Corduroy Mtn. in Print
Now available from Greying Ghost Press, the first print run of Corduroy Mtn. From their site:
We like hats. We like hats so much we threw ours into the literary magazine ring. When we all became embarrassed by our haircuts, what we found was some truly excellent, original, and eclectic material written by a bunch of strangers. First Print comes as a 5×7 chapbook with hand stamped covers (each one is different!), a broadsheet, a photograph, and a Jack Boettcher quote. Printed on high quality linen paper with color inserts.
Featuring: Peter Berghoef, Shane Jones, Brooklyn Copeland, Forest Roth, Blake Butler, Mandy Billings, Brandon Shimoda, Sommer Browning, Adam Maynard, Joshua Ware, Drew Kalbach, B.J. Love, Kevin Wilson, Kendra Malone, Jac Jemc, Eric Amling, and James Iredell.
I was rejected by them once saying my piece was ‘boring.’ They actually used that word. I’m not being spiteful or trying to start up shit (the piece was kind of boring). My only point is Editor Carl Annarummo seems to be in the business of only publishing fucking awesome writing, as exemplfied here. (Hit ‘start reading’ and ride it.)
Good Job everyone. Exciting.
New at Publishing Genius
The wonderful cover of Shane Jones’ novel Light Boxes is now posted over at Publishing Genius. Also, Adam Robinson has redesigned the site and it looks very nice. Scoot on over to have a look. Or go to the blog to see what Adam has to say about the cover. Pre-ordering information here.
Shane Jones blogged more about the book here. Most importantly, he blogged that the book has been sent off to the printer.
Shane Jones looks like a nice man.
new from Mud Luscious
In my email (also probably in yours?), a message from JA Tyler, editor of Mud Luscious:
readers & the like.
look, look, look:
mud luscious issue six is live & death-defying. new work by brandi wells, jamie lin, jared ward, charles lennox, laura hirneisen, lauren becker, tim jones-yelvington, m.d. kempis, ryan dilbert, howie good, kyle hemmings, & drew kalbach. this issue also includes a review of every online & print work available from publishing genius press.
go here to view the issue: www.aboutjatyler.com
ml press also opens today for pre-orders of the jan. trio:
LIKE IT WAS HER PLACE by kim chinquee
A HEAVEN GONE by jac jemc
SOME OF THE LETTERS THAT WERE CUT by michael kimball
each volume is $2 (includes shipping), is limited to a single run of 50 copies, & will ship jan. 15.
five-month subscriptions are also available. $30 / 15 volumes.
go here to support ml press: www.mudlusciouspress.blogspot.com
also the new flash collection by j. a. tyler EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING OF DEATH is available now from the achilles chapbook series. this collection will only be available in a signed, limited edition of 50 copies. $5 (includes shipping).
go here to order: www.aboutjatyler.blogspot.com
read up & share out.
happy 2009.
JA Tyler has reviewed the entire Publishing Genius catalog. That is exciting.
Someone should review the entire Dalkey Archive catalog.
Letter From Austria: Peter Handke’s Sorrow and My Own
I am deep in the Austrian Alps of Carinthia, near the borders of Italy and Slovenia, in a province largely full of people who never leave it, a six hour train ride from Vienna, staring out my hotel window to enormous mountains and yards and yards of snow, pine trees, and quaint houses that have not changed in structure for hundreds of years. Handke is from Carinthia, from a town not far from here. My parents and I see each other once a year because they live in Vienna and we live in New York. Once, I looked out at all the beauty and thought; “All this beauty. Too bad it is full of Austrians.” Other times I look out and try to be happy and grateful. (There are things I like about Austria. I like the food, the Frittatensuppe, the Topfen, the Semmeln, the delicious Austrian pastries, as good as any Italian pastry. I have a weird fetish for the traditional clothes, the Dirndls, the Lederhosen, the felted wool in general. (I grew up wearing that stuff.))
Peter Handke’s mother killed herself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of fifty-one. He writes:
My mother has been dead for almost seven weeks; I had better get to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and I fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the news of her suicide.
The Cupboard vol. 2
from The Cupboard:
The Cupboard is pleased to announce its next volume:
A New Map of America
by
Louis Streitmatter
Edited by James Brubaker
“Perhaps soon, you will begin to hate the cartographer who overexplains his maps…”
The Cupboard
Volume Two
We’ve had to deal with some production issues on this volume, but it should be back from the printer in January and will be immediately shipped. In the interim, you can find out more here and pre-order the volume on our subscription page.
We publish 4 volumes a year, and they can be yours for $15. Subscribe here.
You can also choose to order volumes individually for $5.
*STILL AVAILABLE*
We still have copies of Jesse Ball’s Parables & Lies available and could certainly get them shipped by your holiday of choice if you’d like. Subscriptions to The Cupboard make great gifts (we presume).
Thank you again for your support and your patience.
Happy holidays,
THE CUPBOARD
Paper Egg Books
Featherproof has a ‘new baby’ and it’s called Paper Egg Books.
From the website:
Ladies and gentlemen, we humbly welcome you all to the future of publishing. Just kidding.
Actually, welcome to this new thing we’re doing. The “we” is featherproof books, and the “thing” is a subscription-only series of books. Here’s the idea: You subscribe to paper egg for just $20 a year, and we send you two beautiful, limited-edition books by some of the most exciting authors working today, writing in disciplines often disregarded by that big, ugly marketplace (we’re talking little, beautiful forms like the novella and the short-story collection). More soon, as we get hatching.
I don’t know much else about the project as the site is still unfurnished, but the idea sounds cool. Keep an eye on this; they say more to come in early 2009.
(Thanks to Tobias Carroll for the link)
New from PGP: The Origin of Paranoia as a Heated Mole Suit
I have read The Origin of Paranoia as a Heated Mole Suit by Rupert Wondolowski. It is as good as the title would mandate being to warrant having such a bad ass title on the cover. The poems here are amazing and weird and funny, and for $9 you can’t really ask for much more. Get this quick.
If you don’t believe me just by believing, here is the first part of one of the poems in the book:
I wake up screaming.
I scream scratching the dog’s belly in bed,
scream seeing the third pillow has fallen to the dusty floor.
I scream during breakfast, wet bananas on lips.Shaving, I scream. I scream cleaning up the bloody mess.
Scream when the neighbors pound, when the police
come knocking.
I scream on the walk to work, yard ladies gyrate
gardening shorts,
Arabbers hurl eggplant torpedos at me, their horses stomp, dogs bark.I scream the news grotesque,
football game shooting in Anchorage,
Middle East imploding.I scream under Manhattan like undigested pork.
The previous day, screaming, I crossed
a small lake in the countryside on a rowboat.
Screaming, I ate a picnic lunch, ants
forming a moustache above my screamhole.I scream quietly during a polo-shirted
golf match, a drink umbrella catching
on my sore uvula.
The rest of the book is as fun and new as that. Adam at PGP just keeps poppin bottles. Check ‘er out.
Publishing Genius Press
December 2008
52 pages
5×7″
perfect bound
Cover design by Stephanie Barber, digitized by justin sirois.
Page design by Adam Robinson with thanks to Chris Toll.
The Tree of No by Sandy Florian
from Action Books:
The Tree of No, Sandy Florian’s second book, is now up for sale actionbooks.org. We are not officially releasing it until February, but to celebrate the end of the Year of the Squealing Pig and the start of the Year of Lemurs (All Over Our Bodies) we are starting to sell the books early on our website only.
Here’s an excerpt:
I become pregnant with a hole. Scoop it out and the void comes down on its head. Then give it thanks and sing into the pit. For he is mindful of me. For he is manful on me. I make a beast of him like I make a beast of the bird, like I make a beast of fish, like I make a beast of the sea scrolling under my feet.
This looks amazing. I have already ordered. Action Books is very on point.
While you’re at it, may I recommend Lara Glenum’s THE HOUNDS OF NO, Aase Berg’s REMAINLAND, and Tao Lin’s book if you don’t have it: all three of these I own and love. I also just ordered: MOMMY MUST BE A MOUNTAIN OF FEATHERS. How can you not want a book with that title?
What Ever Happened to Contemporary Press?
I loved the raw noir books that Contemporary Press published, for example, the two Danger City anthologies as well as Tony O’Neill’s Digging the Vein (fantastic junkie lit) and Mike Segretto’s The Bride of Trash. But then, they stopped putting out new books! I decided to contact some of the people and find out what was up. Jeffrey Dinsmore informed me that many of their titles are still available and they hope to publish more books in the future. So, according to him, they are only on haitus. I highly recommend buying some of thier books– which you can find out more about here— if you like funny, dark, inappropriate crime books- think an updated Jim Thompson on meth and the occasional speedball or as GQ said, “books for people who like to drink while they read”. Dinsmore said you also can still get many of their titles from Amazon and other large booksellers, too. And Mike Segretto is putting out his own novel, Curse of The Tarantula, and it will be as over the top and entertaining as his other Contemporary Press work. Here’s what Mike Segretto had to say about the short life (that is not quite over necessarily!) of Contemporary Press:
McSweeney’s Announces Sale, Makes Up Clever Word
is this real? i dont know. is it too big? yes.
In my (and probably your) inbox yesterday was this from McSweeney’s, bless their hearts:
M c S W E E N E Y ‘ S C R A Z Y
E X C E S S I V E
S A L E
Apparently something’s going wrong with the economy. An econopocalypse, we heard. Thus, we have put together an emergency bailout package for the book-buying public. Once again, almost everything on our site is half-off, or even cheaper, for just a few more days — soon it’ll be too late to guarantee Christmas delivery, so now is the time.
And once again, we’ve got everyone on your list covered. We’ve restocked the immediately beloved “What Happens in La Brea Tar Pits, Stays in La Brea Tar Pits” t-shirt, and we’ve piled high the stacks of Comedy by the Numbers for your insufficiently funny friends. For all the hungry nondenominational holiday-enthusiasts in your life, there’s Lemony Snicket’s Christmas story The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming, and for the impatient McSwys newcomer we’ve got the Instant Gratification Subscription. There’s lots more on the site, and everything’s cheap, so click here.
And still the bonus: if you order more than $60 from our site, you’ll get your choice of either Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends or Nick Hornby’sShakespeare Wrote for Money, as a free reward. All you have to do is spend $60 (not including shipping); then, at checkout, find the promo code field and enter:
– MC01 if you want MAPS AND LEGENDS
– NH05 if you want SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEYMaybe you missed your chance before, or maybe you just want to stuff even more stockings. Either way, do not deny yourself these simple pleasures, the joy of giving and/or hoarding. Please go now: http://store.mcsweeneys.net.
The Second Crazy Excessive Sale ends this Friday.
Remember, here’s some more stuff to buy if you’re a Secret Santa.