Sean Lovelace is running right now, far. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS is his flash fiction collection by Rose Metal Press. His works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Sonora Review, Willow Springs, and so on.
The new JMWW is a mind-fuck. How so? It gives us an essay (“MFA my way: In Writing, As in Life, You Must Have Character“) by Christine Stewart. She drops us three rules to creating literary work that will, in her words, “…makes my heart beat faster, that promises to cast a spell over me.” This advice:
How to do this? It’s pretty simple but I see people forget these basics all the time:
1) You must have a good handle on your main character.
2) Your main character must want something.
3) Your main character must do something.
I find Stewart’s “cast a spell over me” requirements as a worthy goal for a book. I also look for this type of literature, but I respectfully disagree with Stewart’s advice on how to create such a thing. While I have certainly dropped into fictional dreams due to character development, I have also been spun into spells by glow arrangements of words. Possibly I am confused on genre. Stewart opens with a poetry group situation, but is maybe writing only about mainstream fiction? Anyway, this is why JMWW is a mind-fuck. It’s an interesting essay to place along works (see below, among others) that do not meet the character sketch, character driven, character-with-clear motivation template. This juxtaposition fascinated me, and made for a verve/swerve issue. Click.
That We Never Knew This Reaches Upward, Assists the Room Grew by Andrew Borgstrom
From Michael Palmer vs. Michael Palmer (2) by Michael Leong
Damper by Cooper Renner
Ark Codex 0-01-08 by (?)
I’m into all kinds of art. I enjoy beautiful things and I like to create.
I guess he had some emotions he wanted to get off his chest. He was just skipping down the Yellow Brick Road in the Wizard of Oz.
If we are going to play with a sock, I’ll play with a sock.
I got out of house arrest this morning.
Bugs Bunny is the smoothest dude I ever met. You know he be chillin’ like it just be a normal day and he- it be cold just like how it is in Boston and he just want to dive in the ground, pop up, he be like oh man this ain’t Albuquerque. That’s got to be the tightest life you just hop underneath the ground and go! No traffic, no Mass pike, no tolls, no taking Yankee hats off- just underneath the ground…BAM…carrots…
I did a study in college, and my study show, in the African American community, the Yankee hat, the navy blue and white, it just, I don’t know, do something for your swagger.
I like to paint murals of the ocean that I see beyond the horizon, because I feel if — in order for us to grow, we gotta know.
You kinda almost have to be the voice of reason out there.
My timing’s a little off. I felt a little foolish.
Soon, maybe this summer, I may get an art gallery going.
Twenty years from now, you’re going to see me riding in a drop top hummer buck naked with some ankle socks on and a headband on.
Well, there is two halves to everything.
One fish, two fish. Red fish, blue fish. Knick knack, paddy whack, give a dog a bone. Ding.
You can’t kill a G. Bugs Bunny is a G.
They took my uniform out of my locker today.
I think it’s kind of freaky.
I glow Hobart and came across an interview with Julia Wertz. Interesting. I then went to her comic blog (once named Fart Party, but she’s tired of that phrase). I then $$ her book. I also glow drinking at the movies. Once, during an absolutely packed house of the showing of Fahrenheit 911 (this was Massachusetts, go figure), I snuck a Fosters oil can into my pants and then when I opened it (always an awkward moment) the beer loudly exploded all over my jeans. That was embarrassing. Julia Wertz is a graphic memoirist. Often she is stumbling, spilling things, misunderstanding the situation, young and dumb (I mean the type of dumb that comes with this developmental age; the character is always self aware and obviously intelligent) and wander/wondering about Brooklyn—often, well, embarrassed. (Example: At one point, she has a giant, painful, of-unknown-origin rash on her ass.) If you are about to go all Oh God another story about a twenty-something in Brooklyn, blah, blah, bar scene, go right ahead. In the introduction, Julia Wertz says, “As an autobiographical writer, I had no choice but to portray the natural progression of my life, and I apologize to anyone who’s sick of these stories as I am.”
It’s an insightful, funny thing to say, and most likely speaks to one of the more endearing aspects of this character, her voice.
What author writes the best about drinking and eating? I mean so good you’re reading and your damn mouth waters.
For his birthday, I gave my father The Pale King. I thought he would glow because he has and always has read daily and he spent his entire life as an IRS accountant and who writes IRS books? He blarred the book. He said, “Sean, this book has no fucking paragraphs. It is chugged full of shit. I’m not reading it.” I said something like, “Uh, books can be good without paragraphs…” Anyway, fuck it. I can’t comment that book, have not read it (might). Can we talk about books as presents? They are sort of awkward. They are the giver and the given. The dancer and the dance. Yes? Like I know right now at least 20 poets who were given The Top 500 Poems (this book is a fucking perpetual barbed wire necklace of albatross dung to poets; I know poets who have 7 copies, like aunt, aunt, mom, bewildered boyfriend, aunt, dog-walker, step-mom; I know people who have like a side Ebay business off this one book), just because their friends/relatives were baffled about 1.) What the fuck is a poet? 2.) What would you give such a person?
I guess my point is can we talk books as gifts? Ones you gave that worked versus backfired? Stories? A guy, a girl, an intern (Leaves of Ass, cough, Grass, anyone?) Ones you have received? Drop us some horror tales, I know you have them. Oh, you’re a “writer,” here’s your 14th “arty” notebook. Moleskin? The bible? Top 500 poems? To sum this up, and to add a structural detail [writer/readers, this is called the loop–you end on a beginning anecdote] that no one really cares about (sorry), I just today sent my dad a portable, collapsible fishing rod (you can take it anywhere!) for Sunday, Father’s Day. He’s going to open it. He’s going to grunt. He’s going to hate it.
Whether corporeal or euphemism or just name for a Tuesday evening out with some new friends, Tongue Party is something you would want to attend. It is also a book by Sarah Rose Etter. It is the winner of the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Competition. To glow this award is a good thing, and when Deb Olin Underth is the judge, I’d go ahead and say great thing. Also has anyone else noticed Caketrain’s chapbooks look and feel better than a lot of people’s book books? Just saying.
Pabst Blue Ribbon is a beer from Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a town where people will stab you in the back as you are climbing a ladder. PBR has a taste sort of like rain, rain gutter, corn and a hint of pale malted irony. Develops a bit of a yeast flavor as it warms. What is irony? I’m not totally sure but Kenneth Rexroth’s third wife left him for their marriage counselor. Bon Jovi plays the radio. A bird hunter pal of mine asked a bird watching pal of mine for advice on binoculars. In the last 5 years PBR has ironically doubled in price. Etc.
I was wondering if Sarah Rose Etter was being ironic in her opening of the first story, Koala Tide, as she seemed to mimic certain Hemingway devices, especially the use of the word “very.”
“The sun was very big and very hot that day.”
“The sky was very blue.”
“Fred wore blue swim trunks and had a very hairy chest.”
But then Etter took us away from this tone, spun us into something detached, this Koala Tide, tide of actual Koalas or again a euphemism or local jargon or objective correlative or perceptive lens of a child during that age, that Bildungsromanian blur, where childhood bleeds [emphasis on bleeds] into adulthood, where pain is introduced as possibility, where we learn not only are adults not Gods, they are slow, aging, stupid, stumbling sub-gods, mumbling who-knows-what into their lipsticked cans of warming beer? This story is evocative and disturbing and badass. You can read it here, and should.
Last week I had a slight buzz and attempted to randomly email 10 random athletes who intoxicated themselves on various substances WHILE COMPETING in their chosen athletic event. Dock Ellis has no email; he is dead. (“The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t.”) Ron Artest, of Hennessey fame, would not answer his Laker’s fan site email address. (“I kept it in my locker. I’d just walk to the liquor store and get it.”) Jeremy Mayfield (“What are you calling illegal?”) drove a race car while on meth, but who here gives a fuck about NASCAR? So. But human being and conceptual artist (in my opinion, as I feel artistic perception presupposes its own dimensionality, beyond involvement or signification or even the substitution of stimulus for sensation, etc.) Joe Kukura answered the mail. Thank you, Joe.
Last July, Joe ran the San Francisco Half Marathon (13.1) miles while drinking 13.1 beers, or one beer every mile along the way. I decided to interview the man.
It seems you have removed the form and movements of running and drinking from their normal contexts, selected their material and spiritual natures and combined them, thus creating art. And any art that becomes physical I consider to be the sublime. Do you consider yourself a conceptual artist?
No, but I’m flattered by the analogy! I consider myself a humor blogger. That medium, though, holds outsize importance in contemporary culture. Any old nobody with a DSL connection, if they’re funny enough, can have a driving role in how vast numbers of people are amused — if for an hour, a day, a week, or more. (Ever forward an LOLcat jpeg? It was produced by an un-famous random person, yet it may have ultimately amused thousands.) It’s a great blessing to be writing during this era.
I suppose there is a train-wreck “self-abuse as art” strain in this project, a la Lux Interior from the Cramps or on that old “Jackass” TV program. And I will admit to bringing a philosophical or intellectual tone to discussions drinking booze while exercising — but that is meant only as a humor device. My main creative motivation is that I just want to be someone who has a good blog.
How many times have you vomited during a run?
Would you like to publish your best work online or in print or you just don’t give a fuck? Pros/Cons of whatever your answer?
A while back some of you were asking about Russian authors. Then yesterday I found a note on a shelf in my Man Room. It made me wistful and sad. It was from a genius and gracious man, Harvey Pekar. We had dinner a couple years ago. (He had onion rings, I had veggie nachos—neither of us eat meat in restaurants.) He talked jazz. I talked bow hunting. Then we discussed Russian authors. The next day Mr. Pekar walked into my office and handed me this exact note:
Here’s what I think it says, though maybe you could help. I couldn’t find some of these Russians, or figure out what exactly to look for, but possibly I just couldn’t decipher Mr. Pekar’s handwriting. Any help would be appreciated. (I found Andrey Bely and Khlebnikov–I mean the others.) I respect Mr. Pekar’s opinion, and following up on these authors would help us all who love Russian lit.
Sean, If you intend to pursue work, Belyo, check out Petersburgh or St. Petersburgh (don’t get the old translation) and The Silver Dove, which are considered by many his best. More daring are Kotekhetaev and his eary early short stories (1900).
Here are some other Russian writers: zamyotin (“We”), Ivanov, Olyesla or Olesha, Pilnyok, Ilb and Petrov (a team). And the poets Khlenikov.
Good to meet you
Harvey
* Update: just figured out IlF and Petrov.