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.
Brief, but interesting: Lincoln Michel on DFW, Junot Diaz. Begs to ask the novel of the ’80s, the ’70s, the ’60s, ’50s…?
I missed the Brandon Scott Gorrell sale. Two days and the inventory already sunder and yank. Fucking internet. A few hours pass and you might as well be telling people about disco.
Heroin Hostess prints you can buy. But will the customs fees go ouch?
But you can’t get all the back issues of Nude Magazine. Unless you live in Europe. They are cheaply priced and look amazing. Black velvet painting, Terry Southern, Jaime Hernandez–that’s one issue!
You can buy absinthe online but must pretend it’s for the bottle not the juice.
The value of the item is in the collectible container, not its contents.
The container has not been opened and any incidental contents are not intended for consumption.
Right…
You can buy first edition Edgar Allan Poe for $662,500. (But that was months ago–Bee Gees and Banana-seat bikes.)
You can buy first edition Light Boxes by Shane Jones for $199.95 new and $250 used. I am fuddled, I’ll admit.
Tao Lin has 40% of the drafts of a short story folded into a “religious tolerance” holding envelope/carrying case. It is for sale, but you knew that already.
Today an editor casually told me writers are like small children. Ouch. Are we? Is that good or bad? It had me thinking…
At The School the creative writing undergrads will be allowed to write only about their hobby. Homework assignments will go like this: “Go home, and do your hobby.” Readings will include rule-books (if your hobby was boccie, etc) or instruction manuals (if your hobby was creating birdhouses out of Q Tips, etc). If you have no hobby, you are immediately expelled from The School.
Grad students in creative writing at The School will be allowed to write only about their job. Homework assignments will go like this: “Go home, and do your job.” Readings will include employment manuals (if your job was lifeguard at city pool, etc), local maps (if your job was delivering various types of paper, etc), or instructional material (if your job was to monitor the unloading of industrial chemicals from train tankers, etc). If you have no job, you are immediately expelled from The School.
Workshop will take place in the pond. The students will sink or swim, in silence.
Finally, all Borges fiction collected. Like your kidneys, a local library, or a reliable bowl–this you need. [Edit–it has been out 10 years] [Edit–beer] [Edit, still read it, though.]
1.) Lists fascinate.
5.) A new review of Umberto Eco’s The Infinity of Lists.
Inside is a Chinese encyclopedia created by Borges. Inside the encyclopedia:
There the world’s animals are divided into “(a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s-hair brush; (l) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies.”
3.) Somewhere sinks a cruise ship named Fun with Puns.
10.) Lists shimmer in their making. Like the distance run, or Yeat’s dancer (also the dance) the list is its own doing/undoing. The runner and the run the same, a cloud, a tributary, an experience and an artifact. The making doesn’t wait for a list to appear; the list is the making and the thing. The list is the listing is the list.
Small Press Distribution 2009 best seller fiction list released. Why not use this as a reading list for 2010?
The French artist Orlan works in various mediums and has been prolific and provocative for years. Her most notorious work uses her body and surgery as an expression of art.
“I am the first,” Orlan claims, “to divert plastic surgery from its aim of improvement and rejuvenation.”
These are called “operation-performances.”
She took a digitized version of the “idealized feminine” face (her source material: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Venus, Francois Pascal Simon Gerard’s Psyche, Gustav Moreau’s Europa) and then surgically altered her own face to create this image.
Nine plastic surgeries. She considers her works “sacrificial.” These performances were painful and potentially fatal.
Orlan’s website.
A new essay from Unzipping of Images…Orlan’s Operative: Provocation, Performance, Personhood
Fiction Writers Review does a Michael Czyzniejewski feature. We get an interview, all kinds of links you should touch with the tip of your tongue. (You move your mouse with your tongue, right? I mean you are at this site…) We get love for Michael. It is deserved.
glow interview with Ed Sanders over at Poetry Daily. If you have seen it, Fuck You. If not, Fuck You.
It’s pretty good to write here, because people leave us alone.