What they said about what we said
In the fall last year, a +3000 page pdf titled “Issue 1” was published featuring +3000 writers/poets by For Godot, a glorified blog. There was a catch: 1) the poems were never submitted/solicited, 2) the poems were not authored by the cited writer (instead generated by an online algorithm) and 3) no editorial correspondence preceded the publication. In short, this was more about the conceptual, probably satirical, musings of the ‘editors,’ and less about the content of the publication. I smell commentary.
Haut or Not: Giancarlo Ditrapano
Finally — a rejection letter to (instead of from) the editor of New York Tyrant.
Dear New York Tyrant,
Thank you for submitting your book shelf to Haut or Not. Unfortunately, it’s not what we are looking for right now. We’re tying to go in a ‘maybe life doesn’t completely suck’ direction, and all your books have a ‘life completely sucks’ feel to it. Sartre was nauseous; Faulkner’s mother was a fish; Kafka’s Czech was never in the mail; never let naked boys hang out on an island; never let an alcoholic hang out under a volcano — yada yada we get the point. Cheever and Saunders offer jestful energy and enthusiasm, but then you go fuck it up with freaking Johnny Got His Gun — what every Metallica fan just had to read, huh? Grim-face Nietzsche is a redundancy, and what’s up with the Banville – O’Hara – Bowles ‘middle-aged man discontent’ trio? You too can stick your face at some foreign wind, but it’s not gonna help your hair situation. It would’ve been funny to see Isaac Babel next to Racial Hygiene, but you had to restrain yourself didn’t you? Also, you didn’t double-space your books, include a self-addressed stamped crate, or give us your BEST THREE BOOKS. Simultaneous submissions are not allowed, and you’re simultaneously being a prick and a pansy. Feel free to submit again, after you get some hope for the human race (which includes the Jews you Nazi).
Rating: Not
Haut or Not: contributor couplet
Justin Taylor
Of course there’s Barthelme — and Lish, and Brautigan, and Markson — these writers are not knee-jerk ambivalent with form, but better, curious about its malleability. They always nodded to the past, full circle. A hot rating is likely, if not inevitable, but what concerns me more is that pile of rubber bands, the Grateful Dead box set, and the array of book marks. Justin, please don’t tell me you’re one of those bookish hipster kids who wear rubber bands like a bracelet. If those function any way as cock rings, congratulations, your girth is unyielding. I had to google St. Mark’s Bookshop and it’s a pleasure imagining you perusing the shelves (we all love that glue and pulp smell) but must you take a complimentary bookmark every single time? Or are those testament to each book you bought there? As for the Grateful Dead — to borrow a line from my mother whenever she heard Motley Crue coming out of my room, “I can smell them from here.” Free love is okay, free drugs is probably better, but these guys were just annoying. I do give Justin props for boldly fracturing his rubber band bracelet image. Should we ever see Justin with a beard, we’ll know that shit ain’t Walt Whitman. Nah, it’s positively Haight Street. How about this for a c/o Lish title: Will you please take a shower, please?
Haut or Not: 3 balls in a sack
Ravi Mangla
Thing Things They Carried: all the crap on the floor because there wasn’t a table. Catch-22: there’s no table and all the books are on the floor. A Farewell to Arms: how about a farewell to crap on the floor? Independence Day: forget about pastoral America, first get your shit off the floor Ravi. The Tipping Point: it don’t matter if anything tips over cuz everything is already on the god damn floor. Introducing Derrida: are you serious Ravi? You actually care about post-structuralist linguistic theory? Dude, here’s a pre-structuralist theory: If Ravi gets his ASS to IKEA and gets himself a fucking table, he can put his lame shit books on it one day and not be such a carpet whore.
Rating: Not
MONKEYBICYCLE No. 6
Monkeybicycle No. 6 is available for pre-order here. From the editors:
In this edition of Monkeybicycle’s print version, we move back toward the traditional style of fine literature that we so recklessly abandoned for issue five. Loaded with dozens of incredible stories and poems from the likes of Ryan Boudinot, Kim Chinquee, Curtis Smith, Laura van den Berg, as well as so, so many more, this book is sure to please. Check out the full line-up below, and then pick up your copy today!
Contributors: Shane Allison, Sheila Ashdown, Richard Barrett, Matt Bell, Ryan Boudinot, Kim Chinquee, Martha Clarkson, Michael Czyzniejewski, Daniel O. Harris, Drew Jackson, Jason Jordan, Jing Li, Frayn Masters, Corey Mesler, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, CS Reid, Nora Robertson, Sarah Salway, Curtis Smith, Tyler Stoddard Smith, John Spiers, Joe Sullivan, Matthew Summers-Sparks, Twixt, Laura van den Berg, Cody Walker, Brandi Wells, and Jay Wexler.
It comes out April 25. [Reasons why April is the cruelest month: T.S. Eliot said so, taxes are due, Hitler’s birthday. Reasons why April is the coolest month: Monkeybicycle No. 6 is released, Kind of Blue is recorded.] Big props to Kim Chinquee, who is in the current/new American Short Fiction, Bateau, and NOON.
Also, check out these [this & this] one-sentence stories which I’ve been enjoying.
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
March 25th, 2009 / 5:54 pm
March 25th, 2009 / 5:54 pm
I like Donald Rumsfeld a lot
In 2003 (sorry I’m late) Hart Seely, a reporter and occasional humorist, arranged Donald Rumsfeld’s evasive paradox-ridden Pentagon briefings and media interviews into poems, collected in Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld. Political satire is not new territory, but this is just awesome. Here is an example:
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.Department of Defense news briefing
Feb. 12, 2002
Haut or Not: Zachary German
Tao Lin emailed us a sideways pic of Zachary German’s bookcase. I decided there was no point in straightening out the pic since German wasn’t straight (that’s arguably not a gay joke). Also, one can better see the spines this way. I cropped the entry into three separate pics (conveniently separated by shelves). There’s no way to do this except after the break — trust me.
English lessons with Ma
My mom recently (finally) started using email. I set up a yahoo account for her and she doesn’t understand the concept of passwords, so neither my father or I can use our yahoomail accounts, as we must keep her ‘signed in’ at all times. The few times when I signed her out, she freaked. She has officially acclimated/regressed like the rest of us. Now she emails me every day ad infin asking me to edit her emails to her friends in China. This was today’s discourse:
Haut or not: A Triad
Alan Horn
Alan Horn apparently really wanted us to read the spines, as he included a very high-resolution pic accompanying the ‘regular’ pic. A lot a blood and sex if you ask me (and I’m not talking about the Bible): Psychopathia Sexualis: An [unclear] Forensic Study, Locked Room Murders, Philosophy in the Bedroom, A History of Secret Societies etc. I feel like I’m looking at Jack the Ripper’s bookshelf. ‘Summer Bachelors,’ ‘What is that?’ and ‘Kiss your ass goodbye,’ none of which I know anything about, are amazing titles. This is probably the most interesting bookshelf we’ve seen. I’ve been criticized often for relying too much on penis jokes, so let me just say that Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India sounds like a castrati — I mean, captivating read.
Rating: [fucking] Haut
Haut or Not: A couplet
Alicia Gifford
Folks, here’s sneak (albeit pixelated) look at what the fiction editor of Night Train reads. Tempted as I was to ask her to resend a higher resolution pic, I thought about the ‘visual vocabulary of spines,’ how we’ve come to recognize a book by its design — how the spine often acts as an abbreviated version of the cover, in terms of color, fonts, etc. The title’s legibility is often not as important as the spine’s thematic composition. Yes, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge how sauve the publisher is; and the publisher hires the editor that judges the book — so in the end it’s related. Matthew Simmons, who works at a bookstore, has a knack for pointing out books. So, what do you see?
