Matthew Simmons
Matthew Simmons lives in Seattle.
Matthew Simmons—
You may know the backstory of Ben Marcus’s book The Age of Wire and String—that it was written with the help of Stith Thompson’s Motif Index of Folk-Literature. Did you know the entire thing is online? If so, why the fuck didn’t you tell me?
“It’s often a distraction.”
I want to point out that responding to depiction and illustration often involves something apart from the formal characteristics of painting. It’s often a distraction. On the other hand, purely formal characteristics exercise the senses as do string quartets, piano concertos, Dixieland. Because of this the representation I’m interested in is of those things only the eye can touch.
Matthew Simmons—
It took Sean McCarthy from Popmatters seven years to sell his copy of REM’s Monster to a used record store because a ton of people bought it and then half that ton tried to sell the damn thing back. I asked one of our used book buyers what the Seattle used book equivalent was. Care to try to guess what title every person with a box of books tries to sell to us? An envelope full of galleys to anyone who can nail it before I update this post with the answer at 7pm Eastern Pacific Standard Time. ANSWER (guessed by Lance and Jack at pretty much the same time): SEABISCUIT.
Writing/Editing Prompt: Kill Yr Narrator
Basic: Take a first person story, new or old—one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Go to the bottom of the story. Press return twice after the final bit of punctuation on the final paragraph. Add a little section sign. This one:
(On a Mac, it’s Option+6.)
Hit return two more times. Let another narrator take over. Explain somehow that the first narrator is dead. Reassess the story from the second narrator’s perspective.
Advanced: Take a third person story, new or old—one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Go to the bottom of the story. Press return twice after the final bit of punctuation on the final paragraph. Add a little section sign.
Hit return two more times. Let something else take over. Consider: if an omniscient narrator “dies,” what happens to the world of the story? Does another omniscient narrator fill the vacuum? Consider: God is dead. What now? Does the world end? Does the narrator’s creator decide to step out from behind the corpse and speak? Does the world remake itself?
Funny peculiar?
I tried to write a couple of jokes for a friend of mine who is a stand-up. Here’s one: You know, with all the sneaking around in the dark, the shouting, and the forcible sodomy, a home invasion robbery is pretty much exactly like a surprise birthday party. Except without cake.
Hmmm. As I said, I tried.
Ever try to write a joke? Let’s hear it.
Matthew Simmons—
When people started binding books for the first time, do you think a bunch of people were really mad because they were just way into the way a scroll looks and feels? Did they tell people that scrolls were totally more authentic?
Writing Prompt: Vanish
Say you’re writing about someone who is not around. Say you are writing about someone that some others have lost in one way or another. (There are so very many ways of losing someone.) As I see it, you have two ways of approaching this.
The first image illustrates one way of doing it. (Image by Charles Cohen.) Someone can disappear and leave a gaping hole shaped just like themselves.
This second image is by a Seattle artist named John Haddock. It is also a picture of someone who is not there. Haddock takes images from the web—pornographic images—and erases the nude figure from the image, replacing it by drawing the patterns of the bedspread, the color of the wall, the features of the room. After the character has been erased, the hole has been filled in.
Try them both. Write something about a person who is gone. In one version, leave the gaping hole. In the other, fill the hole in so it is almost like the person was never there.
Underland Press Sale
Underland Press wrote to say they are offering a 15% discount on their entire stock through the end of December. This includes their lovely, lovely limited edition hardcovers. Finch! Last Days by Brian Evenson! Best American Fantasy! Evil Clowns!
Go forth. Buy. Tell your friends. When you check out, use the code: xmas09.
There’s also a four books for $30 deal at Two Dollar Radio. Joshua Mohr! Gary Indiana! Nog!
Happy holidays.