DROWNING BEAUTIFUL
Look at this beautiful artwork by Jason de Caires Taylor.
(update: That first link seems a little overloaded, so here’s his website: http://www.underwatersculpture.com)
He creates people out of cement and puts them on the bottom of the sea.
Here’s a writer on the ocean floor…
i will not go on the internet, i will not check my phone
I Like What The Hell Is Going On Over Here
5 hidden to lurk on the furky lake
11. Decent collection of James Thurber fables. Dude had a series of glass eyes he would change out at parties, each one for his drink level at the time, each a little bit more red-eyed. He also had an American flag glass eye. He would go to the bathroom, toss in the flag eye, reenter the party.
5. Holy shit! Jeff either snagged the shark, lost his best spoon, or this:
About two weeks ago I tried living as if I were an indie writer.
Oh, the writerly worries of “going indie.” Though it’s one of those things where genre writers think indie means genre. As if genre is subversive. Or indie. Or that they correlate. Or something. Some tidbits, though, or why would I even yawn it here?
14444. Aimee Bender interview in Guernica.
1. Avant-Garde time capsule found.
9. Is caffeine important to the writer? How much do you use?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Writing
Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.
If you want people to read a book, tell them it is overrated.
Most people write so they can remember things; I write so I can forget.
You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.
It is the same with language. Language is largely made to show-off, gossip, confuse people, delude them, charm them, seduce them, scare them, exploit them, etc. And, as a side effect, convey information. Just a side effect, you fools.
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
The test of originality for an idea is not the absence of one single predecessor, but the presence of multiple but incompatible ones.
Beauty is enhanced by unashamed irregularities; magnificence by a facade of blunder.
Gun, Gramophone, Violin, Bawling Baby
First paragraph from Louise Erdrich’s Plague of Doves:
The gun jammed on the last shot and the baby stood holding the crib rail, eyes wild, bawling. The man sat down in an upholstered chair and began taking his gun apart to see why it wouldn’t fire. The baby’s crying set him on edge. He put down the gun and looked around for a hammer, but saw the gramophone. He walked over to it. There was already a record on the spindle, so he cranked the mechanism and set down the needle. He sat back down in the chair and picked up his work as the music flowed into the room. The baby quieted. An unearthly violin solo in the middle of the record made the man stop, the pieces of the gun in his hands. He got up when the music was finished and cranked the gramophone and put the recording back on. This happened three times. The baby fell asleep. The man repaired the gun so the bullet slid nicely into its chamber. He tried it several times, then rose and stood over the crib. The violin reached a crescendo of strange sweetness. He raised the gun. The odor of raw blood was all around him in the closed room.
You Are Not the Only One Writing About Mondavian Zookpeepers
This is one of about 30 “Random” posts on the front page, but here goes nothing: Chloe Cooper Jones conducts a pretty spectacular dialogue with co-stars George Saunders and Deb Olin Unferth over at The Faster Times. Inspiring considerations of the contemporary MFA program abound. George Saunders gives us the only googlable instance of “kicking entities,” which we ought to deem an idiom among idioms, even if I’m not sure what it means. Really, the hope here gets me giddy, and it’s something for sure of which this “literary culture” could use a more healthy supply. Deb Olin Unferth puts it beautifully:
You can look at any space, at any group of people, and see dreariness, self-absorption, the long trod to death. Or you can look at the same space and people and see longing, hope, heroism, and disappointment that will break your heart. If you squint just right at an MFA program, you see both. You see the lifeless side—maybe the student who isn’t finding her voice or the teacher who is just “going through the motions”—and the side that shines and beats.
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November 15th, 2010 / 11:06 pm
November 15th, 2010 / 11:06 pm
Barnes & Noble Made Me Sad Last Night
I was in a Barnes & Noble last night for the first time in years. I don’t live close to bookstores so I mostly buy my books online, at AWP, or at independent bookstores I happen upon during my travels. What I love about B & N is how there are so many options. If I feel like helping myself, there’s a book for that. If I want to read a trashy romance novel with a cheesy dude on the cover exposing his cleanly shaven chest, there’s a book for that. If I want to read up on starting my own business or Kabbalah or the Kama Sutra, there are books for that too. While I was in B & N last night, the whole place felt shrouded in a bit of sadness, as if the whole idea of the brick and mortar bookstore was on its last legs. I don’t really think this is the case but there was something rotting in that store. There were plenty of people milling about but they were mostly lounging in the cafe or reading quietly in the plush, oversized chairs probably covered in bacteria, or browsing the stacks and stacks of books muttering things like, “I could do better than this.” There were these other two guys in the Entrepreneurship section engaged in a hopeless little discussion about how they were going to get rich! Quick! That really happened.
Equality Rules
The Equalizer series is complete! See the final three installments below, plus the final series all in one pdf, along with a note from editor, Michael Schiavo.
The Equalizer 1.13 Henry Gould’s Lanthanum 4
The Equalizer 1.14 Tony Tost, Maureen Thorson, Lytton Smith, Richard Deming, Cosmo Spinosa, James Meetze, Matt Cozart, Eric Unger, Janaka Stucky, Cody Walker, Katherine Factor, Matt Hart, Buck Downs, and Jim Behrle.
The Equalizer 1.15 Mark Horosky’s Fabulous Beasts
Margaret Atwood: Twitter Champion
Margaret Atwood, Twittering into the Dystopian Future
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939. This Thursday she will be 71 years old. Since 2000, she has published 13 books in five genres (novels, short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s books.) She is writing the libretto for a chamber opera to be produced by City Opera of Vancouver. Her middle name is Eleanor. She has 100,122 Twitter followers. Some of them compose Tweets and send them to her. She responds daily to many of these Tweets, even the mean ones. Here are a few representative Tweets Atwood has recently Tweeted:
@anthonyslatcher: handmaids tale sucks & I’m gonna fail alevel exam because of it, thanks..not!! M:Aww.I flunked algebra. I didn’t study.
@Gaiaellyn: I hope that you are able to eat crunchy foods again… M. sez: Not yet :( But learning to appreciate wet noodles.
@keeleyoconnor: hi :) we are in english class in HONDURAS discussing your poems! We have some questions? M: Short questions? :)
But have I ever mentioned Bat Segundo? Mentioning now:www.edrants.com/segundo
paulcgallagher: Hi, planning to continue story of Oryx & Crake/Year of the Flood? Wondering what might happen next… M: Tis the plan! :)
I have some IKKS men’s reading glasses left at #giller table 16: I took them into protective custody for their own safety. Let me know…
@Bexxaloon: so how close do you think we are to Handmaid’s Tale becoming real life? #ofGlenn M: Too close, but with different outfits..
@EvenCool: My daughter’s very own creation: youtube.com/watch?v=Y4hYSe… M: Very soothing for this painkiller’d old biddy…Tx!
This Week in Ghost Writing
I don't know. Here's this guy covered in bees. What is happening?
1. A little while ago I put up a note about ghost-writing, wondering if anyone had done it or would. Since then I found out that Ben Greenman ghost-wrote Gene Simmons’s tell-all memoir, which sounds like fun in a weird way. In the interview they don’t ask any follow up questions which is ridiculous considering the title of the piece is “Ben Greenman Ghost-Wrote the Celebrity Tell-All for Gene Simmons.” All I can think of is a boy-faced Greenman trying to have a normal conversation with Simmons as he’s decked out in full KISS attire, or Greenman calling ex-lovers with cigarette-punctured voices to fact check which drugs they were taking when.
2. If you’re in the mood to get upset, have a look at this article about James Frey’s book-factory scheme. A friend who’s working on a book for them suggested I pitch one, too. It seems like basically a terrible idea. I feel greasy just thinking about it. Why are the MFA programs letting this crazy man into their classrooms? I do not know. I am currently abandoning hope. In general, I mean. All hope.
Will some of the trolls please have a look at the article and spew some much-deserved anger in the thread? Thanks. This one is ripe for a shouting match. (If only it were still Mean Week!)