I Like Lawrence Schimel A Lot
Lawrence Schimel is a prolific writer, editor and publisher living in Madrid, Spain. From erotica to ghostwritten biographies to children’s books, there’s seemingly nothing he cannot write. As publisher of A Midsummer Night’s Press, he is responsible for three imprints and he’s also a friend, like for real. We talk about his press, his writing and his life as an ex-pat writer. Won’t you listen in?
How did A Midsummer Night’s Press come about? Why that name?
When I was an undergraduate at Yale, there was a Vandercook letterpress in the basement of my dorm. I had already begun publishing in anthologies and journals, and I decided to publish a series of limited edition hand printed broadsides. I contacted some writers I already knew or had worked with (Jane Yolen, Nancy Willard, etc.) and asked them for poems, printing runs of 126 copies, 100 numbered which were available for sale and 26 lettered copies which were shared between the author and the press.
When I graduated, the press went on hiatus until 2007 when I started publishing commercially-printed, perfect-bound books.
As for the press’ name, I began writing and publishing science fiction when I was a teenager (Marion Zimmer Bradley bought a story for one of her anthologies when I was still in high school), and since I was known by the nickname “Puck” in SF fandom it just seemed logical to name my press after the same Shakespearean play.
I Like Jeanann Verlee A Lot
JEANANN VERLEE is an author, performance poet, editor, activist, and former punk rocker who collects tattoos and winks at boys. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in a variety of journals, including The New York Quarterly, PANK, decomP, Lung, The Legendary, and Spindle, among others. Her poems have also been included in various anthologies such as “Not A Muse: The Inner Lives of Women” and “His Rib: Poems Stories and Essays by Her.” Verlee’s first full-length book of poems, Racing Hummingbirds, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in March, 2010. I recently read Racing Hummingbirds, one of the strongest poetry collections I’ve ever read, and Jeanann and I had a great e-mail conversation about her book, her poetry and lots of other things.
Why are you hiding your face in your author photo?
Does it appear that I’m hiding? The cut frame/focus of the photo was the photographer’s vision – I enjoy that it is not a standard headshot. This one was selected to evidence my quirky sense of humor. I tend to appear somber in most professional portraits, so the publisher pushed for this one.
You’re a fan of letter writing campaigns. Who have you written to lately and is there power in letter writing campaigns? Have you had any success protesting in this manner?
It’s been a while since I found myself stirred up enough to send out a barrage of letters, but for a long period this was my primary activism. The power, like most things, lies in numbers. So while I can’t know if there are 3,000 – or 30 – other action letters piled up to voice protest, at least I know I count for a plus one. It matters. Most corporations accept a 1:10 ratio – for every one voice, ten others agree but remain silent. Regardless, the typical response is a placating form letter. (Ease down, little activist, we’re not the bad guys, we promise!) The one tangible success I personally received involved complimentary drink coupons from Starbucks after a surge of no-more-curdled-soy-milk letters. Score 1 for the little gal.
I read that you have a theatre background. How does performance work influence your writing?
I strive to disallow performance ideas to influence my writing process. I work to write for the page. Later, working through edits, I review the piece to see how it sounds/feels aloud.
What do you enjoy about performing?
I enjoy taking risks. Changing a room. Being different. I enjoy the body as instrument and the control in delivering the words as I hear them in my head.
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Perchance of a lifetime
Chatroulette screenshot
I want to see this image as a sad reminder of our past, of how divided we are — but, at the gross risk of being insensitive, I see the humor. The humor is not aimed at Jews, Nazis, or the Holocaust, but at the contemporary absurdity of Chatroulette, which has grown more into a role-playing forum than an actual place for strangers to meet, the latter perhaps being most absurd.
Of the many “best of” or “top” Chatroulette screenshots securing their meta-web presences, my favorite is this WWW take on WWII. Here, “Israelite” and “Nazi” (I use quotes because I wonder how much they themselves believe their roles) seem both happily complicit in self-consciously acting out the obvious narrative of their political history, giving a thumbs-up either in solidarity with their respective alliances, or, with an irony only possible in a virtual world, to each other.
The Jew even ducks away from camera, either facetiously, or more solemnly, with a visceral intuition which brings to mind the true horror of hate. Anybody with a flag on their wall is asking to get into a conversation (just like any male in college with an acoustic guitar in his room secretly wants a record deal or to get laid). The Nazi (or, skinhead) has a wonderful smile, which is very out of character, key word being “character,” as that is all we are, and can be, online. If “all the world’s a stage,” then the internet is where we rehearse our lines, sharpening our tongues for a chance at real life.
I Hate Exercise and I Hate Conversation, but I love Ten Talks/Two Walks
I thought I’d give yet another shout-out to Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch’s Ten Talks/Two Walks from Ugly Duckling Presse. Written in the form of “sixty-minute, sixty-sentence walks around Manhattan and a pair of dialogues about walking,” the book’s observational humor often digresses into moments of tastefully awkward poignancy and makes clear, through tugging at the errant threads found in New York City’s human scenery, that everything is truly connected in a glorious form of mental acupuncture: men fighting with lampposts spawn a recollection of a flexible phone conversation, the actions of strangers remind the narrators of their own behavior, and the outside city is shown to be a reflection of the internal time and time again.
As someone who is an outsider to New York (I’ve been there only twice to salivate at the foot of its cultural picture window), Ten Walks/Two Talks grants readers rare and tender access to all the parts of NYC that won’t be shown on Will & Grace anytime soon—and even to some of the parts that may, although they won’t be portrayed in such a koan-like, meditative manner as within this book. If one wished to expand the American Museum of Natural History to include the human specimens found on a collection of random street corners, there could be no better curators selected for the job than Cotner and Fitch. With brand new taxonomic categorizations like “dwarf carrying bag of bananas” and “gold spandex wearing friend to the geriatrics,” this book makes an evocative catalogue of all the city and the imagination have to offer.
Last time I went to the NYC, I paid too much for leggings and ate things that have milk in them when ordered in New York City but do not have milk in them when ordered elsewhere. This was very fun, but next time I think I’ll just walk around and stare.
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March 19th, 2010 / 6:23 pm
March 19th, 2010 / 6:23 pm
I Like Amy King A Lot
Amy King is the author of I’m the Man Who Loves You, Antidotes for an Alibi, and Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox Books), The People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press), Kiss Me With the Mouth of Your Country (Dusie Press), and I Want to Make You Safe (forthcoming, Litmus Press).
She was kind enough to take some time to answer some question about her work in an epic interview that is, if I may say so, well worth the read.
Barry.
First lines of Barry Hannah’s I ever read:
When I am run down and flocked around by the world, I go down to Farte Cove off the Yazoo River and take my beer to the end of the pier where the old liars are still snapping and wheezing at one another. The line-up is always different, because they’re always dying out or succumbing to constipation, etc., whereupon they go back to the cabins and wait for a good day when they can some out and lie again, leaning on the rail with coats full of bran cookies. The son of the man the cove was named for it often out there. He pronounces his name Fartay, with a great French stress on the last syllable. Otherwise you might laugh at his history or ignore it in favor of the name as it’s spelled on the sign.
I’m glad it’s not my name.
Barry Hannah being interviewed by Don Swaim.
I like Barry Hannah a lot. Heard a thing. Sad if true.
UPDATE:
Brian Dettmer’s Altered Books
Brian Dettmer, "Key Monuments #4," Altered Book (2009)
I really enjoy Brian Dettmer‘s altered books, in which cut-out negative spaces inside books are layered together in their original binding to create, or more accurately, excavate, hidden visual and physical worlds. Gladly, the postmodern reflex of facetious appropriation is not the fancy here, but rather, a austere “classical” sense of intricate sculptural negation which brings to mind Michelangelo’s La Pietà or David, whose manifestation were through an aggregate of chronic and gentle subtractive layers. This idea of god or man buried under marble is similar to the newly discovered compositions buried, incidentally or arbitrarily, between the pages of encyclopedias and historical books. Put simply, the truth is in there. To see more, visit his flickr or website.
Ten Years of The Lioness
Hey, so this year is the tenth anniversary of The Lioness, a seminal album by countryish indie-rockers Songs: Ohia, whose frontman is the estimable Jason Molina (who also fronts Magnolia Electric Co.). Molina’s best, I think, are elliptical, sinister love songs, with which he stuffed The Lioness from front to back. His songs are heavily symbolic, studded with violent images, etc.–just listen to the songs I’m posting below (but don’t watch the videos–they’re just still images of the band), won’t you?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXsFkRBsAF8
Chris Ware’s New Yorker cover
"Natural Selection" by Chris Ware, New Yorker, February 2010
Of the four covers for New Yorker‘s 85th Anniversary Issue, my favorite (while I appreciate all of them) is Chris Ware’s. He has a way of condensing large amounts of narrative into small hints or incidents; this is what I enjoy most about Ware: the visual riddles in his work. Eustace Tilley, as implicated by his top hat and green shirt — just a sliver, see it? — resting on his stool, is seen in a sort of aesthetic Darwinian tussle, unknowing of the prophetic butterfly outside his window, a lateral view which places us at the shared “fly’s butterfly’s eye” view. Check out the arc of evolution starting from from the wall: insects to arthropods to aves to primates, to eventually, Eustace himself. Ware’s sense of visual space is simply genius, his empathy abound. We see a pudgy Eustace in sock garters, cutting off his self-portrait just above the belly. And there on the floor rests the butterfly’s shadow, evoking a distance between our orientation as invited voyeurs outside the window and the space inside the artist’s studio. What looks like a self-assured “thumbs up” is, if we are to assume common draftsmen techniques, really just Eustace blocking out the affixed subjects with his thumb, still tentative, despite the cultivated naturalism of this wonderful scene, about what he will select.
