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.
As an attempt to broaden the conversation I’ve been conducting on the topic of experimental literature, Kent Johnson graciously agreed to answer a few questions about the role of authorship and its connection to experimental literature. (If you’re unfamiliar with Johnson’s work, his complete bio follows after the interview, below.)
[O]ur whole knowledge of art is at bottom illusory, seeing that as mere knowers we can never be fused with that essential spirit, at the same time creator and spectator, who has prepared the comedy of art for his own edification. Only as the genius in the act of creation merges with the primal architect of the cosmos can he truly know something of the eternal essence of art. For in that condition he resembles the uncanny fairy tale image which is able to see itself by turning its eyes. He is at once subject and object, poet, actor, and audience.
-Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) — from Chapter V
James Abbott McNeill Whistler - Nocturne in Blue and Green (1870)
To approach. To peek through. To see Marcel Duchamp’s final contribution, “Etant donnés,” is to confront the intersection of art and crime and beauty and murder.
Remember what Poe said in “The Philosophy of Composition“:
I asked myself—“Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death—was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious—“When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
Here is the threshold:
Here is the observer:
And here is the observed….
BEWARE…NSFW…GRAPHIC VIOLENCE…enter this post at your own risk:
Many Dave Maddens exist in the world. There’s the one from The Partridge Family, the one who is a video game executive, the one who is a musician, the one who is an Australian police commissioner, and the one who is a writer who wrote a book that will be published by St. Martin’s Press two weeks from today entitled The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy.
To celebrate its release, Dave and I came up with an idea: I roamed the web and found various pictures of taxidermied animals, which I sent to Dave. He then responded to each of the pictures using his vast knowledge of the field…you’ll find the pictures and his responses after the jump…you’ll also find a picture without a caption and this is where you come in…
Dave has graciously agreed to give away a free signed copy of the book to the person who comes up with the most best caption to that final image. You have one week from today. He’ll select the winner next Tuesday.
For those of you who aren’t clever, or who aren’t selected by Dave, I highly recommend pre-ordering the book now…it’s about taxidermy folks…you can be sure it kicks ass. Also, you can find out more about the author here.
To use language well, says the voice of literacy, cherish its classic form. Do not choose the offbeat at the cost of clarity. Obscurity is an imposition on the reader. True, but beware when you cross railroad tracks for one train may hide another train. Clarity is a means of subjection, a quality both of official, taught language and of correct writing, two old mates of power: together they flow, together they flower, vertically, to impose an order. Let us not forget that writers who advocate the instrumentality of language are often those who cannot or choose not to see the suchness of things—a language as language—and therefore, continue to preach conformity to the norms of well-behaved writing: principles of composition, style, genre, correction, and improvement. To write “clearly,” one must incessantly prune, eliminate, forbid, purge, purify; in other words, practice what may be called an “ablution of language” (Roland Barthes). (pg. 16-17)
Trinh T. Minh-Ha – Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Indiana University Press, 2009)
In case you missed any of them, below you’ll find links to each of the writers who participated in the second edition of my series of interviews aimed at expanding our understanding of experimental literature. (Also if you missed it, here is a link to the list of writers who participated in the first edition.)
Again, my thanks to everybody for participating. This has been a really insightful experience for me and hopefully for many of you. In the near future, I plan to do a post that addresses some of what I’ve learned from the series and how it has helped me to rethink my ideas about this nebulous category of “experimental literature.” At the moment, I’m unsure about a third edition. Only time will tell. But for now, I encourage you to visit or revisit the ocean of ideas presented by this impressive group of writers:
The Palovista residency, located on a 1,920-acre ranch outside of Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, seeks to foster community among young innovative writers and artists, and to promote a mode of critical exchange that privileges writing/speaking to and with, rather than about. Throughout the residency, a number of visiting publishers and poets are hosted for readings and conversations with the younger writers. Visiting speakers in 2011 will include Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Charles Alexander, Cynthia Miller, Debra di Blasi, Evan Lavender-Smith, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Stanley Crawford, and Miriam Sagan. All events are open to the public. Residency operations are funded by the Junior Fellows Prize from the Kelly Writers House.
Co-directors: Leo Genji Amino & Daisy Atterbury. Participants: Natalie Jacoby, Benny Lichtner, Tamar Nachmany, Mugi Takei, Nicholas Taylor, Valeria Tsygankova, and Zachary Valdez.
You can follow the readings / writings / productions / performances of the Palovista Residency here from July 10-24, 2011.
Michael Martone‘s most recent books are Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fiction from the Flyover, Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, a collection of essays, and Double-wide, his collected early stories. Michael Martone, a memoir in contributor’s notes, Unconventions, Writing on Writing, and Rules of Thumb, edited with Susan Neville, were all published recently. He is also the author of The Blue Guide to Indiana, published by FC2. The University of Georgia Press published his book of essays, The Flatness and Other Landscapes, winner of the AWP Award for Nonfiction, in 2000.
Vi Khi Nao lives in Iowa City. Fugue State Press recently released her novella, The Vanishing Point of Desire. She appears in the 2011 edition of NOON.
