Stop Doing This
Stop titling your stories, “What We _____ About When We _____ About ______.”
Seriously, stop it.
This is the literary equivalent of putting a bird on it. (If you don’t get that reference, please stop what you’re doing and go catch up with this joke. Ok. Thanks. Hi.) Using the “What We ______ About When We ______ About ______” title is no longer even an homage to Carver’s story and story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. I don’t know what anyone is even trying to accomplish by re-using that title anymore. If I was still reading slush for a magazine I would automatically delete any entries with this kind of title. All a title like that says to me is this piece was written by a lazy pseudo-hipster.
Sentimental, Narrow, Women’s Writing. Alas, Alack, Anon!
People tend to e-mail me about two things as of late–anything related to gender and One Tree Hill. They’ll say things like, “Have you seen this?” or “What do you think?”
Yes, I know One Tree Hill has been renewed for a ninth season and I couldn’t be happier about it. I have said a few novenas for Hilarie Burton and Chad Michael Murray to return for the final season. If that happens, let’s just say I will be giddy.
Yes, I have seen V.S. Naipaul’s comments that he doesn’t consider any woman writer his equal. I have a Google Alert set up under the phrase, “Bullshit.” He need not worry. We hardly consider him our equal either. Before that Google alert came through though, several people e-mailed me and Tweeted me about Naipaul’s comments. Certain brands of crazy are beneath comment. They cannot be taken seriously. Take Donald Trump, for example. When he began to rant, publicly, about President Obama, it was fairly easy to dismiss his racism and xenophobia because it is difficult to take a man like that seriously. We’ve seen Celebrity Apprentice. His actions were clearly borne of a desperation to remain relevant. Sometimes rich and/or famous people need attention so they say crazy or provocative or stupid things over and over again to get a little attention. (See: January Jones, et al)
Hoe Fiction Works
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The house of fiction has many windows, but only two or three doors. As for the door to the laundry room, only my wife knows that one. But enough about white male jokes. I quickly got lost in my Barthian funhouse and called my editor, who told me to say Flaubert every other page. The hoes of friction, besides a pun, implicates literature’s true calling, to quench the muse of hoes, those handjob sirens motioning like a rap video, if such videos where directed by Renoir.
Books for Christmas?
The kid in this video (via Harriet) feels like I do. Unless it’s htmlgiant’s Secret Santa thing, don’t ever give books for Christmas.
The wtf-est book I ever received was Kurt Warner’s bio. What gives, Pop?
NEWS ALERT: new fairy tale anthology “glamorizes” cannibalism
Whatever you do, do NOT buy this book.
[NOTE: The reviewer has just taken down his/her review from Amazon. Mysteriously. Luckily, you can still read the full text below in all its ignorant splendour! (Monday, Nov. 22, 12:25pm)]
FUCK YOU LETTERS
Any & all comments on this one, and sharing, is very appreciated. Also: what are some fuck you letters that come to mind? Any favorites?
Don’t write all over the goddamn books please.
I hate blurbs on book covers, at least put that shit on the back if it’s all you can do you think you have to to sell your shit and maybe you’re right, I’m no good at selling it. A terrible telemarketer, I would probably make a mediocre regional fertilizer salesman, which is to say I would be shitty at selling shit. So you go on building bridges and stuff. I mean I get it. It’s silly but I’m better at burning them britches. What I like is to consume my brain food from a plain colored box, like an Oreo milkshake, or expensive yogurt the way Muslims frown on figure drawing in the mosque. I think that’s rad. Frown away Mohammad. Patterns are whatever. Pyramids are when. They are good to think on I think. I like to gaze at them and think on Gawd oh gawd the stars the trees. But my kind of cover is a naked Knopf hardbound from the 60s. Maybe I’m boring and probably it’s vain but I don’t want other people’s opine opinions influencing my internal dialogue, not until I’ve digested my lunch which is to say eaten the text the film the album the thing and pooped out an opinion of some kind, however odd it might look oblong and oblique, not until I’ve had time to play with it to prod it to scrape and slice it beneath the blade of my tongue. But I like first for a thing to be in space like a rock in the ground pulsing tight 600 million miles a fucking hour going this is True btw, and then to have it there in my mouth in my ears my eyes huge like a fresh batch of fungus, a bunch of firecrackers going off in my bulb my skull my head. My favorite thing said in French is J’ai mal à la tête. To think of it rolls off the tongue like butter on bread.