture and against the deprivations of capitalism, there are moments in the historical avantgarde which show how deeply avantgardism itself is implicated in the Western tradition of growth and progress.
–Andreas Huyssen – After The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Indiana University Press, 1986)
(Melville House, 2007)
Over the past six weeks, I have been teaching a summer semester undergraduate literature course entitled “Reexamining the Body: Race & Gender in American Experimental Fiction.” After a week of introductory material, we dedicated one week (four days a week) to studying a single novel: Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982), Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School (1978), Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005), and Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee (2007). Each posed a different set of issues, which allowed us to discuss literature as contagion, as colonization, as assault, as enchantment, and as sedation.
To celebrate the last day of class, I thought I would share with you my notes for Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee. These are basically the blueprints for my lectures, or what I use to begin thinking about what I’m going to say in class. In the interest of time, and in the interest of authenticity, I’ve decided not to correct or clean up or organize these notes, but instead share them as they appear in my Word Doc titled “Notes: Tao Lin Eeeeee.” It’s scattershot, sure, but that’s sort of how my brain works.