Viewer Mail!
| from |  M. Baumer |
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| to | Justin Taylor |
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| date | Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:13 AM |
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| subject | a note from thieves jargon |
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| mailed-by | gmail.com |
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Hello Justin Taylor,
I am one of the fiction editors at Thieves Jargon. I was going to write a big thing about Thieves Jargon and Matt DiGangi after I read your HTML post today. I don’t think I’m upset. I think I most agree with Sam Pink. Similar to Zachary German I used to not care for Sam Pink until about a week ago. I was thrown off by his blog. Anyway, I wanted to get across to you that I think Matt has done some really good things with Thieves Jargon. He’s been at it for five years. He started it back when the internet was still good. I don’t know what that means. Someone once said, “The internet died two years ago.” I don’t know what they meant by this. I can only guess. They said this to me one year ago. Three years ago the internet was still alive? Maybe it’s because I don’t like to read comments. Today made me feel a little nauseous.
I believe BB is a good person. I know Matt is. The internet makes people different. I don’t think there is a right and wrong here. I am being cliche or a pussy. Someone should apologize. I will. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I think I was born out of wedlock.”
I feel like I’m doing a bad impression of Sam Pink. Fuck…Bitch…Lewd sexual movements in Langston Hughes face?
I don’t know where else to go with this. You know when you’re watching a movie and you can see the trainwreck coming and you tense up and want to kick the characters in the head because it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen next. I don’t think this is like that. I don’t think it matters that much.
Maybe I will go to your house some day in a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt or a t-shirt. That’s my threat. I hope you’re scared. You can tell all the contributors to HTML GIANT the same goes for them except for Jimmy Chen. If I was going to Jimmy Chen’s house I would make a cake. I have a very easy cake recipe. You only need soda and cake mix. Don’t tell Jimmy. I don’t want him to be disappointed in my cake.
Fuck, I feel like making Mr. DiGangi a cake. I think he deserves one. BB could probably use one. You should make him one.
Both of them wake up in the morning. DiGangi posts the daily Thieves Jargon story. BB probably looks at a Lost Highway poster or something. DiGangi gets on the subway and reads a book that probably no one else around him has heard of. The mailman probably thinks BB is a terrorist receiving airplane manuals. DiGangi works all day publishing boring textbooks, then he goes to class, comes home, does homework, and Thieves Jargon editor duties. BB probably writes a novel in that time. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I don’t know what else to say. I’ve rambled on and said nothing.
Just know I was serious about my threat. I’ve rejected people in person before. I’ve gone to people’s houses and knocked on their doors and said, “Hello, I’m from Thieves Jargon.”
I’m glad today happened.
Everyone should cheer.
Hail DiGangi.
I don’t know what else to think.
-Mark Baumer
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www.thievesjargon.com
www.everydayyeah.com
Gee, that was random.
********BONUS********* JUSTIN TAYLOR REPLIES:
| rom | Justin Taylor |
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| to | “M. Baumer” |
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| date | Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:33 AM |
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| subject | Re: a note from thieves jargon |
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| mailed-by | gmail.com |
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Hi, Mark, thanks for writing. I don’t really know what to make of your letter. To be honest, it doesn’t seem like it should have been addressed to me. It’s not exactly about any of the things I wrote about in my recent blog post, which itself was rather explicit about being somewhat predicated by, but hardly “about,” Matt DiGangi and Thieves Jargon–two entities about which I know very little, and not for lack of opportunity either.
I’m sorry that Matt has to edit boring textbooks. We must, all of us, do something. For example, I have to think of lesson plans and commute to New Jersey twice a week to teach my class, and then I have to grade my students’ papers. Let me tell you, brother, it’s no walk in the park, although I do get to walk through campus, which has many park-like qualities. Also, sometimes the students write things that are very funny. Typically, they have not done so on purpose.
Speaking of which, I have no idea what “when the internet was still good” means, but then I’m not the one who said it. Since you’re the one who said it, it is discomforting to know that you don’t know what it means either. Do you often make declarations incomprehensible even to yourself and then send them off in personal letters to strangers?
Personally, I think shoelaces both got really lame in the mid-90s, but they seem to have really re-emerged during the last year or two, totally transformed and ready to assert their relevance–even necessity, perhaps–to the culture. I can’t wait to see what happens with shoelaces next.
In closing, I wish that I could promise to keep your secret about the simplicity of your cake recipe from Jimmy, but the fact of the matter is that I’m almost certainly going to post your letter and my response (that is, this letter which I’m writing right now) on HTMLGiant later this afternoon, or possibly even this morning, so I guess he’ll probably learn the truth that way.
JT
************DOUBLE YOUR BONUS*********
M. BAUMER REPLIES TO THE REPLY:
| from | M. Baumer |
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| to | Justin Taylor |
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| date | Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 12:52 PM |
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| subject | Re: a note from thieves jargon |
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| mailed-by | gmail.com |
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Hey Justin,
I give you permission to post my email without my permission.
Please include this:
I also want to say something about BB that makes fun of the way he gets off or something, but I am not very good at shit talking.
Justin, I think you want me to kill myself. ‘Shoelaces’ was my self-termination code word when I was created as a sad pot of soup on the back left burner. Then some family ate me.
I honestly think lots of people would consider being gay with BB’s blogspot account. I guess this is a compliment. Sometimes I worry about saying anything bad about BB and any other expert bloggers because in the back of my head I think, “If they kill themselves someone in the future will read this comment of me calling them a ‘shitfuck’ and then they’ll google my name and find my address and come to my house via google maps and dump un-erasable spam on my front lawn and my wife will say, ‘how could you say that?’ and then stop talking to me over gchat and i’ll marriage will be over.”
Oh well.
To Blake
“You’re a shitfuck. Don’t kill yourself.”
Are we having a feud now? About what?
Matt Bell’s HOW THE BROKEN LEAD THE BLIND
I’d be hard pressed to think of a better all around guy than Matt Bell, not to mention one hell of a writer. Matt somehow is able to fuse the abstruse with just great storytelling in a way that few are able to unlock, meanwhile also capable shifting gowns of from one mode to another as cleanly as any magician I can think of.
His forthcoming chapbook HOW THE BROKEN LEAD THE BLIND from Willow Wept Press is something to be excited about and look forward to. Here is a press release and how to order:
Matt Bell’s HOW THE BROKEN LEAD THE BLIND is now available for pre-order!
How the Broken Lead the Blind includes ten fabulous stories by Mr. Matt Bell. And everyone’s favorite artist, Christy Call, is working on illustrations and cover art. We have blurbs on their way from Michael Kimball, Mike Czyzniejewski, Dave Housley, Steve Gillis, Steven McDermott, Dan Wickett, William Walsh, and Ryan Call. I think my job here as promoter is done: What else is there to say? This chapbook, I know, will easily sell itself.So. What you need to know is this: How the Broken Lead the Blind will begin shipping in January. Please pre-order now, as there is a limited print run of only 100 copies.
Go here to order. At 100 copies, these will go mega fast. Do a buy.
Dave Church Died
On Thanksgiving, poet Dave Church passed away.
The reason I know Dave Church is that when I first started sending poems out to small magazines, about ten years ago, he was in every journal. We wrote letters back and forth and his letters were always on thin sheets of paper and written in this crazy longhand. Some were typed on a typewriter. Tough, compassionate, and funny, I always liked corresponding with Dave Church.
Prolific in publishing, Dave Church was also this kind of larger than life character that I always heard about through other writers.
From PoetryMagazine.org.uk: in an articled title “Dave Church: a well kept American Secret:”
“From the tomato plantations of Florida, where he spent time on a ‘chain gang’ for being drunk and disorderly, the eighteen year old youth had set out on a Beat odyssey that was to occupy much of his life from then on in. He has worked as a roofer, bouncer, street barker (for Big Al’s, a strip joint seen behind the opening credits on the old ‘Streets of San Francisco’ TV series), and even cut the lawn for a doctor who paid him in drugs.”
Dave Church was old school indie lit, publishing hundreds of poems in small venues and numerous chapbooks and broadsides.
Sorry to be so dark on a Monday morning, but I thought this was important.
Dear Leader
Blake Butler—our fearless leader here at htmlgiant—has a novella coming from the mighty Calamari Press. Go here to pre-order it.
That is all.
WE WANT YOU: To Help Name Rachel Sherman’s Firstborn Child!
So yesterday I had lunch with Rachel Sherman (author of The First Hurt), who also teaches at Rutgers. She’s wildly pregnant, and told me she’s due in about 7 weeks. She mentioned that the baby is a girl, and I asked if she and her husband had a name picked out. She said there were several in the running, but nothing was settled. I suggested that maybe the best way to come to a decision was through an internet contest. And so, after I agreed to her single and only stipulation–which is that the results are non-binding–she basically told me to go knock myself out.
So it’s now up to YOU to help NAME RACHEL SHERMAN’S BABY. The rules of the game are simple: post your nomination for the baby’s name in the comments section of this post. Eventually, Rachel will pick a winner, and also explain what type of winner you are: (1) “winner” in the sense of “yeah I might totally call my kid that” or (2) “winner” in the sense of “that was really funny slash original slash offensive of you, but seriously dude.” (UPDATE: Rachel says the winner also gets a signed copy of The First Hurt.)
To help get you in the right spirit, here’s a picture of a tiny adorable primate clutching a teddy bear.
Ander Monson’s BOX
Ander Monson has sneakily snuck a hyper link text object onto the web, at his suddenly updated website, which now features a section called The Swarm, containing several new essays and weird links, as well as the above mentioned hyper link text object, having to do with a BOX.
I got pretty far into it and plan to go back and play some more. It does some cool, new stuff I think, based often in Ander’s vivid and multi-edged prong of new layers and new space, ie the launch text of this:
Every word is contained by space, white, visual, semantic. Being a word, it is a segment of something larger, potentially. Alone it is isolated, in a box. As you look into the box you are in the box.
Go play.
The site also mention’s a new book by Ander, but no info directly yet or where, when, or what.
However it comes, I hope it’s soon.
Ryan & Christy Call’s POCKET FINGER
New from Publishing Genius:
Wow. POCKET FINGER represents a new level of ‘wow, fuck’ from Adam Robinson, the Publishing Genius. Insane and beautiful enfolded images from the clearly new and intricately spare imagery of Christy Call, meshed with bro-for-life Ryan’s knack to meld the everyday of fathers, fishing, and tradition with some tonally-wicked phrasing.
Read the shit out of this.
Nick Antosca’s MIDNIGHT PICNIC
With the shitty demise of Impetus Press, Nick Antosca has already gotten his forthcoming MIDNIGHT PICNIC lined up with a new press, Word Riot Books. Very glad to see this getting saved so quickly, and with hardly any delay. Here’s a press release:
Middletown, NJ — Punk rock-spirited independent publisher Word Riot
Press will release Nick Antosca’s second novel Midnight Picnic on Dec.
15.Midnight Picnic was slated to be released by Impetus Press on Oct. 31.
The book’s publication was put on hold when Impetus Press publishers
Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash announced the dissolution of the
company due to financial pressures. Shortly afterward, Impetus Press,
Word Riot Press and Antosca began discussions about the novel’s
future.“Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash’s dedication to Impetus authors
is remarkable,” Word Riot Press publisher Jackie Corley said. “When
Willy and Jennifer learned of Word Riot Press’ interest in Midnight
Picnic, they worked tirelessly to make a deal happen.“I’m pleased and impressed by how fast Word Riot stepped up,” Antosca
said. “Jackie didn’t hesitate, and I think it’s a wonderful thing for
independent literature that she runs her press so fearlessly. It’s
terrific that she’s going to publish Midnight Picnic.”An eerie story about the nature of death, Midnight Picnic is a
non-traditional ghost story in which a vengeful child searches for his
murderer on the deserted roads of the American countryside, drifting
in and out of the afterlife.“If there’s a real Hell out there in the American heartland, and real
ghosts, I suspect Nick Antosca has seen them. Midnight Picnic
reinvents the ghost story for our unsettled times—it’s a riveting and
terrifying 21st Century Book of the Dead that’s one of the most
frightening novels I’ve read in years,” said Elizabeth Hand, author of
Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Winterlong.Jami Attenberg, author of The Kept Man, has called Midnight Picnic “a
thrilling follow-up to his contemplative debut, Fires. His
imagination makes an astonishing show in this macabre, bizarre and
witty story of ghosts and revenge. Impossible to put down until the
extremely satisfying end, Midnight Picnic conjures up the mounting
tension of the finest Bradbury story.”John Haskell, author of American Purgatorio and I Am Not Jackson
Pollock, concurred with Hand and Attenberg’s assessment of Antosca’s uncanny ability to unearth the darker elements of human nature:
“Beneath the skin of emotion there are muscles and nerves, and that’s
where Antosca takes us.”Called a “page-turner” and “a demented little novel” by Publishers
Weekly, Midnight Picnic will be at home in Word Riot Press’ diverse
stable of literary and experimental works of fiction.“Nick’s forceful authorial voice has made him a young writer to watch.
I’m elated to have Nick as part of the Word Riot Press family,” Corley
said.
*This’ll be Blake in a few years
I don’t know if you’ve read The Beans of Egypt Maine. I did—years ago. And I really liked it.
I remember reading something about it, forgetting the title, and then accidentally buying (and reading) that Dorothy Allison book instead. (Yeesh.)
A couple of years later, though, I found the real deal. I remember it being a bit bleak, but the language was strong and straight ahead. Good sentences.
There’s a really good article about Chute in The New York Times.
That’s her holding what looks like an AK-47. Her husband is a sculptor who never learned how to read. (Also, if you look closely at the photo of the two of them, he kind of looks younger than his giant gray beard suggests. It’s his eyes.) They have an anti-corporate militia. She still writes on a typewriter. They have a sign on their property that suggests one stay away: “Woa. Visitors Turn Back.”
They also have a bunch of Scottish Terriers. I don’t know why, but that strikes me as the weirdest part of the story.
Day of Jubilee: Tao Lin offers free victory book to Barack Obama
with ‘obama’ as president my writing will increase in viability, i believe
Happy Actually Having a Future Maybe, Instead of Definitely Being Totally Fucked!
Here’s one for the road-
