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.
9. I’m sort of blar of folks saying the words in first line “Call me Ishmael” are “so intense and effective that they go down in history.” That’s revisionist as Gary Kasparov. The reason “Call me Ishmael” is a boss first line can be found 212,757 words later.
9. Some good books written by musicians if that’s your thang-a-lang.
9. Anybody else want to ban the word moon from all contemporary poetry?
9. Deb Olin Unferth Revolution ‘review.’ Somebody call roll, because we got a lack of class up in here. Oddly, Mr. Robert P. Baird doesn’t really do any reviewing, per se. He might have read the book, not sure. Here’s a snarky line, not about the actual book, etc:
Today, Ms. Unferth is a narrowly but deeply admired writer of fiction, hailed wherever the names Diane Williams and Gary Lutz hold currency.
Hold currency, oh man. I was actually waiting for MRPB to break into tipsy doggerel next.
9. I should talk a bit about hooking and hooking up and the girl libertine.
Do say.
I know in the past many writers have been dismayed by Hong Kong’s literary scene, or lack of, as in literary journals, readings, events. Have things changed?
I can’t speak for the Chinese-language literary scene, but it’s true that the English-language literary community is very small. Aesthetically there is a lack of diversity. I don’t know if it’s the linguistic situation or the ever-looming financial/business culture, but lately I’ve been wondering if the lack in the literary arts has also to do with the city’s struggle with identity; I recently attended a lecture where the speaker pointed out that historically HK was never given the chance to shape its own sense of identity. And if you think about places where the arts flourish, or even the inception of American literature, it usually coincides with a strong sense of self-identity. Much of the literary scene also seems to be expat, which I suppose makes logical sense, but HK has such an interesting relationship with the English language, I find myself wishing for a more heterogeneous mix of writers. I do sense, though, that the literary arts is burgeoning–there’s even a new MFA program this year–which means every literary person here has the chance to be a part of the conversation in shaping Hong Kong’s literary identity. So it’s a really exciting opportunity for birthing those journals, readings, events
A lot of my life is eating soup with a fork
Huge red dirty wall fog
Oh, sod you!
I’d rather be dead than think about death
Drink chose me
Bars are the only sparks
Spouses, money, James Joyce, beer?
Give me my duff. And pour custard on it from a ladle
Bad publicity? Your own obituary
Ah, I never get no snout
I smoked my way half-way through the book of Genesis and three inches of my mattress
Old potatoes, cold
Snow/ice/snow, it is so funny, like a parfait without a hair in it, but not ha-ha funny like a parfait with a hair. I’m not at AWP. Damn. So I’m thinning mints now, but later I’m going to watch Woody Allen movies on VCR. Also I have a doze to bull, but that’s personal. Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt, has been attacked! Again!! Everyone needs a hobby, OK. The flickering of the VCR, or even hens. The last one on Earth who likes to track? Who here likes to track?
(This post a serious evidence of an earlier A. Robinson post [I researched, but couldn’t find] that says HTML people basically post anything)
But hey: What are you doing while not at AWP?
14. WTF? I thought Shane Jones killed February? (as noted) Today I learned that freezing rain is different than sleet. The hayseed fear-mongering weatherman just went simile on the ice; he said, “It’s like a candy shell.” Not bad, though a discord of tone. University dismisses the pacing, caged jaguar of classes; milk and bread sales go all Kelly Clarkson; and I wonder how many sit at home on their MePhones? Just years ago would have been a book for every downtime: waiting room while oil is changed, the vehicle registration line, the afternoon at the bar, this big-ass blizzard. Now it’s a phone. Just saying, but not me. I’m about to cuddle up with Into Thin Air and my Hobart flask.
9. To shit you or to shit you not. I shit you not. Reality rajah Mark Burnett is making literary Cliff’s Notes (yes, those little yellow pamphlets that borrow their color scheme from roadsigns) into a TV comedy series. OK.
1. Dawn Raffel at Willow Springs (with all kinds of good extra links).
94. Look here you smarmy-asses: novels in which the author appears as himself!
2. A sudden thought: What if AWP is snowed in and everyone having to sleep on the Book Fair floor curled inside their satchels, lean-tos made of idiosyncratic eyeglasses, perfect-bound tents of spine-broken books? And when the power fails, what book will we burn first for heat?
14. Literary profiling. The books you ‘like’ on Facebook. Do you ever go vexatious on what books populate your most obvious bookcase? Like maybe you’re having a Superbowl party at the house and what books will the visitors eyeball? Ever left a book out on your desk/table/car floor with intent? Come on, do tongue. Like Play it Again, Sam and the track and field medal. To be petty is to be human.
2. McCain aide outed as “anonymous” O author? I wonder what vice-presidential nominee he is describing here, The Barracuda:
thick hair piled up high, chin out, defiant, taunting, flaunting that whole lusty librarian thing, sweet and savory, mother and predator, alluring and dangerous…
Kyle’s summer reading99. Holy shit Truman Capote’s house is selling at a bargain price! Discount, discount, and with 7.5 bathrooms. Now if I can only hustle a few more chapbooks…
4. The 10 greatest child geniuses in literature. What?! Hal Incandenza only gets 2nd place? And they left off Ignatius Jacques Reilly, Dolores (AKA: Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo and L), and that daughter from Stories in the Worst Way. Man.
Man don’t drink none ain’t natural.
The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits.
It makes me feel like I have four legs instead of two.
Like my lemonade funny.
Ridiculed, beaten, thrown into a crowd.
(ravn)
Beer has a nice bitter taste after ice cream. Next to music, beer is the best.
The theme is the theme of humiliation.
Are you a hunchback or an old cripple? Whiskey on the house!
They are the we of me.
So why add orange juice?
Listen: if you want to steal the dessert spoon just steal the dessert spoon.
Are you a lawyer, agent, or friend?
Life is good. But there are problems.
11. Being a big fish in a small pond. It’s not the same anymore. Because you are going to meet the internets. And the internets is an ocean. So now you’re not a big fish.
2. Black Swan. Because you didn’t learn anything about the ballet world you didn’t know. Every non-ballet world reader here, if asked to write the screenplay, would have thought: Well…bulimia, fucked up toes and shoes, domineering director dude with European flair, bitchy colleagues, when you’re age thirty you’re done, skinny. Well, no shit. Oh, and I wish the director had never seen Sixth Sense. Oh, and ha-ha, the director laughs, the unreliable narrator is really mentally ill and I don’t really have a focus here and we need to prove Natalie really isn’t Queen Amidala so could you arch your back higher in those panties, etc.? I’m just happy he didn’t end it with “And then she awakes” which you know he did and loved in some outtake we’ll see later on DVD. Oh, and Winona Ryder is grossly miscast or possibly just medicated for Kleptomania/busy picking such a meaty, meaty role out of her eyeteeth. Oh and…and oh, fuck it.
1. That Sebald WG died at age 57. But these guys retraced his funk-gloom walk of The Rings of Saturn. This doesn’t suck, as you will see, but it sucks for me that we are doing retrospective ideas on a writer recently loved (by me, fer sure) alive and writing new words.
4. Wendy’s new fries. I’m getting a New Coke feel. It’s a conspiracy of suck to make us like their old fries. The new fries hold the brown of bundled mortgages and taste like a committee or cat litter or a committee of cat litters. Something to make you doubt your ways.
Ah, the confrontational interview. I had this idea it did exist. Then where has it gone? The jostle, cough, the lip-curl. And without it, haven’t we lost something? To discuss, to pry and fling, not what we’re instructed or allowed (a la Tom Cruise [and many others] who actually inculcate the interviewer in advance—you will only ask these very questions). And so then we have nothing more than a softball game played with bats made of limp, leaking sausages. Toy dogs smelling each other’s asses. A farce.
Because we lose surprise, abrupt honesty, what ego and anger can do: make us blurt out something we might regret, or possess, or shock or please our own self with, something true. But some of this comes down to the medium. Over email, my gods, we can all blurb profound. We cheat, and suddenly I am quoting Beckett and know something about mortgage-backed securities, MFA statistics, and the best clothing option for a casual late fall round of bocce ball (Cabela’s MicroDown soft shell, in hue woodland). An interview over the phone, you might have notes or might be naked (a clear advantage for flow of thought). You don’t see the interviewer at all, the nonverbals, the power of space, but at least it is real time and has potential for nasty, like when Terry Gross asks Gene Simmons about wearing a studded codpiece:
Gene Simmons: No, it holds in my manhood.
Terry Gross: [laughs] That’s right.
Gene Simmons: Otherwise it would be too much for you to take. You’d have to put the book down and confront life. The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs.
Terry Gross: That’s a really obnoxious thing to say.