ToBS R1: ‘curating’ a reading series vs. crossing off typed name & signing your name below it in yr book
[Matchup #20 in Tournament of Bookshit]
‘curating’ a reading series
pros: you will have something to do, you will have a legitimate reason to talk to and meet writers you like, you will be able to promote writers you like which may distract you from shit-talking writers you dislike
cons: ~90% of readings i’ve been to have ‘seemed bleak,’ you will quickly ‘run out of’ readers to ask to read, you might feel pressure to promote the readings so it won’t be awkward when the audience is small, you might feel pressure to introduce every reader with enthusiasm and to appear happy/excited that they’re reading for your series, you will be in positions where you might have to either ignore or reject certain people who want to read for your series READ MORE >
ToBS R1: characters that ‘just have to have their stories told’ vs. celebrity fiction
[Matchup #17 in Tournament of Bookshit]
I don’t how many people who hate this novel, or just want to make fun of it (here, here, here, and here for a random smattering of the shit-talking) cite the following passage as an example of bad writing: “Gia danced around a little, shaking her peaches for show. She shook it hard. Too hard. In the middle of a shimmy, her stomach cramped. A fart slipped out. A loud one. And stinky.” Snooki’s “novel” might be bad (I wouldn’t know; I’ve only read one excerpt enough to write this), but shall I compare this to a summer’s day–I mean to Ayn fucking Rand, in particular from Atlas Shrugged (a book I read when I was 19 and won’t bother with again because it’s Ayn fucking Rand)?: “Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” READ MORE >
ToBS R1: hating on Jonathan Franzen vs. hating on Jonathan Safran Foer
[Matchup #16 in Tournament of Bookshit]
You meet a woman and wake up to her bookshelf:
• 30-50 copies of Elle
• 1984
• [something by Chuck Klosterman]
• Everything Is Illuminated
You say, “Okay,” to her while she sleeps. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: emailing yr writing to people you dont know vs. readings w/ so many people reading no one listens
[Matchup #15 in Tournament of Bookshit]
emailing drafts of your writing to people you dont know
Right now I am picturing the recipient of one of these drafts: What, why? the recipient—let’s say she is a she—might be thinking, upon discovering this unexpected draft in her inbox. The brief note accompanying the draft says something that is nice enough, but also fundamentally presumptuous. It states the author’s reasons: “I’ve been a fan of your work [or blog, or Twitter] for quite some time now…” READ MORE >
ToBS R1: gordon lish vs. foot fetish
[Matchup #14 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Background – Feet
Casanova dabbing at some polenta around his mouth, glimpsing the toe cleavage of a passer-by, dropping his neckerchief, hanging his head, leaving his still-full plate on the table, going after her.
F. Scott Fitzgerald looking through the peephole at Zelda (hyperventilating in her chair), writing something in a notebook, lying on the carpet so he can see, under the door, her bare feet shuffling back and forth.
Goethe with writer’s block, sketching a foot, a viaduct, a foot, a cliff face, a foot, a shoe, a foot, a liberty pole, a castle, a foot, a foot, a foot.
Dostoyevsky at a bakery, queueing behind a woman, noticing her sandals, leaving loafless to follow her home, being invited in for vodka in his imagination, his stomach a sad animal.
Elvis looking at a pamphlet, blinking at the words “somatosensory cortex” rereading them for the fifth time, wishing he was holding a pineapple close to his face, wishing he was 13 again with his mother tired from work, taking off her shoes, relying on him. READ MORE >
{LMC}: My Brain on Beecher’s
Beecher’s has been hanging out in my living room for a while. I read it. Summary, or “my brain on Beecher’s”:
{LMC}: A Marvel of Words
The most incredible thing about Beecher’s Magazine has already been commented on by many, but I will say it again: the thing is gorgeous. Each page is made of elegant, thick paper I don’t know how to classify except to say it’s the kind of paper on which you would print your resumé. The binding is exposed, with black string hanging off its sides and glued down in place. Then there is the cover: on an open expanse of white there is nothing but the letter “b,” its stem shaped like a rifle, with a small red “1” just above it. The “1” refers to the issue, which is Beecher’s first-ever. With this beautiful design, we are off to a good start.
The opening story is Alec Niedenthal’s “Sailing.” I have no idea what this story is about. What are we to make of lines like, “During the day I will make Roger play like he is me and I will play like I am Roger so that Roger, the barbarous queller of my passion, can finally and for the very first time bestow his suffering on me…”? Or, “Then I will have Ralph, I mean Roger, I will have Roger and Dog during the day to take care of, until father comes home and I am his pale sacrifice on the floor.”
ToBS R1: NaNoWriMo vs. ‘What is your novel about?’
[Matchup #12 in Tournament of Bookshit]
On “What is your novel about?”…
The kneejerk hatred of “Wiyna?” has partly to do with the dread of trying to encompass an entire novel in a soundbite, along with the sense that revealing something that took a lot of effort and patience to write a novel about, something that the author may have spent a long time probing the aboutness of, something that now probably has an amount of sacredness to the author, to casually remark, “It’s about…” can be taken as an attempt to devalue/demystify the novel from the author’s point of view.
But for as loaded as the question comes at the author, it is almost a necessary question for the asker on a primary level. To be in conversation with an author who says, “I wrote a novel.” and says no more, it’s human nature to at least think the question “What’s it about?” or “What is it like?” or “Can you please give me some kind of concrete idea or image related to your novel so I can attach it to my memory of ‘you wrote a novel.'” One reason the asker may not completely appreciate the weight of the question is because many products of mainstream entertainment have obvious aboutnesses. For the sake of casual conversation, “Schindler’s List” is simply about the holocaust. “J. Edgar” is about J. Edgar Hoover. “Superman,” “Spiderman,” and “Batman,” are about Superman, Spiderman, and Batman, respectively. When your novel’s title is a bit abstract like “There Is No Year” or “Us,” the mind has a hard time nailing down even a thread of aboutness. And human beings like aboutnesses. They like people who like aboutnesses. So answering the question politely may leave an impression on the asker that this author is a nice person and maybe we can be friends now. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: announcing yourself as ‘available for interviews’ vs. following several thousand people on twitter
[Matchup #10 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Announcing yourself as ‘available for interviews’ seems fine to me. I don’t see anything wrong with letting people know that you’re available to be interviewed. It’s different than saying ‘interview me’ (command) or ‘I need people to interview me’ (desperate) because it conveys information in a non-obligatory manner that also makes the person announcing it seem busy and ‘prestigious,’ to some degree, via the implication that s/he isn’t always available to be interviewed.
Following several thousand people on Twitter seems like pussy shit to me. Following a small amount of people means you either fuck with people you like and/or follow people based on the quality of their tweets. Following no one means you don’t fuck with anyone else’s tweets. Following several thousand people means you fuck with whomever and/or are trying to garner ‘follow backs’ to increase your amount of followers. To me, following a small amount of people or no one is hard; following several thousand people is pussy shit. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: ‘is the author of’ vs. bowties
[Matchup #8 in Tournament of Bookshit]
BOW TIES
Seems like boys (girls later) who wear bow ties are either those who’ve never seen their own asshole or they’re so preoccupied with their own asshole they carry a snapshot of their asshole in the leather handbag they refer to as a ‘tote.’ Either a douche or a douche. There are exceptions, of course, as there always is with FASHION, that grand meatus of illusion, and so we’ll give pervs like Pee-Wee Herman a pass ’cause he knew that in order to sport a ridiculous trademark you gotta show a little dick. The tools I’m talking about are the casual bow-tie wearers, the straight twink walking down San Francisco’s Valencia Street with a Vonnegut tattoo whose ‘girl’ owns more accessories than books, and who has never read Tom Wolfe but knows enough to pass him off as a ‘fashionable guy’ and there’s something about that bow around a str8 twink’s neck that makes me think of a half-assed suicide attempt, a bottle of Tylenol PM chased with a bottle of $10 corner store Gnarly Head Pinot Noir, or ‘X marks the spot’ like DECAPITATE ME HERE FOR GOOD HEAD. I’ve attended three readings where the readers wore bow ties and I imagined their soft putty nutsack flesh twisted around the neck instead of the $19 American Apparel polka-dotted cotten. I attended San Francisco’s Literary Death Match and met Todd Zuniga and stared at his bow tie the same way my ex-boyfriend stared at women’s tits. Seems like bow ties would be much cooler if they were made of ball flesh, not to mention pleasing a man’s sack would be easier/more accessible, tho it depends on the dickhead. I don’t really know how I feel about girls in bow-ties. I mean, I like the gender-queer bois who sport ties, but straight girls who sport bow ties seem like bitches who don’t give head and powder their puss. I guess if a girl has to wear something around her neck I’d rather it be a dog-collar attached to a leash, but that seems mean. Maybe if Vonnegut had sold these instead of overrated paperbacks, I’d appreciate the attempt to convey intelligence through neckware. Tie a bomb around your neck and whisper ‘god is in the details.’ READ MORE >