A Lot of Them Ugly & A Lot of Them Dark: An Interview with xTx
xTx has two books published Normally Special and Nobody Trusts a Black Magician. She has been published at Lamination Colony, Metazen, Word Riot, and a million other places. I don’t actually know if xTx is a human being or a hamster but her book made me have a lot of emotions. Her stories “Standoff” and “The Mill Pond” show an amazing understanding of the craft of writing but at the same time they don’t lose emotion.
NC: Who are some of your favorite authors and describe why you like them? But also what writers have influenced your style?
xTx: I always feel like I’m going to take a bullet for admitting this but, whatever. I’m not going to lie so I can fit in with the cool kids. The mainstream authors that always come to mind when I am asked this question are Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk and Jonathan Ames. Stephen King because I started reading him when I was super young and the stories he told blew my mind. I loved the evil versus good and the ugly and the weird and the scary he always brought. I love Chuck because that shit is fucked up good, yo; his stories, his characters, the detail, the uniqueness, the strange. I can never get tired of Chuck. I like Jonathan Ames because he’s so honest, self-deprecating and funny.
But to be honest, after I devoured all of their books, I really haven’t read these guys in a handful of years. Especially since I discovered the online lit scene and started reading all the zines that were out there and finding out there were ‘regular’ people out there making words that could also blow me away.
The books/authors that have blown me away recently are: Paula Bomer/Baby & Other Stories, Rachel P. Glaser/Pee On Water, Lindsay Hunter/Daddy’s, Danielle Evans/Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, and Alissa Nutting/Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls. Amazing books…all of them.
I can’t really say that any writers have influenced my style, at least consciously. I mean, maybe years of reading King and then Chuck put me in a place that savors the fucked up, dark and magical. Or maybe that place was always there and King and Chuck found them. If anything, being exposed to so much online literature taught me that there are so many ways to write and so many ways to tell a story and that gave me the confidence to trust in how I wanted to write things even if I felt that maybe it was the ‘wrong’ way.
Interview: Darby Larson 14
10. You are a sturdy man. How does that affect your writing?
Thank you I think. I’m taking “sturdy” to mean like level-headed or rational or maybe even relativistic, because I’m really out of shape physically. I think it helps but also hinders me (it’s relative!), see answer to #4 above. It’s not healthy to be so level-headed because it leaves little room for heart.
14. “Stop using words” is a pretty heavy thing to write on the page. Yet you write those words in The Iguana Complex. Discuss.
A Constant Froth of Expectation: Stephanie Barber Interview
The other day I “had a chance” to “sit down” with filmmaker, poet and performance artist Stephanie Barber to discuss her book, these here separated to see how they standing alone or six films by stephanie barber, which I published with PGP in 2008 then again a few months ago. As the title suggests, the collection features six movies on a DVD, packaged with the soundtracks printed in book form. The interview was a continuation of a lot of other conversations about art and life that she and I have had lately.
How did you come up with the idea to put this together? Since we’ve been talking about the origins of ideas lately, I’m wondering if this book was your idea or my idea?
I don’t know. That’s the first question? Your idea.
How did you choose the six pieces, out of all the many films you’ve made?
Um, these are the ones that have the most, uh, writerly soundtracks.
Writerly?
I don’t know, not writerly. Wordy.
What is something you want the audience to know about the book/DVD?
I can’t answer that question.
It seems to me that separating the text underscores the fact that you are working in two different languages — English and then the visual language. Which comes first?
They come together. They are conceptually one unit, one impulse, one art gesture, one art offering.
But when you’re thinking about a piece, such as–
I think about the whole thing together.
There are a lot of great videos on Youtube. Not yours though. Is that old fashioned or what’s going on there?
Um, this is a mean interview. Are you trying to be mean to me? READ MORE >
cats per container about 4
11. Auden’s 1956 book review of The Return of the King. (much thanks to biblioklept)
For objectifying this experience, the natural image is that of a journey with a purpose, beset by dangerous hazards and obstacles, some merely difficult, others actively hostile. But when I observe my fellow-men, such an image seems false. I can see, for example, that only the rich and those on vacation can take journeys; most men, most of the time must work in one place.
11. Valzhyna Mort is a Belarusian badass. Just saying.
11. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.
4. All Diagram t-shirts are 10 bucks until they are gone. (I suggest the dead hamsters.)
11. Note to self: continue to eat old book reviews.
persnickety 11 sleep chucks
8. Slate says DFW would not have sent Pale King to a publisher. Awkward analogy alert:
9. Now that Amanda Hocking has sold out to become a go-go-gillionairre, Forbes weighs in.
Nine. The new JMWW is out.
10. Kevin Brockmeier interview.
I broach my sentences one tiny piece at a time. That’s always how it is for me — slow and considered. I’ll work and work at one little cluster of words. Then, when its rhythms are in place, I’ll move on.
11. John Gardner Fiction Contest ends in 9 days.
12. Ever watched video of your own self reading? How did that go?
big-ass crunky green tomato reading notes
Done went 50+ poets in three days Alabama, something. Reading (s) questions/notes:
1. What to do with hands?
1. How long do you think about what you are going to wear?
2. Introductions longer than poems.
44. Risky: reading in southern accent because you are in The South.
11. Poetry readings in bars make the bartenders almost mime-like, hushed ordering, pouring of drinks, a reverent tinkling of glass, silent smiles. Quite lovely.
[Brandi Wells reading at The Green Bar. The can of beer in right corner low is Abe Smith‘s beer. It is a Good People IPA.]
3. POETRY (profound, hushed voice…book in hand) versus “Uh, these are some poems.” (crinkly paper in hand)
3. Read first or read last or read middle or refuse to read?
3. Inside jokes to friends during reading to larger audience as never effective?
3. Flask/no flask?
3. Revelation: I am beginning to prefer undergraduate or other poets who have not read live very often.
3. I honestly thank/congrat one poet and he blows me off. He ‘cut’ me as Hemingway used to say. A poet. It costs him one book sale and some bad word of mouth later at a beer trough. So what? Respect or hater? A tad of both, I suppose. I still dig his poetry.
4. Do you prefer podium or some physical thing to psychologically shield you from audience?
6. Moon, muses, gossamer. Three words possibly enfeebled/faded, or possibly a challenge to prove otherwise?
4. Best intro line I heard since it could be innocuous or an absolute rip-shot across bow or simply authentic or really smart-ass: “Hey ya’ll, I’m not really a poet. I wish I was, I’d be real smart.”
3. Eagerness is interesting.
“Burk’s Nub” from LOOK! LOOK! FEATHERS by Mike Young
So. Cyber-punk.
“Johnny Mnemonic” can’t get past just being Johnny Mnemonic. “Burk’s Nub,” though, gets to be Tetsuo The Iron Man, and “Burk’s Nub,” gets to be George Washington.
Because “Burk’s Nub” isn’t concerned with the gadgetry of cyber-punk. It’s just concerned with youth, with bodies, with tubas, and with language. And because it is full of concern and not full of fetish, it gets to be fuller and more satisfying and more interesting. READ MORE >
137 horses of the Elton John
Last week fucked around and got a triple double
1. Ice Cube rapped this. It is a way to make good art. “Fuck around” and you might stumble into a triple double. The lack of intent opens up the writer to odd directions. I think Perec “fucked around” into triple doubles. A triple double helps yourself and a larger idea. This is an admirable goal for words. I would like my writing to be like pick-up basketball, not a day at the office. Also I would like to dunk on Joyce Carol Oates.
2. Dude is a doctor and a writer and just won a $100,000 prize. That’s a good day.
2. The belief that the short story is a poor relation of the novel persists.
2. Nox versus Next in the quarterfinals.
2. Burnside Review chapbook contest is now open.
137. What book (s) are in the floorboards of you car right now? (I have Big World, Hitler’s Mustache, and an anthology of re-told fairy tales)
Excess of bad poetry: an interview with Luna Miguel
Luna and I have been preparing this interview for five months–or, I should say, I’ve been lazy and bad enough to (with the swerving and errant dedication that is now emerging as my style) let this one sit, short as it is, raveled and incomplete since October, asking a question every few weeks, no doubt irritating Luna in bookish, unpromising bursts. Which is all so stupid, so feckless of me because of how much of a force–a clearly, as you’ll find out, erudite and redoubtable force–Luna is in contemporary literature. Eg, here she is in Elmundo yesterday. As one might expect, Luna writes with the irreverent edge of a Rimbaud, but goes beyond mere edge, beyond what one might call the chintz of aspiration, to the “elsewhere,” not of youth, but of style, which is the earmark of youth; she might be called one of those writers who is not ahead of her time, who in fact has no toehold in anyone else’s time, but rather is planted squarely in her own time, but precisely because she has founded it–not alone, but en bloc with her comrades, who are amply referred to below (in fact, what we have there is a catalogue for the future). Hers is the time of a new world poetry. Welcome her.
biochemistry made 11 cats
1. Cathy Day said, “Why not write in the classroom and workshop outside the classroom?” (It’s about time to write a traditional-workshop-structure-is-dead post, but not now. Later.)
1. After 130 years they dig up a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. (No, Tess Gallagher did not find it in a sock drawer.) Stevenson abandoned it. So people ‘finish’ it for the dead author, publish it. Same old story.
1. Best books on Nuclear accidents/fears/history.
1. Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.
11. Visual artists rarely feel the need to explain the artifact. Writers often do. Why is that?