Please enjoy this three part video of Brian Evenson reading at &NOW last fall. He read “South of the Beast,” a story he says he wrote in his late twenties, as well as “Windeye,” published in PEN America 11, and then “A Pursuit” and “Invisible Box,” both from Fugue State.

(via @Caketrain)

Parts 2 and 3 after the break.

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Some neat book sculptures from Paul Octavious.

A team of publishing nerds Tumblrs what New Yorkers are reading on the subway (etc.) at CoverSpy.

The OED costs $200ish a year to access, but you can enjoy for free their word-of-the-day feature (thanks, jh).

Coudal Partners field tests some books with the help of Jonathan Messinger, Ron Hogan, Eric Sptiznagel, and Jessa Crispin.

One Story is offering editorial mentorships for writers who’d like some thoughts on their work ($25 for 15minutes).

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Looks like UT-Austin has acquired David Foster Wallace’s archive. From the press release:

Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed “Infinite Jest,” the earliest appearance of his signature “David Foster Wallace” on “Viking Poem,” written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.

You can look at some of the notes he made inside the books in his library here. And here are some notes he made in his dictionaries. The archive will be available to researchers next fall.

(Thanks, jh, for the tip)

When my sister and I were little, we sometimes played around our house a very loose adaptation of Calvin Ball. Our version involved one of those big Koosh balls that were popular in the late 80s, as well as other objects and toys and so on. We also ran up and down the hallway a lot. I don’t remember who won or how we scored it or whatever. I just remember that we had fun.

I say all of this above in order to set up a very enthusiastic hurrah for these people, who have organized a game of Eschaton in Minneapolis. Anyone else seen this? They seem to be very serious about it. They have an extensive rule book. They are planning ahead a month in advance. They will not bring dogs to the event.

Keith Pille, the author of the rule book to Eschaton Lite, writes on the event wall:

One thing we could do with a month of lead-time: figure out what sort of game-scale works. My half-assed experimentation in the back yard tells me that i can’t throw a tennis ball with much accuracy for more than 30 feet (it also tells me that we shouldn’t have a dog on hand, because she’ll try to catch and run off with our warheads). I’ll do some more experimenting to see what sort of scale/target size would really work for us. I think ideally, you want targets to be hittable but not automatic…

I hope they take pictures or post a debriefing or make a video.

(via @TheLiftedBrow)

I believe there is little to gain by exchanging opinions with other artists concerning either the ideology of art or technical methods. Very much alone in my work, I am almost jealous of it. Geography has no bearing on it, nor have the interests of the community in which I work.

-Yves Tanguy, 1954 (via this John Ashbery article)

While a resident at the Women’s Studio Workshop last year, Abigail Uhteg created The Complex of All These, a neat handmade book in limited edition. She took over 3,000 photos of the entire process and put them together into this video.

You can preorder Scott Garson’s American Gymnopédies from Willows Wept Press. Apparently, there are only 28 copies left. I think some of these pieces in the book appeared in Unsaid and The Collagist and elsewhere. Go to The Collagist to read a few. Go also to ArtVoice to read one. And, over at Garson’s Fictionaut page is “Houston Gymnopédie” and “D.C. Gymnopédie,” which shortly afterward appeared in Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts.

Sometimes the streets of Houston do stink, I must admit, and one of my favorite things about D.C. is the way it appears on a map.

Opening tomorrow at the Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington D.C. is Call + Response, a show consisting of the paired work of sixteen D.C. writers and sixteen D.C. artists. According to the press release, the show grew out of co-curators Kira Wisniewski and William Bert’s desire to draw together two groups in D.C.: writers and visual artists.

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Read excerpts and order here.

I’m working on another ‘weather story’ and found this video of a wind turbine self-destructing. I believe, based on what little I’ve read, this can happen in storm conditions if the brakes in the turbine fail.

I can’t remember if we’ve talked about ‘research’ here (so sorry if this is an old topic), but I just wanted to type out a few notes on research and my research habits.

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How much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! When I think back and recall the time when I was still a member of the canine community, sharing in all its preoccupations, a dog among dogs, I find on closer examination that from the very beginning I sensed some discrepancy, some little maladjustment, causing a slight feeling of discomfort which not even the most decorous public functions could eliminate; more, that sometimes, no, not sometimes, but very often, the mere look of some fellow dog of my own circle that I was fond of, the mere look of him, as if I had just caught it for the first time, would fill me with helpless embarrassment and fear, even with despair.

first few lines of “Investigations of a Dog” by Franz Kafka (translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)

From Christopher Heavener of Annalemma comes this call for submissions (deadline: Jan 15th) and donations to a project that seeks to support the work of Anne Elizabeth Moore, who works with Cambodian women, teaching them how to make zines. Here’s word of the anthology/donation drive direct from Chris:

In the winter of 2007 editor, author, and activist Anne Elizabeth Moore was invited to live to Phnom Penh to teach Cambodian young women how to make zines. She plans to return December 24th to continue her ongoing project. We think this is awesome. We want to help her out and hope you do too.

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