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.
Barry Graham shoutout at Chicago Now. He’ll be reading tonight at Quickies! (along with others who glow like tongue-cannons)
“I am more proud of the books I have read than the books I have written.” Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevdeo
Crazy is OK. Who hasn’t awoken on the kitchen floor, naked? And hanging out with/knowing/dating Crazy can be fun, or funny. Loud-Talker, Close-Talker, Person-Who-Eats-Only-Boiled Potatoes, every mélange and mishmash of personality—it’s cool.
But English departments have small rooms. And they seem to stuff workshops in the tiniest, the concrete walls, flickering fluorescent hum, chalkboard with that awful stuff, chalk. Like a bonfire, Crazy is Ok with a bit of open space, but in a small, closed room, the romance of the cracking heat tends to burn.
Did I mention the semester begins today?
What is your workshop horror story? I’ll flavor the pot with my top 3.
1.) Student of mine who brought a coffee mug of vodka and OJ to class every meeting (no big problem [maybe–he did get a bit sloppy/vociferous at times, and I had to tell him more than once that the phrase “words-of-ass” is never appropriate or helpful feedback] except for when the woman next to him narked).
2.) Student of mine who wrote intricate, detailed, very specific story about killing every member of the class in intricate, detailed, very specific ways. In a recent post-911 environ of paranoia, this incident ended up involving the ABI (Alabama state FBI) and two undercover cops who pretended they were college students.
3.) Fellow student (this in grad school) who leaped up and screamed into all our faces (causing crying and/or additional screaming) because the instructor insulted Richard Nixon. Was I frightened? Indeed.
You?
This is my day in the sun and I’ve got my arms in the air, my head tipped back like the hinged lid of a lighter. Contrary to popular belief, I am not alone. Everyone’s listening. All I see is the bulging gas above me and I’m shooting my mind at it. I’m as close to God as I’ll ever be. The people are tiny. They’re buckshot around my ankles. I could kneel and run my fingers through them.
Lucy Corin, from The Entire Predicament.
Everyone says Lucy Corin creates worlds, so I am going to pass on that one. Lucy Corin creates Cornish hens, light yet succulent on the gray tongue of my brain. That’s better than worlds. It might be metaphor, magic realism, or everyday life, I will let you decide. Corin has this light touch, this light touch with her prose. It is mysterious like Japanese dolls. I like it.
Stephanie Barton, managing director of Penguin Children’s Books, says publishers in 2010 will go with “very traditional, no-risk purchases.”
(Does this mean no more, “Joined at Birth: The Lives of Conjoined Twins”?)
Oh come now, I don’t believe you, Steph. Somewhere sits a sneaky MSS, as in smart, as in subversive, as in prepping the soil to grow not turnips, but psychotomimetic unicycles.
Alt books for kids? Weird books, strange books, honest books–books you read as a child (or to your child) and then went, “What the fuck?”
“After a fall from an experimental aircraft, Cris Molina is stricken with an unusual brain malfunction: He sees everything wrong (shoes look like books and a shirt looks like a fifth century Ming vase).”
Or, for your 12 year old…who may or may not be Doing It.
“Okay,” said Jonathan. “The choice is this. You either have to shag Jenny Gibson—or else that homeless woman who begs spare change outside Cramner’s bakers.”
Your selections?
(Cartier-Bresson)
People sometimes scoff flash fiction by noting its recent flabelliform of popularity. I occasionally refute by bringing past authors of flash to the now. I hope you may one day gather this feature and create a joiner’s mallet.
Enter Daniil Kharms.
He felt cause and effect were funny, buy not ha-ha funny. I once thought serious silliness the only real answer to life (but I digress), so was/am happy the day I stumbled upon Kharms. Automatic and lifeless makes us into a thing. This is good or bad?
Excellent site here of his work.
Here is a flash for you, titled, “How a Man Crumbled.”
– They say all the best tarts are fat-arsed. Gee-ee, I really like busty tarts, I love the way they smell.
Having said this, he started to increase in height and, upon reaching the ceiling, he crumbled into a thousand little pellets. The yard-keeper Panteley came, swept all these pellets up into his scoops in which he usually picked up the horse muck, and he carried these pellets away somewhere to the back yard.
And the sun continued to shine as ever and splendiferous ladies continued to smell just as ravishingly as ever.
