Ghost Writing
heroofswitzerland.blogspot.com
I’ve known a few writers who ghost write young adult novels for money which has always seemed both enticing and repulsive. On the one hand it seems like it could be really freeing and fun to work inside the constraints they give you (Nerd/vampire superhero lesbian coming of age story in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles– GO!) and under a pseudonym, but on the other hand I wonder if it would be too draining for how little money you might earn. Has anyone had any experience with it? Would you take a ghost writing job if someone offered it today? How much would you want to earn for it to be worth it?
lit/life/love in the margins
Friend of mine recently found a 1975 copy of Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island in a Goodwill store. Inside a woman named Paula had written a quote (actually the ending paragraph) from The Lover by Duras and then this note to Jon:
You were my birthday present; you came to the door–no one else was home. you said “let’s celebrate.” We dropped acid and went to the friend with the nocturnal monkey-like animal and made love for hours.
Enter The Void: OUT TOMORROW
In theaters tomorrow and On Demand on the 29th. Don’t miss this film. Some more whet:
–Steve Erickson interviews Noé: “I saw “Lady in the Lake” on mushrooms and became fascinated with the idea of depicting a character‘s perspective while he’s on hallucinogenic drugs. I also read about astral projection, and the afterlife. I don’t believe in it, but as a collective dream, like flying saucers, I wanted to depict it properly.” and “I want to make a movie that will be very sentimental and sexual. I have a long treatment now. It’s a love story. I want to film sex as I’ve experienced it, which I haven’t seen accurately represented in erotic or pornographic films.”
Public Relations
In Cambridge, Massachusetts they’re printing yoga poses on their parking tickets to remind that double-parked undergrad what she learned at Equinox last weekend and to baffle/enrage the guy who just drove daddy’s beemer into a speed trap. I guess the police are getting sensitive about their image because someone started a yelp page reviewing the Cambridge Police Department and it only got four stars from the guy who went there this summer to register his handgun, because, you know, yoga only gets you so far. But they’re going to earn that fifth star, goddamn it.
PR is important, we know. A roommate told me last night that the Washington State Department of Tourism motto used to be “Whaaa?” and even though he thought that was ridiculous, I thought that was appropriate. It says: “Washington– Pot smoking is totally OK here.” READ MORE >
Phallic Phractals
Why would the word “choad” be used to describe two distinct parts of the male anatomy which reside in extreme vicinity? Choad means both 1) a penis that is as wide as it is long, and 2) the area between the scrotum and anus (fml. perineum) — as conceptualized using fractals in opposite directions (emmision and butthole serve to orientate the viewer). It’s like using one word to describe both the rind and pulp of a lemon. Words are free, just make one up. Call a penis that is as wide as it is long a “brupmont” and the conflict ends.
I once heard a male porn performer refer to his imminent emission as “choad,” that (emphatically) “Oh, [he’s] gonna blow [his] choad on [her],” which is either semantic negligence on his part, or exclusive insider lingo. Brupmont will probably never catch on, as those who host such a diminished digit speak meekly into their laps.
All Context, No Content
Here is an image of a small boy walking along the precipice between a zone of water and a monolithic structure.
Hi. My name’s Mike. I will be posting here periodically (thanks Blake). I had planned for my first post to be about Tan Lin’s Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking (Airport Novel Musical Poem Painting Film Photo Hallucination Landscape), which Adam Robinson mentioned last week, because I finished it yesterday and wanted to say something about it because it’s amazing, but I left my copy at home. I don’t like writing about books in detail if I don’t have them in front of me.
Instead of telling you about Tan Lin’s book, I will tell you about myself. Sometimes I really like talking about myself, and sometimes it makes me really uncomfortable. Most of my “author bios” are really brief and include a statement about how I am going to kill myself in the ocean. I also generally point out that this may or may not be true.
Eagerly Anticipating
This Is Not a Tragedy:
The Works of David Markson
by
Françoise Palleau-Papin
The very first book-length study to focus on this seminal American author, This Is Not a Tragedy reviews David Markson’s entire body of work, ranging from his early tongue-in-cheek Western and crime novels to contemporary classics such as Wittgenstein’s Mistress and Reader’s Block. Having begun in parody, Markson’s writing soon began to fragment, its pieces adding up to a peculiar sort of self-portrait—doubtful and unsteady—and in the process achieving nothing less than a redefinition of the novel form. Written on the verge of silence, David Markson’s fiction represents an intimate, unsettling, and unique voice in the cacophony of modern letters, and This Is Not a Tragedy charts Markson’s attempts to find, in art and language, the solace denied us by life.
Meeting people is cheesy
David Hockney’s 1988 portrait of his critic/curator friend Henry Geldzahler is a likely summoning of Van Gogh’s 1889 portrait of his postman Joseph Roulin. Hockney is a known admirer of Van Gogh, so this is not shocking news; it just struck me how similar the subjects look — God’s template for people limited, each person another’s reincarnation. The men, weighed down by middle-aged bulk, look out over rosy cheeks with sky blue eyes. Their collars made from sharp triangles, the guillotine of fabric life.
A cynic will say it’s all about who you know, which might explain Hockney and Van Gogh’s respective ascent and descent in the art world. (Roulin unfortunately could only help with the mail, by which Gauguin’s heated correspondence was no doubt conveyed.) Van Gogh only had a set of brushmarks, and Roulin’s beard is described in the same fashion as the manic trees and clouds of Van Gogh’s dreamlife. Hockney’s less modernist brush work is cleaner, flatter.
“Yah, it’s all about who you know,” I hear myself say at parties to the spinach dip, “fucking system.” Cynicism is rationalism for losers, so hello. If there is a system, Gauguin left it when he moved to Tahiti forever, braising in the humid yellowed air with beautiful brown women. “I shut my eyes in order to see,” he once said, under a spell of sweaty Tahitian sun hinted by Henry’s tropical-themed shirt, which means vacation is either near or just ended.
The eye’s translucence is paradoxically noted with an opaque dab of white. Nothing so fake as painting can be so real. The great thing about art is every stranger, however long ago, has a chance to see and be seen. It’s all about who you don’t know.
14 crucifix clutching cocaines
5. The Bateau Press Boom Chapbook Contest is open for submissions until December 31, 2010. Fuck yes!
4. This woman is a fucking conceptual food artist and vegetable butcher.
11. Thing now is to drop F bombs at readings. Three readings, 9 readers, carpet F bombing. Even lamer is to prep the F bomb. “I know you’re college kids, but I’m about to say fuck so deal with it…” or “Hope you people can handle some fuck words. No babies in here, right?” Fuck on. Fuck off. People don’t seem as drunk as usual. Maybe the F bombs are Freudian life relief at reading sober. Fuck.
77. An interview with Luna Miguel by SJ Fowler. Thank you, 3:AM. You are a hitchhiker in my heart.
But if I think back to my youth, the truth of the matter is that I didn’t pay any attention to criticisms, reproaches, and suggestions either. So I have no authority to speak today.
Write a Book, Then Take a Picture of Yourself Looking Like a Douche and Put It Inside
Flavorwire has spoken out against the five major offenses frequently made in author photos. For my next book I want to take an author photo that breaks all five where I’m smoking while putting my hands to my face while twisting my torso to rest my arm on the couch in my office and supporting my head upon my fist.
