The David Shields Interview (Paperback Edition)
Flaubert claimed: “The value of a work of art can be measured by the harm spoken of it.” Reality Hunger, by David Shields, was one of the most controversial and talked-about books of 2010, reviewed nearly everywhere. Shields debated with journalists, writers, and artists such as Nicholson Baker, Simon Critchley, Leonard Lopate, John Cameron Mitchell, Rick Moody, Michael Silverblatt, Zadie Smith, DJ Spooky, Judith Thurman, and Simon Winchester. This past February saw the paperback release of Reality Hunger. Recently I met with Shields to analyze the polemics and decipher the carnage.
CALEB POWELL: The constructive response to Reality Hunger drowned, at times, amidst negative reviews. Walter Kirn said that he was “amused to see some of the hysterical reactions it’s provoked.”
DAVID SHIELDS: About negative reviews, the book is called a manifesto. It’s raison d’etre is to generate discussion. To provoke. I cannot object to any fiercely critical review. One reviewer said, “The discussion surrounding the book is more interesting than the book itself.” Well, what generated the discussion? My book.
CP: In their reviews…James Woods defended the traditional novel, and Michiko Kakutuni attacked.
DS: Neither of them talked about the book, they just mention it in passing. They are total spear carriers for conventional fiction…neither remotely engage with the argument. They mulch in a kind of drive by…Woods said something like…it’s good to be reminded of these arguments but Shields needs to define his terms better. Michiko called it “deeply nihilistic,” that’s so…
CP: It’s not the sharpest comment…it reads as hyperbole. I mean, you say the novel is worthless, but you praise a lot of art.
DS: She…and Woods, they are the megaphones of conventional fiction. The New York Times and The New Yorker, highly venerable institutions, whatever…they articulate nineteenth century conventional fiction…are you a Franzen fan?
Noah Eli Gordon & Sommer Browning Reading Tour
In support of both of their new books, Noah Eli Gordon (whose The Source just came out from Futurepoem) and Sommer Browning (whose Either Way I’m Celebrating just came out from Birds LLC) are hitting the road and the nation with some singular languages. Come do a look and hear where you can. I just read Sommer’s book of poems and comics and it is brimming with some other energy, kind of like if Dickinson & Kafka had survived to see the advent of malls and complex sugars (or not at all, but you know… it’s electric). Noah’s book, based on his “ambient research” of a year of reading only page 26 of books, is currently glowing in my wait-brain to be eaten hard. Do not miss!
If your city doesn’t appear here, fret not: Noah & Sommer will be reading live here on the site for the return of our Live Giants reading series. Plan to show up March 15th at 9 PMish. More info later. Dates after the jump.
Meg Pokrass Damn Sure Right Interview!
Q: Sans enunciation/emphasis or other context, your title Damn Sure Right is open-ended: braggadocio or bluster, surprise or satisfaction—and so on. The person on the cover photo is “dressed to kill” (my words), yet is also more than half hidden. What is your idea concerning the title and the cover image?
A: The title comes from an utterance in the story “Damn Sure Right”. The full utterance is, “He didn’t need to hurt her, damn sure right.”
My characters are often groping for a concrete way to see things in order to feel better.
To me, the cover photo reflects vulnerability mixed with stalwart determination. Press 53 publisher, Kevin Morgan Watson found the image, ran it past me and we were in instant agreement.
Q: Will you discuss “The Serious Writer and Her Pussy”?
Touch a little extra on the rough parts
This is great. Baby on the Safe Side. A collection of poems written by Sarah Bartlett and Emily Kendal Frey, available for free reading from Publishing Genius. Add them to your Tuesday reading list. These 20 poems are funny and trenchant like crazy, and they make for a fast read. I laughed a lot, then cracked my knuckles and said “ex-cellent.” The kids are all right. Aren’t they?
Oscar Recap: Something Good Won
One of the winners at last night’s Oscars was a short animated film by a guy named Shaun Tan. The film is called The Lost Thing. And it was far and away the best of the nominated shorts. (The Pixar thing was fine. The pollution thing was fine. The Gruffalo was kind of terrible. The Madagascar piece looked nice but was sort of empty.) But, deserved to win, did win. Who knew?
Here I admit a bit of a bias: I really like Shaun Tan. So I was bound to favor his piece over any of the others. And I really like Shaun Tan because I really, really like his bookThe Red Tree. READ MORE >
11 wet velveeta on jar knuckles
11. In his craving for fame and fulfillment he dumped his family, bullied his friends, ripped off ideas and lied about his past. Charlie Sheen? No, Gauguin.
11. Seventy-one copies or eighty-two days remain to snort up Darby Larson’s The Iguana Complex. Go there.
11. Lorrie Moore weighs in on the Carmelo Anthony/New York Knicks trade.
1. Top 10 counter-culture books. At first I gandered and thought where is Trout Fishing? But it seems like this guy glows memoirs. I’ve read zero of them. Summer?
11. Your best guess: What the fuck is a personal library? It sounds like I am a book. We are not books, but the idea is comforting (beginning, middle, end–nice delusion…). Here’s a new one: What is on your personal library shelf right now that isn’t a book. I am going to go look right now: empty wine rack, candles with dust balls, 3 family photos (all three professional, posed bullshit photos), a gnome dressed as a Tennessee Titan, a plastic pumpkin (fuck, it stayed up since Halloween), a fake hollowed-out book that is a hiding spot for letters from a young lady in South Africa, a rope bracelet that protects you from sharks, __________, two deeds to automobiles, a buckeye, a single .44 bullet, a chocolate coin, a treasury bond. You?
“The universe wants something that is in me / but not what I have in me to give. / Let me tell you: I haven’t whispered right in years.”
Why there aren’t Jordan Stempleman fan clubs in every open field—fan clubs that would consist of an abandoned Astro Van, painted with blue and yellow racing stripes, almost hidden among the tall stalks under a sunset somehow permanent, while inside the Astro Van is a photograph of the same field and Astro Van under an even more beautiful sunset, a photograph the fans inside the Astro Van try to avoid looking at (but when we do we can’t help but shake our heads) while meanwhile they are either trying to scratch out every reflective surface until it’s not reflective or polish every unreflective surface until it is reflective (we can’t decide), and even meanwhiler crows live their whole productive lives on top of the Astro Van because above all it makes for a meek scarecrow, why there aren’t Jordan Stempleman fan clubs like this—well, it’s beyond me. Here are four sets of decontextualized lines from Jordan’s new chapbook Wallop (from Grey Book Press) :
1
One out of five people applying for citizenship
today secretly wish they were applying
to live in a forest just outside the country
to which they’ve applied,
where they could still see the lights
from the largest cities at night
2
Was that the tenderness people always talk about
or just a bad cold?
3
Health happens like this:
there are stupid things
we put in us.
Some of these things go from stupid to nothing.
A few never leave.
4
… It’s like a road of pine trees
that first say no to the car, no to the bike, no holding hands
to make your way through this rowdy, timeless path.
Go Right Ahead: It is Friday
I broke my life.
But childhood prolonged. It becomes a hell.
My eyes and hearing are supernormal. I weigh 129 pounds. You can see what a diet of beer and light wine has made of me.
Do you understand the stopgap quality of hatred and rage?
The bridge besides the bridge of sighs.
Listening to the prisoned cricket.
And the hissing hair.
To drink dark beer with Mrs. Grant at four in the afternoon, under an umbrella, is a pleasure and a comfort.
Another entire bottle? I don’t know—let me drink on that.
See, it erases memory, as in grief, but arouses desire. So begins the cycle.
Stella spells ill.
To hell with that poem!
Honeysuckle blows by the granite.
Raul Zurita at Notre Dame 2/2011
At Montevidayo, a fantastic series of videos of Raul Zurita reading from Song for His Disappeared Love at Notre Dame, with translation by Daniel Borzutzky. Part one of the series is below, part 2 & 3 at the link.