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.
I’m really impressed by all the journalists who could calmly sit down and bust out a thoughtful response to the finale of LOST last night or even this morning. Not me. It was such a royal disappointment, I can hardly put my words together. After a six year commitment, I am left feeling like maybe I should have broken up with it five and a half years ago.
Why?
Because last night the writers of the show invalidated all of the things that made the show unique and intriguing by opting to focus on the human characters rather than the one character that made the show what it was, the island. I sure as hell wasn’t tuning in every week to find out whether or not Sayid would redeem himself or Ben would turn out to be a good guy or who Kate would choose to make out with or if Charlie was ever gonna kick his heroin addiction. That’s the soap opera shit that you can find on any television show. No, I tuned in every week because of the mystery, the mythology, the numbers, the Others, the Egyptian shit, the time traveling, the donkey wheel, the electromagnetism, the Dharma Initiative, the Hanso Foundation, the smoke monster, the disease, the question of fertility, quantum physics, immortality, whispering ghosts, haunted cabins, magical ash, fountains of youth, glowing caves, etc.
Unfortunately, the writers decided those things were superfluous. And thus, they chose to turn a brilliant and mysterious epic into a mere soap opera. Ask yourself: without the island, how is LOST any different than Days of Our Lives?
(*As a side note, this is exactly why Battlestar Galactica ended up sucking: it, too, lost sight of what made it unique and succumbed to becoming a soap opera.)
The perfume her body exhaled was of the quality of that earth-flesh, fungi, which smells of captured dampness and yet is so dry, overcast with the odor of oil of amber, which is an inner malady of the sea, making her seem as if she had invaded a sleep incautious and entire. Her flesh was the texture of plant life, and beneath it one sensed a frame, broad, porous and sleep-worn, as if sleep were a decay fishing her beneath the visible surface. About her head there was an effulgence as of phosphorous glowing about the circumference of a body of water—as if her life lay through her in ungainly luminous deteriorations—the troubling structure of the born somnambule, who lives in two worlds—meet of child and desperado. (pgs. 34-35)
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
by David Lipsky (Available now from Broadway Books)
I’m trying to write a full review of this book right now, but it’s proving difficult.
First, I must admit that unlike many of my literary colleagues, I am not and never have been a fan of DFW’s writing, so my reading of this text is biased accordingly. I actually only requested a copy of this book for review because so many people I respect recommended it, and because I figured that perhaps by reading it I might be seduced into reconsidering my position.
Unfortunately, it didn’t really change my opinion or offer any compelling reason to reconsider Wallace’s work. (Except for maybe Broom of the System, which Wallace seems to have come to dislike because of the heavy theoretical influence, which is actually the reason I think I would probably like it).
Going back to this thing about me not being a fan, I think that’s really important. If, for instance, someone were to come out with a posthumous book-length interview transcription with Alain Robbe-Grillet or Gilles Deleuze, I would savor every line in much the same way I sense others savor these lines. But for a reader who isn’t already in love with DFW, the book isn’t that appealing. I found it uninterestingly repetitive, and I got an uneasy “someone trying to capitalize on the death of a famous person” feeling from it. I mean there are these parts where DFW asks Lipsky not to include something in the interview and there it is on the page, which sort of feels icky – but at the same time it works to give us a more well-rounded picture of DFW – but then again, dude was a real dude, not a “well-rounded character.”
Also, it made me feel really, really bad for DFW. It made him seem so sad, so lonely. Here’s a couple lines that, for me, characterize the overarching sentiment of the book, this is DFW speaking:
That story at the end of [Girl With Curios Hair], which not a lot of people like, was really meant to be extremely sad. And to sort of be a kind of suicide note. And I think by the time I got to the end of that story, I figured I wasn’t going to write anymore. (61)
I just don’t know about this book.
Have you read it? What did you think?
Semester is finally over and now I feel like I have so much to tell you about…
Jessica Smith is compiling “An evolving, informal and incomplete list of contemporary female poets writing in (or translated to) English”
David Shields has an interesting interview at 3QD, in which he offers “A Very Partial Reading List” of his 120 favorite books ever written
Fukuyama reviews Julian Young’s biography of Nietzsche
Thalia Field has a new book out, which she co-wrote with Abigail Lang, called A Prank of Georges
U of Georgia Press is holding their annual Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
MLP has announced that anyone who pre-orders Sasha Fletcher’s WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED before June 1st will receive a free copy of a companion chapbook called THE WORLD CHANGES AS IT WRAPS AROUND YOU.
Larry Fondation reviews Vanessa Place’s La Medusa
Bradley Sands has a new book out called My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!
Oh, and here is David Lynch’s short film “The Alphabet” (1968)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmMwKBMse_w&feature=player_embedded
DOWNTOWN CROSSING
by Mairéad ByrneA cup of coffee can be a mother.
A cigarette can be a mother.
A blanket can be a mother.
A wool cap can be a mother.
A coat can be a mother.
A booth can be a mother.
A warm grating can be a mother.
You can be your own mother.
I found this poem in a really cool anthology called Not for Mothers Only: Contemporary Poems on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing (Fence Books, 2007)
Also, Mairéad Byrne’s collection The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven (Publishing Genius, 2010) is available now.
Bret Easton Ellis’s Imperial Bedrooms
Forthcoming from Knopf
Ellis explores what disillusioned youth looks like 25 years later in this brutal sequel to Less Than Zero. Clay, now a screenwriter, returns at Christmas to an L.A. that looks and operates much as it did 25 years ago. Trent is now a producer and married to Clay’s ex, Blair, while Julian runs an escort service and Rip, Clay’s old dealer, has had so much plastic surgery he’s unrecognizable. While casting a script he’s written, Clay falls for a young, untalented actress named Rain Turner, and his obsession and affair with her powers him through an alcoholic haze that swirls with images of death, mysterious text messages, and cars lurking outside his apartment. The story takes on a creepy noirish bent–with Clay as the frightened detective who doesn’t really want to know anything–as it barrels toward a conclusion that reveals the horror that lies at the center of a tortured soul. Ellis fans will delight in the characters and Ellis’s easy hand in manipulating their fates, and though the novel’s synchronicity with Zero is sublime, this also works as a stellar stand-alone.
–from Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
I’ve got an insurmountable stack of summer reading. Here are a few titles I see when I glance over at it:
Say, Poem – Adam Robinson
Dhalgren – Samuel Delany
The Invention of Morel – Adolfo Bioy Casares
The Worm Ouroboros – Eric Rücker Eddison
Language in Literature – Roman Jakobson
Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics – Lara Glenum, Arielle Greenberg, eds.
In the Metro – Marc Augé
Firework – Eugene Marten
Cyclonopedia – Reza Negarestani
Stupidity – Avital Ronell
Post-Continental Philosophy – John Mullarkey
What do you have in your stack?
JOB TITLE: Editorial Assistant
TYPE: Full-time, entry-level position
SALARY: $24,000–$28,000 depending upon experience and background, plus medical benefits.JOB SUMMARY: Editorial assistant is responsible for the day-to-day editorial operations of the Press. This is an ideal position for the right person committed to entering publishing, undertaking challenging work, and becoming an integral part of Dalkey Archive Press.
REQUIREMENTS: Minimum BA (preference given to applicants possessing reading knowledge of at least one other language, with emphasis on French or Spanish); superior copy editing and proofreading skills; extensive reading background in literature; extensive reading knowledge of Dalkey Archive Press books and publications; superior writing skills; well-organized, able to manage multiple tasks and shifting priorities; able to communicate well and volunteer regular status updates to Publisher; available nights and weekends; able to learn quickly.
Expected Starting Date: June–August, 2010
Application Deadline: May 15, 2010
The tradition has always been that you may more or less describe the things that happen you imagine them of course but you more or less describe the things that happen but nowadays everybody all day long knows what is happening and so what is happening is not really interesting, one knows it by radios cinemas newspapers biographies autobiographies until what is happening does not really thrill any one, it excites them a little but it does not really thrill them.
…
It is awfully difficult, action is direct and effective but after all action is necessary and anything that is necessary has to do with human nature and not with the human mind. Therefore a master-piece has essentially not to be necessary, it has to be that is it has to exist but it does not have to be necessary it is not in response to necessity as action is because the minute it is necessary it has in it no possibility of going on.
…
And so always it is true that the master-piece has nothing to do with human nature or with identity, it has to do with the human mind and the entity that is with a thing in itself and not in relation. The moment it is in relation it is common knowledge and anybody can feel and know it and it is not a master-piece.
from “What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them”
by Gertrude Stein
I’m taking over as the Online Editor of The Southeast Review. One of my main goals will be to promote indie/micro/small presses and their books. To that end, I’m looking to publish a shitload of book reviews.
That means I need you.
Poetry/Fiction/Nonfiction/Cross-Genre/Whatever
Please consider writing a few words (formal/informal/meditation/critique/create your own form) and then send those words to me with a brief bio: southeastreview.org@gmail.com