What’s wrong with liking what other people like?
Recently, I’ve been listening to the radio.
Pop music.
God, it is soooo good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPW5le3cug&feature=player_embedded#!
I mean, Rihanna’s Only Girl has a beat you (read: I) can’t help bopping my head to. I’ll admit it: I love pop music. And not in an ironic-I-like-this-but-only-to-show-how-much-better-I-am-than-it (or, hipster) kind of way. No, I really like it. But I’m embarrassed that I like it. As in: when I’m walking down the street listening to Lady Gaga on my iPod and I pass a cool looking person, I have this intense urge to turn it down so he/she doesn’t hear it (and thereby judge me), or, I want to take out my earbuds and convince them how I mostly listen to indie music and this is just my running mix or some stupid excuse like that. But why? Why should anyone be embarrassed about liking what other people (read: a lot of Americans) like?
For the shit genre!
Opening my notebook the morning after a night of woozy ambien scribbling is like opening a present: you never know what’s inside. Today there was a note that said, “Beckett—101-2. Shit genre.”
Here is the passage I noted. It’s from Samuel Beckett’s first play Eleuthéria, which was disowned by the Beckett Estate.
Dr. Piouk: What does he do?
Mme. Meck: (With pride) He is a man of letters.
Dr. Piouk: You don’t say! (Enter M. Krap. He reaches his armchair and cautiously sits down)
M. Krap: You were saying nice things about me, I feel it.
Mme. Meck: There isn’t anything the matter with her?
M. Krap: She is unharmed.
Mme. Meck: She is coming?
M. Krap: She’s getting ready for that.
Mme. Piouk: There was a time when you were unaffected.
M. Krap: At the cost of what artifice!
Dr. Piouk: You are a writer, Monsieur?
M. Krap: What gives you leave to–
Dr. Piouk: It can be felt in the way you express yourself.
Mme. Piouk: Where has she been?
Mme. Meck: She is going to tell us.
M. Krap: I will be frank with you. I was a writer.
Mme. Meck: He is a member of the Institute!
M. Krap: What did I tell you.
Dr. Piouk: What genre?
M. Krap: I don’t follow you.
Dr. Piouk: I speak of your writings. Your preferences were for what genre?
M. Krap: For the shit genre.
Mme. Piouk: Really.
Dr. Piouk: Poetry or prose?
M. Krap: One day the former, another day the latter.
Dr. Piouk: And you now deem your body of work to be complete?
M. Krap: The lord has flushed me out.
Dr. Piouk: A small book of memoirs does not tempt you?
M. Krap: That would spoil the death throes.
Mme. Meck: Admit that this is a bizarre way to treat guests.
Mlle. Skunk: Extremely odd.
The shit genre. I love that. I’m stealing that. Whenever someone asks me what genre I prefer I will tell them, “The shit genre, of course.” You’ve never heard of it? You must not know much about literature. (Like Beckett’s characters, I sometimes fantasize about getting sassy with “legitimate” types….)
Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes & I Like __ A Lot & Massive People & Random / 8 Comments
March 31st, 2011 / 3:02 pm
March 31st, 2011 / 3:02 pm
Hey Small Press!
I’m excited about Hey Small Press! an organization focused on getting small press books into libraries. They are the next thing in the new literary movement, which is focused not on publishing a journal or a book, but on providing a useful and specific service to the literature that is already being produced.
Hey Small Press! was founded by Don Antenen, a library employee in Kentucky, and Kate Hensley, a literature student at Harvard (and, er, editor of her own beautiful-looking Monolith Magazine). Together, they will select ten new books every month and send their curated list to libraries across the country, with info and ordering instructions. Here’s some copy from their press release:
Year after year, independent presses publish the most exciting books but lack the marketing budgets to get noticed by public libraries. The lack of marketing leads to under-representation on library shelves and lack of access for readers. HSP! exists to pick up the publicity slack and push hard to get these books noticed. Every month. Free of charge. Because amazing books should be available to everyone.
Giorgio Morandi & Daren Wilson
If you google image search “morandi” you’ll be searching for Giorgio Morandi, a relatively unsung Italian painter who spent his adult unmarried life living with his sisters in Bologna painting the same twenty or so objects for decades upon decades, obsessively rearranging them, emptying himself of bias towards the “subject” until the objects held no more importance than the unattributed space they resided in. When, it is said, they asked him why he never dusted the objects, he said that such furriness was visual time. I’m paraphrasing of course. Morandi is my favorite artist because of his faithful reticence, his solemn humor and patience. Daren Wilson is an artist who copies Morandi with an earnestness that seems to precede any postmodern tendency, hanging his paintings “salon” style in what seems to be his studio. I like Daren Wilson a lot. And so, it is both auspicious and odd how I, we, are here — looking at things that are real and not real. The representation of objects in oil; the representation of oil in pixel; the representation of space as contour; the representation of physical objects which we’ve accepted we’ll never touch. Touch your screen, I dare you.
Al Burian US reading tour
I recently caught up with Al Burian in Berlin to record a podcast and I realized that I should let all of you know that you should not pass up the chance to see Al Burian read if he is rolling through your city on his upcoming reading tour. Seriously. I’ve seen him read several times and he’s always delivered. Tell him Jackie sent you.
NEW PUBLICATIONS BY AL BURIAN
BURN COLLECTOR #15 will be out in March, published by Microcosm.
http://microcosmpublishing.com
March will also see the release of OK, OK, You Smote Me, a short story in zine format, available exclusively from Quimby’s bookstore of Chicago.
READINGS
March 12 Bookthugnation, Brooklyn NY
March 13 Molly’s Book Store, Philadelphia PA
March 15 Towson University, (near Baltimore) MD
March 17 Sugar City, Buffalo NY
March 22 Quimbys, Chicago IL
March 25 Chicago Zine Fest
Author News & Events & I Like __ A Lot & Massive People / Comments Off on Al Burian US reading tour
March 8th, 2011 / 4:36 pm
March 8th, 2011 / 4:36 pm
Beefin’
I wrote an article about editing and some of my past favorite submissions (favorite as in “was this handwritten paper submission composed with human blood? ha ha. wait…no seriously look…this submission REALLY IS written in dried human blood, wash your hands!” or “poem about a snowflake written in the shape of a snowflake just in time for Christmas,” or “story from guy in prison who in his cover letter asks us to mail the money he’ll get if his story is published to the address of a given drug dealer below, explaining that the funds will be an installment payment towards the crack cocaine tab he’d accrued at the time of his incarceration” or even “travel back in time to kill Hitler only to end up falling in love/sexing him, so much sex that he becomes docile and happy, except you then get pregnant with his hitlerspawn who grows up to do exactly what his father would’ve done even though his name is Wilhelm, sometimes the best intentions don’t get the best results” favorite). But also about the pure, kitsch-less favorites as in “this story makes me see Pushcarts rain from the sky.”
Also, I will be reading this Saturday at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle at 7pm
Also, I keep trying to quit Taco Bell beef but it’s like that Taylor Dane song “Love Will Lead You Back.” Ain’t that the meximelt truth.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6A0xivfIMo
Geography Thursday: A Place of Dreams
A non-magic magic story: In April 1879, a French postman tripped on a stone while he was delivering mail. Inspired by its shape, form, texture, whatever, he picked it up. From that day forward, this postman, named Ferdinand Cheval, collected rocks in a wheel barrel after work, and from these rocks he built a palace. I wanted to use the word “castle” to emphasize the magic component, but “palace” is just as sufficient. He called it Palais Ideal, his Ideal Palace. It took him thirty-six years. Below, you’ll find images, lots of them. They are glorious.
2010: the books I didn’t read
Yeah, I read some books in 2010. I wish I had read more. These are my favorite 2010 releases I didn’t read.
I like the WNBA a lot because it is a place I go when I want to be alone
I woke up today and looked at my boyfriend. He looked at me. People make a big deal out of today. My boyfriend and I didn’t do anything except look at each other. Then he made an omelet and I drank a glass of water. Today was not a big deal in the chronology of my life. After I drank some water I went on my computer.
I got an email from the illegitimate-seventeen-year-old child of someone famous. She sometimes emails me when she is upset. She is upset almost every day.
3 OOP BOOKS I READ RECENTLY AND LOVED
[Another not-mean post for mean-week. Sorry. I had part of this done before I realized it was mean week (duh) & wanna write about these books while they’re fresh in my head. Also, I might do this regularly because I am a major proponent of out of print books, who knows.]
I end up reading a lot of books that are out of print. Part of me feels like I do this to compensate for the fact that I no longer dedicate an excessive amount of energy to digging up & talking about lost films. Another part of me just always insists that the best shit is found by digging as deep as possible. I like looking for things, reading about lost things, and finding things that there’s not an abundance of discussion about. It makes me feel like I’m solving a mystery, and I get a major rush out of it.
I spend a lot of time combing through World Cat listings & requesting books & articles from inter-library loan networks. I also obsess over used-book meta-search engines. I also feel like, perhaps, that a lot of marginalized Other’s books end up out of print, so I sometimes tell myself that I can feel slightly empowered. This may or may not be ridiculous. Regardless, I’d like to talk about three out of print books that I recently read and enjoyed.