Krammer Abrahams might be serious
If he is, it’s a great day for everyone with eyelids and bees.
I like Krammer Abrahams. If he had written two 500+ page bricks, I would write a long post explaining why I like him. Instead, I’ll just say: he is making the new weird.
Here are some stories you can read by him online:
They Fucked Behind the Blue Curtain @ RobotMelon: This story has a character named ‘Boots Walking in America,’ and is presented with the above picture wherein the author wrote the title of his story on his chest.
Something About a Present Day Jesus @ Lamination Colony: (This story came with a title-chest photo also, though it aroused too much livelihood in me to post it in my post-coital leisure.)
Out of Africa @ Titular: it’s a story about Africa and prostitutes (kind of) and herpes, what else do you want?
And now, here is a press release from this man about a new journal with a new name:
is now accepting submissions. Stories will be published on a yearly basis. I am not sure when that year will start. Submissions should either be 16 words long or over 30,000 words.
Actually, I am not being serious about the ‘publishing on a yearly basis’.
I am serious about submissions being 16 words or 30,000 words long.
If you submit a work 30,000 words long I will probably read it and choose my favorite 16 words. If it is really good I will publish the whole thing on sticky notes. I do not know how I will do this. It might be impossible, but if the work is good enough I will find a way. I will be Gilbert Arenas and become a hibachi and say, “Nothing is impossible” and jump out of the upper deck and your work will be published on sticky notes.
It will be very limited. Only one or two copies will be made. More will be made for $.
I think that is all. Publishing schedule coming soon.
THANK YOU,
Eat these words and vomit them on other people who don’t want to listen but then have to think about the words you threw up on their shirts.
A.S. King
A.S. King is a woman (see picture), but I didn’t know that when I first read her work and she has the wonderful ability to really write in a genderless style. I read one story of hers on Word Riot and was blown away by her humor, her darkness and her ability to basically use magic realism in a way that I found refreshing and purposeful. I immediately read everything else she had online and that was a really great day. Sigh. I then contacted her via her website and told her that I was her newest, rabid fan. Then I worried that she thought I was a stalker. But she insured me that if I were a stalker, she would like that. I find such a maturity of subject matter and playfulness to her stories and an ability to even broach politics –read this messed up, great one on Eclectica– without being preachy or didactic or anything but fascinating and truly thoughtful. She falls into the category of writer-whose-work-is -very-different-than-mine who I so appreciate for opening me up to different ways of writing.
Pre-order her forthcoming book, The Dust of 100 Dogs, here, even though it’s a “young adult” book because how rad is a book about a girl pirate reincarnated as a dog 100 times who then comes back as a modern teenager? I’m reading it, ya or no ya.
transcription for Jimmy Chen
This is the face of genius. This is the genius of face.
[with a hat tip to Peter Masiak, who left these many and several fine words in my inbox late last night, with this message attached: “ever just read the lyrics? I had about 75% wrong.”]
“The Country Diary Of A Subway Conductor”
“O get him out of there!” What if it cost 25c
to wake up in the morning? A dollar, ten dollars?
I’d pay it all the way to the poor house. It’s not made
if it’s made in Roanoke. Night pulling up in front of
the house like a bus. It came at me with shears. Her
sweater had faces, famouse faces knitted all over it.
The porch swing ticked off Central Daylight time.
“How many hours do you think it’ll take me to smoke this
cigarette?” she said with a smile. The smell of fried
food came drifting out one of the castle windows.
“Lets go around back” I said “my brother burried some
stuff back there.” We ducked down and walked through
the black bushes. My shoe made a sucking sound in
the turf. “He can afford anything” I said “he’s got
dogs that blow on trumpets.” “Priests!” she cussed.
Thunder cracks over Ben Franklin’s shop. Who wrapped
my dreams in a blanket and led them outside to the black
book in the yard? “Hey what indian tribe occupied
southern california? They were a lucky bunch of fellers!”
Sting Bible, More Sea Bible, Knur & Spell. In moments
downhill, towards sleep in the still water shop. Imagining
places I was almost sure I’d never been & had taken to
assuming were the memories of my grandfather somehow
deposited in my mind. They were there and gone, just before
I could get my bearings, catch any names or find out
where the hotel was. Just a pile of glass shavings that
could never be reassembled into the gone order
of buildings & the shade puring off of them. “WATER!”
*******SPECIAL BONUS*******
I interviewed David Berman for The Brooklyn Rail back in 2005, when Tanglewood Numbers came out.
From the intro (click anywhere on text to get the whole piece): >>Terse and enigmatic, occasionally ignoring questions outright, Berman was nearly impossible to pin down, which was especially frustrating since everyone wants to believe that their musical or literary heroes could easily be their drinking buddies or best friends. But Berman is a man who can say a lot even when he’s not saying much, and his general reticence served to increase the gravity of moments when he actually opened up. Just another part of the Berman package, I suppose.<<
Win Nick Antosca’s MIDNIGHT PICNIC
You may have heard by now that Nick Antosca‘s brightly anticipated new novel, MIDNIGHT PICNIC, is coming out this month from Word Riot Press. It’s been through some kind of phantom haunting of its own but now in the firm hands of Jackie Corley and company, it will soon available for your eyes (and is now out from preorder on the site, if you are so inclined, and should be.)
I really loved Nick’s first book, FIRES, and having read MP already I can tell you it is like a mix of Cormac McCarthy’s CHILD OF GOD on too much Kool Aid and full of magic, phantoms, surreal shopping malls, those shots from Lost Highway where it is just the car going into the night, etc.
To celebrate the coming release, Nick and WR Press have hooked us up with two copies of the book for to give away to HTML Giant readers. Entry to the give away is simple:
What is the way you would least like to die?
Answer this question in as little or as many words as you need to best elucidate the exit method. Bonus points have been promised to those who illustrate their deaths with pictures or drawings in MS paint. Whoever most effectively, creatively, disgustingly, or whatever other adverb seems good as deemed by Nick will take home what I can guarantee is a book you will not soon forget.
Another thing I won’t soon be forgetting is the picture the author requested to be included in this post, which I will now bestow up you in all good faith that it will lead your mind to the gory end that gets you the book prize.:
Contest closes Monday night. Let’s hear it.
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?
checking back in with Joshua Cohen and Kafka’s Office Writings
I’m sure you’ve all been keeping up this week with Nextbook.org’s five part series on Kafka’s Office Writings, which I first blogged about on Monday. But in case you haven’t, this is a good time to look over what you’ve missed so you can be all caught up for the big (?) finale tomorrow. The series, as I’ve mentioned now several times, is authored by Joshua Cohen, quite possibly the youngest working critic to be described non-ironically as “venerable,” assuming he has ever actually been called that before, which, if he hasn’t–well he has now.
(clicking anywhere on the text of a given day takes you to that day on Nextbook)
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After you’ve had your fill of nonfiction, consider perhaps some of his other literature. Cohen is the author of five fine books out from presses that Giant readers and contributors alike have deep affection for: A Heaven of Others (Starcherone, 2008), Two Tribal Stories (Small Anchor, 2007), Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed (Six Gallery, 2007), Cadenza for the Schneiderman Violin Concerto (Fugue State, 2007), The Quorum (Twisted Spoon, 2005). A new novel, Graven Imaginings, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. Better get on over to his website and see what the score is.
SPOT-CHECK: Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a Postcard)
POSTCARD #122: GROWING UP DEAD
This shit is badass and I am not even kidding at all.
Not by Michael Kimball, but also potentially of interest is the following:
I remembered this book as having "Postcards" in the title, and by the time I figured out what it actually was I had spent too much time looking for it not to use what I found, and for whatever it's worth one of the essays in it is actually about The Grateful Dead.
Elizabeth Ellen
Being sort of old school and timid of new things, I didn’t realize that the internet indie lit scene rocked until I read Elizabeth Ellen. Fucking A. I didn’t even know who Barry Graham was until I read everything that Elizabeth Ellen has ever published and everyone knows how important Barry is to me. The clarity of emotion! The rawness! Her boobs! I worship her. She makes me a better writer just by having read her stories. And poems. Read her story on Dogzplot right now and tell me that it isn’t one of the bravest, twisted things of beauty that you’ve read. I also like that she’s got a tween, like me and Barry. I like everything about her and I don’t know her at all! You can read about her life story though at Michael Kimball’s “write your life story on a postcard” thingy. But really, buy her chapbook, Before You She Was a Pittbull. Then, hang out all day on her author website, clicking away at all of the links. I think she needs to update her website, though, and I would offer to help her with that because I love her so much.
‘I Am Also In This Play!’
Wigleaf, the flash fiction wild child of internet sensation Scott Garson, has gone bonkers with excellence, and the latest update proves it.
Stop everything and read Sean Kilpatrick’s “Progress: A Play in _ Acts.”
You won’t regret it. It is funny. It is fucked up. It has the following line in it:
Character A (to audience): In answer to your question, this play was written because we love audiences. Our love is almost Swedish.
Folks, my love for Sean Kilpatrick is all Swedish.
ALL THIS WEEK: Sympathy for the Cubicle Rat at Nextbook.org, starring Franz Kafka and Joshua Cohen
not Joshua Cohen. Or Kafka.
Check back at Nextbook.org every day this week for a new installment of Joshua Cohen’s writing about Kafka’s Office Writings. Also, there may be periodic updates here, highlighting our favorite pieces from the series and/or reminding you to go read it.
Who could say no to this mug?
Or this bug?