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.
Q: Sans enunciation/emphasis or other context, your title Damn Sure Right is open-ended: braggadocio or bluster, surprise or satisfaction—and so on. The person on the cover photo is “dressed to kill” (my words), yet is also more than half hidden. What is your idea concerning the title and the cover image?
A: The title comes from an utterance in the story “Damn Sure Right”. The full utterance is, “He didn’t need to hurt her, damn sure right.”
My characters are often groping for a concrete way to see things in order to feel better.
To me, the cover photo reflects vulnerability mixed with stalwart determination. Press 53 publisher, Kevin Morgan Watson found the image, ran it past me and we were in instant agreement.
Q: Will you discuss “The Serious Writer and Her Pussy”?
The Concept Flash is not about an emotion (that would be expressionism, aka Kafka), but rather something larger, an idea.
The idea is then set, into concrete.
The logic of the idea follows the dialectic of the concept. This can assist you, in a structural sense, or even with the setting, characterization, narrative, etc. The attributes of the concept can be appropriated for technique within the flash. The concept flash is infinite in its manner. You could write a lifetime of these: ideas in our lives represented as things. Stop digging holes with your fingers. I am offering a type of shovel. OK, a spoon.
Will you shut up and provide an example?
Yes, I will provide an example.
Cube by Amelia Gray.
11. In his craving for fame and fulfillment he dumped his family, bullied his friends, ripped off ideas and lied about his past. Charlie Sheen? No, Gauguin.
11. Seventy-one copies or eighty-two days remain to snort up Darby Larson’s The Iguana Complex. Go there.
11. Lorrie Moore weighs in on the Carmelo Anthony/New York Knicks trade.
1. Top 10 counter-culture books. At first I gandered and thought where is Trout Fishing? But it seems like this guy glows memoirs. I’ve read zero of them. Summer?
11. Your best guess: What the fuck is a personal library? It sounds like I am a book. We are not books, but the idea is comforting (beginning, middle, end–nice delusion…). Here’s a new one: What is on your personal library shelf right now that isn’t a book. I am going to go look right now: empty wine rack, candles with dust balls, 3 family photos (all three professional, posed bullshit photos), a gnome dressed as a Tennessee Titan, a plastic pumpkin (fuck, it stayed up since Halloween), a fake hollowed-out book that is a hiding spot for letters from a young lady in South Africa, a rope bracelet that protects you from sharks, __________, two deeds to automobiles, a buckeye, a single .44 bullet, a chocolate coin, a treasury bond. You?
1. ASU’s online literary mag yawps for submissions for short fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art for its 7th issue, which is scheduled to come out in May 2011. The guillotine (a term I argue should now replace the tired deadline) is March 31. For accessories, check out www.superstitionreview.com.
1. Fairy tales thrive in the face of technology.
1. Hey listen:
(Two nights ago someone offered to buy me a Kindle. I just couldn’t. But I am thinking on it.)
5. Today is President’s Day so go compartmentalize, punks.
I broke my life.
But childhood prolonged. It becomes a hell.
My eyes and hearing are supernormal. I weigh 129 pounds. You can see what a diet of beer and light wine has made of me.
Do you understand the stopgap quality of hatred and rage?
The bridge besides the bridge of sighs.
Listening to the prisoned cricket.
And the hissing hair.
To drink dark beer with Mrs. Grant at four in the afternoon, under an umbrella, is a pleasure and a comfort.
Another entire bottle? I don’t know—let me drink on that.
See, it erases memory, as in grief, but arouses desire. So begins the cycle.
Stella spells ill.
To hell with that poem!
Honeysuckle blows by the granite.
What authors are the most accessible to being taught, especially to young writing students (as in taking their first classes, not age)? What authors are not?
Example. T.C. Boyle. Very teachable. Consistently uses structures easy to graph/visualize, massive layers of basic CW language techniques, always some intent at theme. Now you can argue the merits of his fiction, but that isn’t my point. My point is the merits of the fiction as pedagogically useful.
(You could take this one story and teach a semester of Intro CW: Freytag’s, quest narrative, suspense, immediacy, imaginative prose, precise verbs, unreliable narrator, suspense, POV, etc.)
Diane Williams. Not so great to teach. The voice, the thought, the paroxysms of perfect, and perfectly odd, sentences—you could smother a young writer, you could lead them to a cliff’s edge and accidentally push them off. (Yes, I know Miss Flannery O’Connor, this would do the world a favor, etc.)
Now I generalize, I generalize, so don’t go all sack of hammers. And I’m not saying don’t read any and every writer (OK, not Jewel). And, with upper level classes, I think the ratio switches—Personally, I start bringing in writers I wouldn’t teach earlier (like Diane Williams, Barry Hannah, Gertrude Stein, etc.) and I start removing T.C. Boyle. And I’m not saying you need to take any writing classes, ever—this question is couched in context. OK, enough with the disclaimers. WTF?
I just wonder if you have your own choices: A writer perfect for the teaching of creative writing to young writers, a writer you might want to avoid? I’m sure many of you have had experiences, as student or instructor. What authors glowed, what thunked?
11. Kevin Wilson short interview at The Short Review.
I cannot imagine a question I’d ask that would have an answer I’d be happy hearing.
10. Money. FC2 gets cash! Oh, and there is a 25% sale on For Whom the Bells Toll (now $58,500). Even Shakespeare couldn’t make money with all this internet bullshit, waaaaaaa.
9. Best title, best profile ever.
8. Dude prints out an 1818 edition of John Keats’ book Endymion on New York’s first espresso book machine. Wow.
375,000: Hi, I am vapid. Lady GaGa’s boyfriend (a nightclub manager/long-distance runner/deejay/certified personal trainer/semi-pro bowler) is a notorious drunk. He is also really fit. His blog here. Now he is writing a weight loss book called “The Drunk Diet.” OK.
Mornings with clouds. Windy mornings. Mornings with black wind rushing like water. The trees quiver, the windows are creaking like a ship. It’s going to rain.
Yes, I’m sure of it. I’m going to meet her. Of course, I’m a little drunk, a little reckless, and in an amiable condition that lets me see myself destined as her lover, cutting into her life with perfect ease.
James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime is my choice for best love novel ever. I don’t know what that means, exactly. But the prose alone will make you believe in that skittering ghost. People do see it, they say. That’s what good prose does–makes you believe. You’ll see something here, in these pages. The story is devastating. And sensual (one of the finer forms of devastation). Go ahead, name your best “love” book ever. Go ahead. It’s OK. If no, read this one, I say.
Brood, I do, on myself naked
She handed me a full glass and said, “This is the last drink you will ever take”
Are you equally unspectacular?
If you love me, as I love you
We’ll both be friendly and untrue
When you go. Go TV spots and skywriting. I mean it
I am surprised and pleased at the recent abundance of the nearly naked
I am not even going to drink. Only beer or brandy
We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place
Our friend the owl
Something has been said for sobriety but very little
Smears brandy on the trampling boot
Up to the bar on a donkey!
Blessings on thee, little man
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan
But helicopters
What is a prose poem, a flash fiction? They are both bastardy forms. Fuck, they should be hanging out. Simpatico, I feel. Or at least enough I walk your toad, you walk mine. Fueled on hops and piss. I guarantee you Max Jacobs would have bought. both forms a dank. aperitif. Hell, so would Kim Chinquee. But, noooooooooooo. So. So. Tell me. What is the difference? Fire away.
