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.
"Pond Scum" by Bill Benzon
I love Benzon’s photos of pond scum, especially because many of them feature manmade objects amidst the polluted water, which creates an interesting tension between the living and the dead. The juxtaposition of “nature” and “industry” also appeals to me. Bio and synthetic. Both are contagions. Neither are innocuous. Alone they seem dormant, put together they seem toxic. Or at any rate, they seem removed from humanity, forgotten, neglected, afloat in their own private universe. I’m beginning to think of “the avant-garde” synonymously: both living and dead: undead. Or more precisely, not-human, inhuman, unhuman, or as a kind of desire to dehumanize.
Conversation is cracking over at Montevidayo lately on the topic of “the avant-garde.” I tried to join in by offering some preliminary ideas about the connection between the avant-garde and dehumanization. But then other obligations got the best of me and I fell out of the conversation. Then, in the comment section of an interview I did with Noah Cicero over at WWAATD, I responded to questions by Stephen Tully Dierks and tried to extend some of these ideas by showing their application via specific literary texts (Beckett, Barnes, and Burroughs).
All of this to say, I figured maybe I’d do a thinking-out-loud post here on the topic.
According to his official bio, Dennis Cooper was born, he grew up, he wrote, he attended, he transferred, he was expelled, he met, he attended, he then attended, he studied, he founded, he lived, he moved, he began. And now he currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris. Harper Perennial will release his newest novel The Marbled Swarm in November 2011, and next month they will be republishing Horror Hospital Unplugged: his 1997 graphic novel collaboration with artist Keith Mayerson. He blogs at denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com.
Johannes Göransson is the author of four books – Dear Ra, A New Quarantine Will Take My Place, Pilot (“Johann the Carousel Horse”), and Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate – and the translator of several more – most recently Johan Jönson’s Collobert Orbital and Aase Berg’s With Deer. He teaches at the University of Notre Dame and edits Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes, and he blogs at montevidayo.com.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orlbo9WkZ2E
photo by Gary Kuwahara
Sesshu Foster has taught composition and literature in East Los Angeles for 25 years. He’s also taught writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has been published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and the on-line magazine Joyland. He is currently collaborating with artist Arturo Romo and other writers on the ELA Guide. His most recent books are the novel Atomik Aztex (winner of the 2006 Believer Magazine Book Award) and the hybrid text World Ball Notebook (winner of a 2010 American Book Award).
Eileen Myles was born in Boston in 1949, attended catholic schools in Arlington, Mass. and graduated from UMass (Boston) in 1971. She came to New York in 1974 to be a poet. She’s the author of eleven books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, the most recent of which is Inferno: A Poet’s Novel (O/R Books).
Dodie Bellamy’s most recent book is the buddhist (Publication Studio), an essayistic memoir based on her blog, Belladodie. Her most recent chapbook is Whistle While You Dixie (Summer BF Press). Time Out New York named her chapbook Barf Manifesto (Ugly Duckling) “Best Book Under 30 Pages” for 2009. She usually teaches 4 classes a semester in the grad writing programs at Antioch Los Angeles, California College of the Arts, and San Francisco State.
Illustration by Dave Crosland
Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novella Baby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York‘s top books of the year. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife, Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship.
