In Ten Senses
Next time you have an hour, go listen to poet (and officially recognized by a Seattle alt-weekly, genius) Heather McHugh deliver a lecture on art called “In Ten Senses: Some Sentences About Art’s Senses and Intents.”
Go out and look for her work, too. Don’t be fooled by McHugh’s obvious affection for the sounds of words and their multiple meanings. She is much more than merely clever. She has a dark, comic sensibility, too, but is not simply a creator of black comedy. McHugh’s got levels to her.
Literary Doppelgangers: Douglas Coupland/Norm MacDonald
Levi Asher, over at Literary Kicks, linked to Jimmy Chen’s post on literary doppelgangers, but seemed disappointed by Jimmy’s not having mentioned Douglas Coupland/Norm MacDonald.
Well, Levi, it took me a long time to find a suitable Douglas Coupland picture, so here you go.
I have never read any Douglas Coupland, though I have seen some Norm MacDonald. Men At Work is one of my favorites. Man, when they shoot that guy in the butt with an air rifle. And then they think they killed him. And so they stuff him in a trash can. Hilarious.
Bacon Explosion Wins A Book Prize!
Yes it is true! The Bacon Explosion has won a BOOK PRIZE which is something that ALL of us want! It just goes to show that BACON > US! I hear that The Bacon Explosion has quite a way with language and its work was called “elegant and lucid, emotionally charged and precisely controlled,” by the National Book Critics Circle! And that’s a circle I don’t want to mess with! Hooray for Bacon Explosion! AND the Bacon Explosion didn’t even have to die of liver failure like Roberto Bolaño to win this award! Because everyone knows that the Bacon Explosion CAN’T DIE! The Bacon Explosion was the inspiration for the modern children’s classic ‘Tuck Everlasting’! It is the perfect example of humanity’s awareness of our own mortality and makes us comprehend our role in the world! It’s so sad at the end of the book when the Bacon Explosion stands over Winnie’s grave! It’s so ironic that we all want to live forever, but then when we do, we’re all like ‘no i don’t want to live forever!’ and then it’s kind of like that BORGES story where Connor MacLeod fights his first battle in the Scottish Highlands in 1536, but fights his greatest battle on the streets of New York City in 1986!
NOAH CICERO, NEW BOOK, WHITENESS, PAVLIK, HUNGER, SELLING-OUT
the way i found writing on the internet was noah cicero. he was the first person i read, who was what people call “an internet writer.” i still think that he has written some of my favorite things. he is working on a new book, called Best Behavior. noah was a trill a$$ blood and he answered some of my questions. we talk about the new book, how to murder an elderly person with a snap bracelet and youngstown ohio, let’s see, uh also The Human War.
(interview after break)
What’s in your moat?
The worst one can usually expect from heading back home is an awkward encounter with an ex-girlfriend (“You look…great! No, you look great!) or reverting back to your 15-year-old self in the presence of your still-overbearing mother (“I can’t believe you put mayo on my sandwich, ma. Do you even know me? I’ll be in my room.”). The protagonist in J. Robert Lennon’s forthcoming novel Castle, though, has a far bigger, weirder and more sinister homecoming that involves bear traps, suspiciously altered documents and a fight to the death. I emailed a little with Lennon about his novel, as well as the book of short stories (Pieces for the Left Hand) that is being released the same day (March 31) and his one-man band, The Inverse Room. READ MORE >
PETER CAVANAUGH IS A QUIET PERSON AND HE EDITS THE JOURNAL “TULIP”
this is peter staring at a 40 oz of king cobra across the room
peter cavanaugh edits TULIP, a journal recently retuning to print. i emailed him some questions and he told me that on wednesday he was planning on blacking out so he’d answer them then. here they are.
MEN: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE WRITERS OF “MEN”
it’s what we all look for on the internet: MEN. every day, i open the internet browser and search for men. i don’t always like what i find, but i did like this. it’s a new chapbook from those boys from manchester, socrates adams florou, crispin best and spiros florou. here is the first paragraph, with an interview after the break:
I want to scare children all the time.
When I walk past a school, I press my
face through the railings and stand there,
looking at the children. I wait for them to
be afraid. The children are in their school’s
playground. They feel safe. They are
having fun. I press my face through and
stand there and look at the children.
Literary Doppelgangers
I’ve always thought J.D. Salinger looked like the young Al Pacino in The Godfather, so much so that when reading the former, I would hear ‘HOO-AH!’ sporadically inserted throughout the text. The Glass and Corleone families are very similar; both represent brilliant families slowly falling towards their demise.
And then there’s Leonard Cohen, circa his breathtaking Songs From A Room period. He is said to have written those songs in Hydra, a (then) primarily uninhabited Greek island without electricity.
This got me thinking about doppelgangers, which despite sounding like a kind of gang-bang, is strange since our visual notion of these men are through a stagnant set of photos. We share a collective ‘memory’ of famous people, and I thought it might be fun to talk more about folks who are doppelgangers.
—
Poe sorry for his drinking. Butler, not.
Here:
“Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behaviour while in N-York?,” Poe asks New York publishers J. and Henry G. Langley. “You must have conceived a queer idea of me — but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.”
Compare, contrast to this in the comments.
Best compare/contrast wins a prize. Or two. I have lots of galleys and am cleaning house. Prize packages tailored to the tastes of the winner.
UPDATE:
Apologies for vagueness. In the comments, write a short essay (Oh, even just a paragraph long) comparing and contrasting Poe’s apology for his drunken behavior in New York to the video of our fearless leader screeching drunkenly about smoothies when he visited New York a couple of years ago. The video is linked to the word “this” because I was unable to embed it.
INTERVIEW WITH NATE TYREE OF “BOOKMUNCH”
BOOKMUNCH is a website that reviews books and interviews authors. i recently interviewed NATE TYREE, a contributor for the site.
(interview after jump)