Lit Mags as an Empty Mob Scene & yes I know this is an oink
If there’s anything the majority of the community of literary magazines suffers from, it is a lack of imagination: a whole-on blanket of blanking in the way of actual attention demanding, which is very likely a large part of the reason why many of these magazines, and the book industry as a whole, often, doesn’t spread. Blank. Noise for noise’s sake. Tribunals and routine.
Man, I sure am loving Mean Week!
happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.
How about you?
Mean Week is Your Week too, I guess
Things don’t feel mean enough for Mean Week. Things feel like they should be more mean.
Please use this thread as a place to say mean things you feel no one else is saying. If the only way you feel you can say exactly what you mean is to be anonymous, go for it. I promise not to look at or share IP addresses, and no one else can see them. Total privacy. I won’t blame you for not coming out of the gate. Just want to hear some real spit and shit from anybody. About anything, myself included. Only respect can be gained.
Go?
Sean Lovelace knows nothing about nachos
Anybody who happens to have bumped into the words or online speaking of Sean Lovelace (author of the recently released How Some People Like Their Eggs, which is fantastic and very smart (that will be my last positive reference to Mr. Lovelace in this post)) knows the dude really wants you to know that he loves nachos. It’s hard to get through a week of his blogging without at least some kind of reference to it, and to how much he loves them, etc., etc. He’s even published essays on the subject, including one in the David Foster Wallace memorial issue of Sonora Review.
To me, though, Lovelace’s endless tirading about the food seems overbloated, and in some ways insecure. It seems the food-language equivalent of truck nuts:
Gore Vidal Endowed Chair
Is Gore Vidal just old or did something bad happen to him? (I’m not so glib to write this post usually, but it’s mean week.) He’s been sitting down, by my estimations, since c. 2002 and I wonder what his problem is. Maybe he always wanted an Endowed Chair.
Here he is in his reading chair with what appears to be either flat champagne or apple juice. He’s gonna have to get up to pee soon, and I’m worried about his efficiency. Below on the left is an image from the 14th Los Angeles Times Festival and the wheelchair clarifies that the sitting down might be an imperative. Notice the Prada shoes — good to know the royalties are in good shape. The picture on the right is him as close to camping as he’ll ever get. The cerebral man has no need for a suntan. He’s probably petitioning for the invention of color photography.
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Dan Nester Doubles Down on Mean: FUCK GERUNDS
Just fuck ’em.
Or better yet, let’s fucking fuck gerunds.
That way, it–the fucking–will keep going into the eternal present.
That is all.
—D.N.
Mean Week: On Beer
I don’t like beer.
Rants of the Rejected
Bradley Sands of Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens just tweeted this link to an old letter he received from a disgruntled, rejected author in 2008. It seemed like a useful thing to repost for Mean Week. Here’s the beginning (wtf?):
Dear Bradley,
Where are my stories? What did I do wrong to deserve such a cold shoulder during The Mark Chapman Generation, Twin Towers, “Malvo”, academic massacre, Amish massacre, etc? Is that it, then, Bradley, you’re just going to leave me dangling? Ok, if that’s the way you feel. I’ve never seen 1 magazine in 40 years of doing this live more than a few years after being treated so shitty as you have treated me.
Any fun rants out there? Either ones you’ve received from authors or ones you’ve sent to editors?
Roxane Gay—
Writer M.J. Nicholls complains about magazines who don’t accept everything “good” that comes their way. He’s finished with magazines like decomP and elimae because they send form rejections. With regard to PANK he says:
I DON’T SEE WHY the site publishes LESS than it RECIEVES. Surely the basic rules of SUPPLY and DEMAND apply here? If a slue of challenging and interesting work is offered – publish it. Give the reader a CHOICE. Stop setting your own agenda and being so FUCKING FUSSY.
I shall… leave it at that.
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Poetry for Poetry Haters: The Northville Review
It is very timely that during Mean Week, The Northville Review‘s Poetry for Poetry Haters issue has gone live. Northville editor Erin Fitzgerald interviewed the issue’s guest editor Whitney Freemesser who explains why she hates poetry.
Why do you hate poetry?
I don’t like frou-frou OH SO DEEP descriptions of things. If something is black, say it is black. Don’t say it’s inky jet ebony.
As people who received a rejection slip for this issue discovered, you do actually like some poetry. The example we gave out was Richard Brautigan’s At the California Institute of Technology. Can you talk a little bit about why you do like this poem, and maybe name some others?
I like it because it’s simple and not overwrought with emotion. We don’t have to listen to lines and lines of the same sentiment repeated thirteen different ways. As for other poems that I like, I like most of Brautigan’s work. Also, there’s a poetry anthology called “Pictures That Storm Inside My Head”, edited by Richard Peck. I like the title poem from that one, though I don’t remember who wrote it.
Do you think that eliminating repetitive and overwrought elements might be the key to getting people to actually like poetry?
Well, it would make ME like poetry a lot more. But I’m not the usual poetry audience. I don’t have the time/energy/patience to listen to it. It’s like listening to my son try to tell a story – it takes him a few tries to get started, so he’ll repeat the same phrase over and over – and I just want to yell “GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!” And then it’ll turn out to be something about Wii Sports Resort or Phineas and Ferb.
Read more of this interview here and enjoy poetry from Ryan Bradley, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Howie Good and Daniel Romo.