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.
For example, Matt Mullins and Three Ways of the Saw (Atticus Books). The “jagged” school. Certainly Eugene Martin (this book amazing, BTW). Sometimes XTX, Mary Miller, sometimes KGM. Certainly Jamie Iredell. A Hubert Shelby Jr./Iceberg Slim/Patti Smith continuum. Lipstick on the edge of a knife, balls clanking. Thrown/thrown down bottle of flungward. Slash. Krash. You wake up to vomit and your breath smells like burning tires, wonder, jamboree and regret.
Matt Mullins lives in a three-room apartment in a quiet business section of downtown Indiana. His apartment, located in a fifties-futuristic building in sight of four pawn shops and a hat store (That’s not really a hat store, Matt told me), is comfortably unimposing, though it does testify to his days as a traveling musician: souvenirs from Kalamazoo, Mexico, the Eastern Shore, the steppes of Kansas; a bookcase lined with personally inscribed records by Kiri Te Kanawa, DMX, Matt Salesses, Ginsberg (spoken word), Dee Dee Ramone; an entryway in which vintage amplifiers and various guitar cases are stacked shoulder high, as if headlining festival tours of indefinite length were perpetually in the offing.
Our first meeting took place in the summer of 2011. I arrived at his door in the early afternoon, but it was not his door, it was a small bar. There was an elderly woman behind the bar who looked exactly like a cross between a nocturnal monkey and Anthony Perkins. I had a shot of vodka and a very cold beer then asked, “Does Matt Mullins live around here?”
Night-monkey Perkins nodded to the ceiling. “Upstairs.”
I found Matt Mullins newly awakened, his thick brown hair tousled and pale blue eyes slightly bleary; he was obviously surprised that anyone would come to call at that hour of the day. As he finished his breakfast (a Pop-Tart and a grapefruit) and lighted up his first cigarette, his thin, somewhat wiry frame relaxed noticeably. He became increasingly jovial.
“There’s a bar below this apartment, can you believe that?”
“There is?” I said.
“Yes. Let’s go down and have a look.”
We never did get to the interview that day. But there were other days.
Tonight White Castle expects about 6,400 people during its candlelight dinner event (they take reservations). Love writing? Love to be writing or to have written? You date a short story, marry a novel, so what’s a poem? Will we watch more or less porn today? (It smells like more.) It’s easier just to watch TV. TV is closer to reality anyway; it’s truer than the book. (The insanity of TV is the insanity of human life.) Liars of the heart. I wrote today might just mean a check to your garbageman or lord or where some say we lost our romance, our thumbs (oh those ghost phones): LH6, NSA, RUH? I read that book means you’ve heard of the title. It all a circle jerk in here, isn’t it? In the beginning was the word, but what type of love was that? Ah, the seduction of eloquence. I read for plot. Do you? No, but in 1990 David Letterman, in an odd reversal of his usual policy, paid Miss USSR to appear on his show. And then what happened? (The fee was four cartons of Marlboros.) I don’t know but it was lyrical to have her in the Green Room and ever put bananas in your coffee filter and made the coffee (why not?) so I pray to the big brassy lie of books.
First love is pretty great until you meet your second love at a bar one night. A man spends $1.60 today for every dollar a woman spends. Love reading a book or to have read a book? The insanity of reading is the synapses lifting 2D to 3D—you believe this shit? Or, why do we write/read books at all? Because, as you well know from your own clip-clopping, books are not pills that produce health when ingested in measured doses. Books do not shape character in any simple way-if, indeed, they do so at all-or the most literate would be the most virtuous instead of just the ordinary flesh-sacks with larger vocabularies. Sadly, my second wife caused me either horror or horripilation during love (her kisses decalcomania). Or, can we bring more love around here? Time kills it all, your passion, your dachshund and/or funny hamster, and then the stacks of books you’ll never read. (Words are clocks) I mean can we stop with all this literature and art stuck in the self-reflective light of the here and now, a lonely place inhabited by the solipsistic me. Also can I get some greasy fries? I mean big ol’ gas station gloopy tater wedges? If no, then GYPO. And beer me. Then shut out the light and let’s get to writing.
I was watching a small child play indoor soccer and honestly it had its moments but I was feeling that inevitable weight, boredom. I mean the kid was falling down, sort of tumbling, and I just wasn’t feeling that, so I walked about a block in a type of cold, hard rain (like smoke on the sidewalks) and across two streets and into the library. I selected a novel by James Salter. It was one of those old yellowing hardbacks that smell like my grandmother’s hallway where she used to keep a bottom drawer of ‘toys’ for when the kids dropped by. (The toys were a wooden block, a rock, an ancient, battered lunchbox, and one leather shoe.) I love those types of books. And it was about rock climbing and lyrical and plot-driven, as is often the way with Salter and, you know, reading is odd, some odd, inevitable chain—this book leads to this book leads to—and I started thinking about fighter pilots (Salter was one) and way leads to way and I finished Salter’s wonderful little novel and got online and bought Once a Fighter Pilot…by Jerry W. Cook. This was a mistake.
You ever been in a conversation where the person finds out you write (Oh Jesus, here we go…) and they cough up some variation of, “Yeh I’m going to write a book when I get the time.” Hmmm…that sort of gives me mixed feelings. I first think, Fuck off. But that’s just a harsh thing that kicks in. I relax and think, “Go right ahead” in this sort of drawl-type thinking, still a tinge of acid. One time over beers my recently retired dad, a dedicated and experienced organic gardener, said “I should write a book about my life as an organic gardener.” I answered, “Good idea. Bring me the first three pages tomorrow.” He did not. Another response I feel is, “Just because you have material doesn’t mean you have a book.” Or I might think, “When you get the time, why not try brain surgery, too?” I have other responses but I’m rambling and I wanted to get to my point: not everyone should write a book.
I should have known. There were warning signs:
2. OK, you don’t want to read any fucking super “Can creative writing be taught?” posts on here so don’t, just skip this link and start pounding avocado into paste (for the guac dip later), but this one has some interesting points and some decent links. So.
Creative writing is about doing the work of writing, and the experimental innovator benefits from time, support, and guidance.
11. Super exchange between John D’Agata and a fact checker, Jim.
Really, Jim, respectfully, you’re worrying about very stupid shit.
7. Jim Ruland over at Hobart is REALLY cheering for the Giants tonight.
2. What’s your AWP book fair budget? I like to take a big bundle of cash and leave my card behind. I bring the card, and it’s butter my biscuits crazy.
3. How to handicap this Superbowl? Brady plays it cool but you can see in his eyes the wake up daily, the “WTF? I own $8,000 flower pots and can do things with my hair. This kicks ass!” Eli looks like he cuts Brady’s yard, and not well. He walks through life in a daze. Brady gets nightly cunninglingus advice from his Brazilian goddess wife (who could buy him out X 20). “Clockwise, fucker!” “Sorry,” he mumbles again as he rubs the back of his neck and walks out back and throws a football through his walnut fence (lands in neighbor’s spleen-shaped pool). Eli likes Applebees but thinks the Wonton Tacos Chicken are “Too dern spicy.” Brady sometimes eats sushi fried, OK? Eli once wrote a complaint letter to Wal-mart (about some frozen waffles that split in half upon toaster entry) but didn’t send the letter because, in his heart, he loves Wal-mart. Brady did attend the opera in Italy last summer, but he also took two Lorcet and a V&T before settling in his seat. Eli is scared of horses (their heads are way too big!). Brady likes to smell the tips of his own fingers. Who knows?
Tell me the last time you quit a job. That’s a tough thing. You have to look at yourself and suck up and do it. Paint it for me. Then you must look at “that person” when you quit. Tell me how/why. I bet there are “hell yes I quit” and “why did I quit?” and the other thing, the space between the two.
Tell me how you felt. I mean this could be good. I’d like to hear your stories. I will NOT rip them off for my fiction, until I DO.
BONUS: Ever been fired? I was fired twice. Both lovely stories.
There is an actual space between fiction and nonfiction. We, these here folks, should squat it/sit thar/inhabit this space, if anyone. What/Where is that space? I’ve been thinking on it. What u say? I’d like to see more writers in that space.
Here is an opportunity to store your firearms (or umbrelli?) underground. 2012, people.
Also: When you take ibuprofen, what do you take, 2-4 tablets? Or more (barbaric yawp goes the duodenum)? Just pondering.
I do enjoy book as artifact. Funky front matter. Sudorific spine. A peplum on the paper edge, etc. This is something small presses do well. Mythical book as bible. As postcards. As a head shaped box (or a box shaped head?). Sometimes I hold these books, re-hold them, turn them, smell them (like beer, the odor of books simultaneously contains similarities and unique variances), bend them, watch them, pause during my reading and judge, question, critique (sometimes a book gets too cute in its design; this is about words), admire. I really do like when a book is a thing. Ok, let me hit this Magic Hat.
Here is a video of me talking about some of the stories and images I really enjoyed from Get in if You Want to Live. (I am pretty inebriated, so you may not be able to fully understand me. I do slur [though I never once feel compelled to fucking punch someone, now do I?])
Whoa, Magic Hat! I didn’t expect fruity. What is this flavor? A little lavender and pumpkin pie, a smidgen of doughnut, or is that musk? A hint of buttered popcorn vanilla peppermint cheese pizza roasting meat cinnamon buns strawberry parsley green apple rose Oriental spice baby powder chocolate pink grapefruit cranberry. Just a hint. Interesting. Let me try another one. That first bottle reminded me of the time I went horse-dancing in Mexico. (The riders are usually drunk, the horses are always beautiful, the music is deafeningly loud. All four legs move in time to the beat.)
11. Lucy Corin goes:
So when people call books bad for being masturbatory what they are saying I think is that they hate the culture/community/ personality type they associate with where that creative product comes from. They don’t want to hang out with those people, or those people make them feel bad about themselves or the world in a ‘what has become of us’ sort of way. Because if you LIKE someone, you probably LIKE watching them masturbate, after all.
2. Turgenev Hunter’s Sketches online. Oh hell yes. Grab me some black bread and vodka and I’m holing up like an elevator.
2. Sci fi Aimee Bender story online, you Star Cheeks.
3. And Stanley Fish goes,
The essence of all this is contained in an aphorism I formulated in 1964 as I watched my colleagues at Berkeley turn from abasing themselves before deans and boards of trustees to abasing themselves before students. Here is the aphorism: Academics like to eat shit, and in a pinch they don’t care whose shit they eat. Of course, had I known enough at the time, I could have saved myself the trouble and simply quoted Freud. For the masochist, Freud explains, “it is the suffering itself that matters; whether the sentence is cast by a loved one or by an indifferent person is of no importance … but the true masochist always holds out his cheek whenever he sees a chance of receiving a blow.” Whatever else they are, academics are resourceful, and when they set their minds to it, there are no limits to the varieties of pain they can inflict on one another and on themselves.
14. Word is AWP registration is sold out. 9300 registrants! First thought: Damn, that’s a lot of colorful skinny eyeglasses. Latte, anyone? OMG aging writer with a ponytail. (Let it go, Sean! Only if you let go your scarf matching your Converse sneakers.) Next thought: Time to put Book Fair pass on eBay.
2. Let’s gossip. Sinead lasted 16 days and that’s pretty good because if your man is on an iPad during the ceremonies you are fucked. (Then again he stalked her online to set up the matrimonies, so…) He’s a drug counselor (dork alert) and they of course went and got some crack and weed for the wedding night shenanigans. Sinead had to leave, OK? She said she was “living in a coffin.” (Actually, marriage is not a coffin, per say, but rather another walled habitat, an institution.) A few years ago a company in Massachusetts would sell you a “living coffin.” Here’s the deal: You buy your coffin but keep it in the house, like in the living room (groan at the pun, sorry). They even had shelves for books and a wine rack. The lid of the coffin was hinged to the back so you could push it up against the wall. Once you die, the lid could be attached with maple pins before burial. You sit there in your room staring at your own coffin daily and you are sure to finally recognize the macabre miracle of your daily existence as one of the living beings today on this planet. I think.
1. You have two days to enter the Frank Hinton/ xTx chapbook contest. I Vouch for it.
11. “Barefoot on the Pulpit” is a mighty fine poem for you today.
4. Here is a little pick-me-up. Dickens finds his baby daughter dead and must now write his wife about the situation (she is away). He does so, in this letter, but he fudges the truth a bit, in a very caring (maybe?) way, to prepare his wife for a situation, a concept naturally impossible, this preparation. But he tries.
7. In the UK, if you harass a badger and are caught in the act, your name will be added to the United Kingdom National DNA Database. I shit you not. For life, man! So don’t do that. Don’t harass badgers.