Rauan Klassnik
http://rauanklassnik.blogspot.com
author of three collections: Sky Rat (Spork, 2014), The Moon's Jaw (Black Ocean, 2013) and Holy Land (Black Ocean, 2008) ... ----- @klassnik ------
…….I am Paulina……
Lying in bed the other day and listening to Paulina Rubio’s sultry and filthy voice I felt suddenly (no, I knew!) that I could have written her songs and that she could have written my poems.
——Encrusted W/ Emeralds——Stinking Ditched——Boiling——
——I’m On The Back——Of An Elephant READ MORE >
Author Spotlight & Behind the Scenes & Massive People & Music / Comments Off on …….I am Paulina……
September 24th, 2013 / 10:36 pm
September 24th, 2013 / 10:36 pm
“Narrative Gold” — (In the Memoir Swamp) — Talking to Seattle’s Elissa Washuta
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“the memoir genre is full of duds”
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Rauan: why is most Memoir so bad, so boring (and in so many instances just a kind of “grief porn”)??
Elissa: Memoir is the genre most often entered by celebrities. It’s also full of books by people whose lives have been stricken by remarkable tragedies or circumstances that are marketable to readers hungry to know about other people’s lives. If we want to know about that secret wig that Andre Agassi wore for years during his tennis career, he’ll gladly sell us a copy of his memoir, Open. If we want to know how Dustin Diamond felt about playing Screech, he’ll give us an earful in Behind the Bell. Politicians use memoir to push their agendas; the infamous use it to set the record straight. Many celebrity memoirs are ghostwritten, and I get the feeling that the people on the covers don’t think much about craft.
Memoir isn’t working, I think, when the author has no ear for language, no eye for image, a limp voice, and an insistence upon a narrative arc that delivers an easy revelatory triumph at the end. In mediocre-at-best memoirs, the narrators balk when faced with the opportunity to tease out the most complicated tangles of their experience–sometimes, the revelation of their own complicity in what’s gnawing at them. That’s narrative gold in memoir: reading about a character with agency is much more compelling than reading about a helpless victim. I certainly do not wish to judge or take away from the lived experiences of the people who wrote the memoirs that I’ve found the most to critique in (including Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel and Lucky by Alice Sebold), but in memoir, there’s a problematic tendency to close the gap between art and life that allows the most exciting work to take place.
I read and listen to (audiobooks of) lots of memoirs. I’ll listen to any memoir that Seattle Public Library has available. While I do think the memoir genre is full of duds, I’ve read so many thrilling, vibrant, well-written memoirs in the past few years, including Rat Girl by Kristen Hersh, The Guardians by Sarah Manguso, Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin by Nicole Hardy, READ MORE >
Rauan Klassnik—
….even if you don’t help them give birth to Lenses (“a messy, caustic bunch. Inherently unclean, fibrillating, picking, shifting in and out of dark rooms”) you should definitely check out Jake and Barrett’s creepy, unnerving video
(click here)
3
Rauan Klassnik—
a soft target
okay, so, Franzen’s been toasted again:
“Every woman must decide how not to sleep with Jonathan Franzen . . . how best to escape his sexual clutches if (she) ever encountered him on the path that led to the nearest market town” —
(from The Toast)
“for he shall be riding on a white steed, and his right hand will bear no glove. When you see him, you must rush at him, and throw your kirtle over him, and hold fast to him –”
(from The Toast)
But is it funny? In poor taste?
click here to read the “Toast” in full
Tips For Getting Published
Rauan — boils it down
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[ …touched and overwhelmed by all the letters I get bemoaning the travails of getting published I spent the last few days locked up in my laboratory boiling my thoughts and advice down to the basics. The essentials.
Stick to my program and you’ll likely be a Bestseller before the cows come singing on down through their skulls full of rice (results not typical)… ]
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1) “It’s all about the writing”—well, you know, that’s absolute crap.
2)
If your nose
Aint brown, this book’s
Going down(like the Titanic, fire & Ice, blah, blah)
These sorts of mantras and reminders are vital. Tape this one on the wall over your desk. Engrave it on your sad, desperate brain.
publishing’s a cold-blooded beast
3) Lie, beg, borrow, steal, squeal, bribe, flatter, romance, fuck, suck, READ MORE >
Brian McGuigan (of Seattle) talks Tao, Junot Diaz, Guns, Poetry Readings, etc……
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writing, like Nascar, needs to “twerk”
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Rauan: so what do you think of Tao Lin’s prose?
Brian McGuigan: Tao Lin is the literary equivalent of Nascar without the excitement of car crashes. I know people out there love his work (as there are many out there, like me, who don’t), but reading his prose is like watching cars drive in circles. His sentences lack much pulse. The verbs don’t twerk–they don’t even do the Hokie Pokie. They just lay there flat, motionless, like sex you don’t really want to have but you’re doing it because you know your partner wants it and you just want to go to bed. I feel the same about Lin’s dialogue, which is often cited as his skill, but it reads like a bad Miranda July movie, overcooked and unsalted. There’s just no spice. The sum of it all reminds me of writing I read in college workshops over a decade ago. If I could ever make it through one of his novels (Twenty pages into “Richard Yates” I chucked the book on the floor of a beloved Seattle indie bookstore and walked out.), I’d have red-penned the shit out of it. I’ve never understood the hype around Tao Lin. His writing just isn’t for me.
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w/ Spice — (twerkin’)
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Okay, so that was the first part of my latest Seattle Author Spotlight (# 8, featuring Brian McGuigan).
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Brian was, until quite recently, the program director at Hugo House. Brian’s still involved with Hugo House, curating among other events his regular and extremely popular Cheap Wine/Beer & Poetry/Prose nights, but now, after the success of his essay My fantasies of mass murder at Salon, Brian spends most of his working hours on a memoir regarding his experiences with violence, guns, etc. Brian McGuigan is street wise, a damned hard worker and has an excellent and elegant sense of humor. Coming out of a tough Irish family Brian certainly has toughness also and, though I don’t think he’s been to Ireland, Brian speaks as though he’s kissed the Blarney Stone several times! It was great chatting with him in preparation for this Spotlight.
And, to follow then READ MORE >
Seth Abramson’s Using Me!!
— Seth Abramson —
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[ “…….. I’m kind of thinking, believing, that even without these peculiar and exceptional contexts (and this is impossible for me to truly know) that there’s something really compelling here. Something really fascinating. Many of you will think I’m goofing around here. I am not ……..” ]
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to follow is an excerpt from one of Seth’s newly-minted poems (available on Inknode (here) and on Youtube (here) where you can listen to the audio of the poem coming out of the visual of a disconcerting seated-figure):
“…Seth Abramson grabbed her. Threw her to the ground. Pulled off her pants. Ripped off her panties. Mounted her. Seth Abramson’s young pink balls rubbed painfully against her hairy twat. O Lord, he thought. O Lord. O Lord. And finally Seth Abramson collapsed in a young boy’s cumless climax. She pressed charges. Seth Abramson was arrested. But when they examined her they found no traces of semen or forced entry. And when they examined Seth Abramson it all made sense: he had a house-mouse cock…”
(from “Strangers,” a poem “comprised of 275 statements made by individuals I have not met.”)
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And this, if I might say so myself, is excellent work (ha ha), and I say so, because I have a sense of humor, and because I wrote a “version” of this in my Adventures of Sex Ableton (# 11, to be precises) that I posted READ MORE >
………..Penny Goring…………
made especially for this feature — (thanks, Penny!!)
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anyone familiar with Penny Goring (her work, her Tumblr, her Tweets) will understand why I’m chuffed to be featuring her here in the 3rd installment of my UK Author’s Spotlight. anyone not familiar with Penny should check her out. most every link in this post will be to her Tumblr or Twitter. except for the one to her book, the zoom zoom.
(you’ll find Penny’s Bio at the end of this post.)
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brief interview:
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rauan: as far as writing goes where, if at all, do you draw the line?
penny: words or pics, it’s all the same to me, i don’t draw lines. my exes mum, after reading a poem of mine, he told me she sed to him: ‘someone needs to get her to stop. will she ever draw the line?’ but i won’t. because i don’t want to. if something happened to me it is mine. i can do what i like with it.
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rk: some people think that all Art comes from the way Male and Female bodies talk to each other, violent, gentle, in shadows, and in light. whatcha think? (and please elaborate)
pg: i’m always deeply cringing at any sweeping statements about what art is or isn’t etc. ugh. i’m not comfortable with the capital A either. being an artist feels more like a curse to me. i ran from it for what felt like a long time. but i got into lots of trouble, nearly died, ended up in rehab. so now i make stuff but i’m doing it compulsively. its like i’m a donkey chasing a carrot. and i put out too much work. i treat tumblr, facebook, twit, like a wall in a studio, not a show. if i’m working on it i’ll post it. that applies to my macros, vids, and written work. but then i’ll go back, within minutes, days, or weeks, and delete most of it.
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“pretentious as fuk”
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rk: the movie Ted and Sylvia is, undoubtedly, one of the great movies of our time. READ MORE >
Rauan Klassnik—
White Privilege by Seth Abramson
(a poem of 400 true statements)
text version of the poem available at Ink Node here
Alex Dimitrov: “It’s My Book”
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The writer Ted Rees takes real issue with Alex Dimitrov’s decision to use a photograph from David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York series as the cover of his book. Rees is clearly disturbed by this and over on his Tumblr (HARM MASSAGE) he fleshes out what he considers to be “a multitude of problems” in the form of a letter (DEAR ALEX DIMITROV) that you can read in full here .
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Here, now though, is an extract from Rees’ letter:
…your use of Wojnarowicz’s photograph is, to quote a friend, “one of the most unconscionable appropriations” of another’s artwork that I’ve seen in years. It speaks to a self-importance wrapped in ignorance at best, and a type of colonialism at its worst. Through social and perhaps physical capital, you have acquired an image, totally denuded it of its creator’s political and social intentions, and made it into what you imagine is a reflection, and thereby a representation, of yourself and your work. The act debases Wojnarowicz, whose life was punctuated by poverty, hardship, confusion, and resistance, and whose work attempted to bring attention to how these elements worked on his own life as well as the lives of those around him.
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And, to follow, now, is the transcript of a little Q & A that I did with Alex:
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Rauan: You don’t seem too bothered by Rees’ criticisms. But could you tell us why you chose the Rimbaud Wojnarowicz piece for your cover?
Alex: Wojnarowicz’s work is important to me—the anger and passion READ MORE >