Haut or Not: “Worst of” (w/ digression)
What I could see happening has happened: satirical Haut or Not entrees — and from whom other than ‘TTB’ aka ‘Two Tears Boye,’ from Jaguar Uprising Press. (Circa 07-08 TTB and his partner Golden Bear were lamented/admired for their satirical takes on Bear Parade titles.) TTB writes this:
Hi, My name is jimmy chen. I wuz wundering if u could review my current reads bookcase on yur super duper website thingy! THANKS A BUNDLE!! hehe lol.
Empathetic satire or pure derision? I’ll opt for the former. TTB’s jest was followed by no doubt a found picture of some girl’s stack o’ chick books. TTB’s derivative impulses are arguably haut, but this stack of books may be the worst stack of books I’ve ever seen in my life.
Haut or Not: A Couplet
Tim Jones-Yelvington
I can’t argue with this guy — these books are just too haut. Good to see ‘writer’s writers’ like Diane Williams and Steven Millhauser, powerful ‘famous’ ladies like Moore, Gaitskill (I wish her last name was Hall) and Oates; and of course, our friends Tao Lin, Blake Butler, and Kim Chinquee. (Incidentally, Rachel B. Glaser’s ‘fiction’ piece about Christ, and Christ-like pop figures, in the pictured American Short Fiction is fucking great.) Impressed to see Vol. II (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower) of Proust’s epic — as most people only read Swann’s Way and consider it done (like me). I will get slammed for this I’m sure, but I never really understood the cult behind Jesus’ Son. I have this theory that, like cats, we are either indoor or outdoor readers. Jane Austen would be the epitome of writer of indoor books, and maybe Graham Green or Conrad as writer of outdoor books. I’m an indoor kinda guy, and Denis Johnson feels outdoorsy. And just for the records, my ‘best american fantasy 2’ doesn’t involve the genre, but a shortage at the sperm bank during a sorority convention. I should grow up soon.
Rating: Haut
Guide to becoming a better writer
Here are some tips on becoming a better writer, which begins with your posture. Feng Shui means ‘wind water’ in Chinese, which is better than ‘passing gas diarrhea.’ My point is, us Chinese are profound peoples. Fortunately, htmlgiant has an in-house Chinese representative, yours truly. My goal is to help you survive the literary world. Please pay attention:
1. Chip on Shoulder
You will need a chip on your shoulder. When somebody asks you ‘what you do’ at a party, you will need to think ‘fucking moron,’ and reply, [sigh] “I’m a writer highly published online. I’ve been nominated for a the Million Writers Awards and was interviewed twice. My chapbook sold out in two weeks.” As you sulk by the spinach dip, you will reaffirm the stereotype of self-involved writers.
2. Monitor Angle
Your monitor should tilt towards the heavens as you blind angels with your genius.
Haut or Not (w/ digression)
Drew Toal writes:
After he moved out of our apartment, Tao Lin didn’t take all of his books with him. So, it should be noted, that these are likely his least-essential books. But isn’t Tao Lin’s refuse still hauter than a normal person’s bookshelf pride?
It’s a strange message, but I can only assume that Drew would have no reason to mislead Htmlgiant, so let us gather that Tao a) lived with Drew at one point, and b) these are/were his books. In a perfect world, I probably should have contacted Tao to corroborate this, but this is an imperfect world.
Haut or Not: Alexis Orgera
Lewis Lapham, of Harper’s fame, started a new quarterly focusing in depth on ‘timeless’ humanist qualms such as war, love, nature, etc., and I’m happy to see this on her shelf. The thinness of that Moby Dick spine looks like some abridged version, but I’m hoping knot (get it? fuck). Joyce and Beckett sit well next to each other like Exile and Absence out for a date. I can only imagine the library late fees out on Paradise Lost — the Fall of man at 20 cents a day. Alexis is onto something with all this irrevocable mor(t)al stuff. (And who needs The Iowa Review when I got a review of Iowa right here: corn blows.) If you think I’m grasping for material here, I’ll just repeat what I said to Marco Polo, ‘get lost.’
Rating: Haut.
Haut or Not: An Assortment
David Hodges
Heller, Kafka, Orwell, Vonnegut — welcome to class kids. This semester Mr. Hodges will be teaching us how horrible society is and how to maintain a negative attitude. Then we’re gonna read A Confederacy of Dunces and all kill ourselves in hopes of also being posthumously published. And don’t forget, you can use Tom Wolfe’s book as an ottoman. Lastly, we’ll finish off with a biography of Clarence Thomas, cuz there’s nothing that says justice more than a pube on a can of Pepsi.
Rating: not.
Happy Cobra Books
Our own Matthew Simmons’ Happy Cobra Books has just released their new website, featuring Matthew Savoca’s e-book TOUGH!!! with his poems accompanied by illustrations by Tao Lin, Greg Lytle, Mike Bushnell, Tracy Brannstrom, Gene Morgan, Chelsea Martin, among many others.
Editor’s note:
TOUGH! is a book of brief pieces, haiku of the apotheosis of rural American maledom. Very funny. Wonderful illustrations, too.
Downloadable pdfs featuring Chelsea Martin, Catherine Lacey, Ellen Kennedy, Justin Dobbs and Blake Butler coming soon.
Uncategorized / 13 Comments
March 11th, 2009 / 1:12 pm
March 11th, 2009 / 1:12 pm
Literary Doppelgangers
I’ve always thought J.D. Salinger looked like the young Al Pacino in The Godfather, so much so that when reading the former, I would hear ‘HOO-AH!’ sporadically inserted throughout the text. The Glass and Corleone families are very similar; both represent brilliant families slowly falling towards their demise.
And then there’s Leonard Cohen, circa his breathtaking Songs From A Room period. He is said to have written those songs in Hydra, a (then) primarily uninhabited Greek island without electricity.
This got me thinking about doppelgangers, which despite sounding like a kind of gang-bang, is strange since our visual notion of these men are through a stagnant set of photos. We share a collective ‘memory’ of famous people, and I thought it might be fun to talk more about folks who are doppelgangers.
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Haut or Not: Matt Cozart
Melville’s dick on Sister Carrie — that’s all I can think about, and what looks to be a bunch of children’s books on top of Kenneth Koch and William Carlos Williams. Now we know where Matt’s priorities lie: so much depends upon/ a red wheelbarrow / and whether or not it’s nap-time. Such blasphemy doesn’t even compare with John Irving being 3 tiers above D.F. Wallace. [Brief interview with a hideous man: Q) You ever wish your last name began with M?, A) Yes, all the time.] As for O. Henry and O’Hara: O’MyGod
Rating: Not.
Haut or Not
HTMLGIANT hereby institutes Haut or Not, where we rate your bookshelves. This was initiated and corroborated by J. Taylor and B. Bulter, respectively, and inspired by this recent post and the unfortunate yet captivating Hot or Not series.
Just email htmlgiant@gmail.com a picture of your bookshelf (or stack of books w/ spines showing) and one us will either rate it ‘haut’ (haute, formal) or ‘not.’ You may also email individual contributors at their personal addresses if you specifically want them to rate you, acknowledging that our tastes vary drastically.
Here are the parameters:
Subject heading: Haut or not
pics: 500 pixel-wide jpeg, ~200kb.
Disclaimer: we are also free to rate, or make commentary on, all implicated vicinity of the photo. For example, if in the far distance we see an out-of-focus neon thing that resembles a dildo, we will assume it’s a dildo. You may insist it’s a $275 Roche-Bobois lamp, but we will ignore you. So please, be careful. If you are not prepared to be made fun of, this is not the venture for you.