Same Shit, Different Day– Edgar Allan Poe edition
This was in last week’s New Yorker but I just got around to reading it this week. It’s a long piece by Jill Lepore called “The Humbug: Edgar Allan Poe and the economy of horror.” This year is the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth, and so there are a few new editions of his work out, as well as a biography, all of which seem only of passing interest to Lepore. Her real interest is in Poe himself, and his efforts to survive by his pen in an era of constant economic flux, where the literary market was always especially grim. When Poe wanted to bring his first book of poems out, his publisher demanded a guarantee against losses. Magazines and journals stopped paying their contributors. In short, the picture of the literary world that Lepore paints seems–to me anyway–more the same than different, compared to our own. I thought that readers here–irrespective of your particular interest in Poe–might find something heartening in that knowledge, or at least take some cold comfort in trans-generational commiseration.
Shane Jones and Dear Leader have a conversation
Kevin Sampsell (seen above dancing) made our friend Shane and our Dear Leader talk about small press issues and being an “internet writer.” The conversation appears on the blog of the mighty, mighty Powell’s Books.
It’s a mighty fine conversation. Here’s an abridged highlight:
Blake: People call you and me “Internet writers” in certain forums, though I don’t necessarily ride that term at all, and think mainly it comes from people not understanding the Internet as a tool. Have there been things you’ve done that you thought effective? Have there been things you would like to do but haven’t, or are not sure how?
Shane: …The “Internet writer” thing is just a label. I don’t consider myself, or you for that matter, an Internet writer.The “Internet writer” thing is just a label. I don’t consider myself, or you for that matter, an Internet writer. I think it’s because we both have blogs and publish online that some people call us this. But we also have printed stuff in journals and printed books, so I don’t really get it. I do know that starting a blog was probably one of the most important steps I made in my writing “career.” I became involved in a community of talented writers and it let me expose my own writing to a community of readers. And that’s very important…
Blake: Yeah, saying “Internet writer” is about as arbitrary and misplaced as saying “typewriter writer.” People so desperately want to name things.
An Exclusive Interview with J.G. Ballard
J.G. Ballard Interview by John Hughes
The following interview with J.G. Ballard took place in the spring of 1996. It was recorded on to micro-cassette off speakerphone on a 6 a.m. call from the 4AD Records office in Los Angeles, CA to J.G. Ballard at his home in Shepperton, England. The tapes were transcribed in New York in 2005.
I contacted J.G. Ballard through a friend at Zone books. Zone had recently published a Ballard essay; an experimental dictionary of words for the future. I got his home number and called him to set up the interview below. The original plan was to discuss Rushing to Paradise. The interview opens, however, with the revelation that David Cronenberg was planning to release Crash at the Cannes Film Festival, summer’96.
In that respect, the interview has two parts. The first addresses the Crash movie release and the second, Rushing to Paradise.
DFW Praise Compendium
At the height of my obsession with David Foster Wallace, garnered after reading ‘Infinite Jest’ over several weeks in 2001, an act which literally changed my life, I began going after any and every piece of writing not only of his, but that he had recommended, blurbed, mentioned in interviews, taught, etc. Many of these books also had a profound influence on my brain, including Gass’s ‘Omensetter’s Luck,’ McCarthy’s ‘Blood Meridian’ and ‘Suttree,’ Donald Barthelme, and countless others.
During this period I began constructing a list of these texts as I found them. The list, which I remember as being several pages long, is now likely floating somewhere in one of my many expired computers. I was able, though, to find at least what makes up part of the list in an old email folder, and as such it appears below.
I know this is not an exhaustive list at this point, and if I find a later draft of it I will repost: in the meantime, however, if you have any other knowledge of blurbs or etc. (and any that might have occurred later in his life, after I stopped making the list, will obviously be absent) please comment them. Where I could, I tried to include the actual blurbs and/or comments, and in other places just included the names of authors mentioned in passing or other ways.
(It likely should be noted that many of these refs came from the amazing and wonderful interview conducted with Wallace by Larry McCaffery for the Review of Contemporary Fiction, which if you have not yet, you should read.)
Also included is a Reading List from a class Wallace taught on postmodern fiction (I believe), which is a pretty fantastic collection of texts.
Incomplete list is after the break:
INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL JAMES MARTIN
The ecstasy of a faint outdoor wind: A photo essay by Philip Roth
Hi, I’m Philip Roth, the author American Pastoral and other books without so much foliage. I love the smell of fresh cut grass and foreskin. But hey, enough with the Jewish jokes. Whenever the camera crew comes to do a profile on me, I say “Hey, I have an idea — it would be nice if we went outside.”
I’m thinking. I’m thinking about America and the plight of the ‘other.’ I’m thinking about a waspy girl I once wanted to make love to. I’m thinking of that protestant ass. I’m thinking of my shopping list: eggs, broccoli, extra virgin olive oil, national book award, toilet paper. God I love being outside at or around dusk.
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#6)
[NOTE: The launch party for SOMETIMES MY HEART PUSHES MY RIBS is at 7 p.m. tonight at Cafe Orwell in Brooklyn. – JT]
My Dog is a Little Obese
put the clif bar in your pocket from a florida gas station and walk away
put the entire box of clif bars from a duane reade in penn station in your bag and walk away
put two clif bars from price chopper into your pocket and walk away
this is CVS, there are no clif bars here
buy 4 clif bars from albertson’s and feel bad
there is 50mg of caffeine in your clif bar
cut the clif bar in half with scissors and eat one half and put the other half in a bowl
hide the scissors in the closet
there isn’t any caffeine in the lemon poppyseed clif bar
put organic green tea extract on your tongue and put your tongue in my mouth
there is 50mg of caffeine in my brain
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
When the Whip Comes Down: William Deresiewicz Reviews Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry
There's a heaven above you, baby.
I read “When the Whip Comes Down” in The Nation yesterday, and I think it’s well worth sharing, not so much because it matters whether Deresiewicz “likes” Mary Gaitskill (he does) or the new book in particular (he doesn’t), but because I think the piece itself is a shining example of a particular kind of critical writing, more or less in its optimum form. Though he’s fit his thoughts into a review-length essay, I think Deresiewicz has given us a valuable piece of criticism-proper. You come away from the review with a substantially enlarged and nuanced understanding of Gaitskill’s work, even if you’ve read it all before (and I have, except for the new one). I also think any aspiring critic looking to hone her skills (and I’ll go ahead and count myself among this number) stands to learn quite a lot from reading Deresiewicz and understanding how he works. After you’ve read “When the Whip Comes Down,” you should click-through on his name at The Nation website and check out his previous work for them. Critics are like any other kind of writer–if you’re lucky enough to find a good one, read up.
“How Wood Works: The Riches and Limits of James Wood” (11/19/08)
“Homing Patterns: Marilynne Robinson’s Fiction” (9/24/08)
“Fuku Americanus” – on Junot Diaz (11/08/07)