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Bananas

Jacob Dahlstrup made this banana boat.

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August 19th, 2010 / 5:44 pm

HTMLGIANT Features & Random

Belief Quartet

I.

This morning I was listening to Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” on my headphones sitting outside drinking coffee, a 56-minute commitment to listen to in its entirety. The score is recorded live in one take; the instruments played so uncharacteristically that they sound put through a sequencer. Much of Reich’s music is about timbre, acoustic capacities, and the melodic “negative space” between syncopated notes. When some bass clarinets came in pulsing thick and strong, I felt deep droning reverberations in my chest cavity, so visceral it was, so moved by the spiritual score  — until I realized a large truck approaching behind me, shaking the ground, its driver the 19th musician.

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August 19th, 2010 / 2:04 pm

A Few Notes of Randomness

As an editor, sometimes the way writers value an acceptance into the print issue over an acceptance into the online version of the magazine is frustrating. As an academic, I understand why many writers value print publications. I also respect the desire for a physical artifact, something you can hold in your hands and leave on your coffee table and pass around with friends and loved ones. For many readers, longer work translates better on the page. I respect print. I get it. I also respect online publishing. I find it as valuable as print publication, I love the exposure it provides as well as the accessibility. We print 750 copies of our print issue. Our online magazine gets 7,500 or more unique visitors a month. Now, there are all sorts of factors that will dilute online traffic figures but I know without a doubt that more people can and do read the magazine online than the print version. This week a writer stated in his cover letter, “This story is only for print consideration.” I advised him we consider all work for both print and online publication and if that were a problem, he should withdraw his submission. He withdrew his submission. Sometimes when writers learn their work has been accepted for online publication they express disappointment, ask if there’s something they can do to get their story into the print version like it’s a back room casino in Manhattan. Twice, writers have declined publication. That is their right.

I am on a mission to eliminate the word that, whenever possible, from my writing. It is such an empty word. More often than not the that is not needed. I’m also getting ruthless with just and the excessive use of it as an empty signifier. I keep telling myself, say what something really is. Are there little words you try to eliminate from your writing or tics you try to overcome?

The Rumpus is doing a one off book club for Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. I signed up for it.

The literary magazine club is actually going to happen! I will pull together some more coherent details early next week for you all. If you would like to join you can watch this space where many of the discussions will take place or you can join the Google Group I’ve created for other discussions and top secret club communiques. NY Tyrant sells out so you might want to get your copy of NY Tyrant 8 (Vol. 3.2) pretty soon!

Have you read the new issue of The Collagist? Mary Miller, who never ever disappoints, has a story called The Cedars of Lebanon that I just love.

Here is a pretty thorough story on the very sad affairs at VQR.

I have an extra copy of Mary Hamilton’s We Know What We Are. If you’re interested, comment with a little story about what you know you are. I’ll pick my favorite on Friday at 5 and you’ll get this book and some other good reads.

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August 18th, 2010 / 5:20 pm

Which writer would you most like to read a memoir from who hasn’t done it yet and maybe probably won’t?

Dickens: Unhappy.

Childhood: Happy or Unhappy?

This very enjoyable video that Jordan Castro just now posted on Facebook reminded me, if I needed reminding, which I didn’t, that summer is more or less over–whatever summer means in our iPhone-addled times. (This last phrase I have lifted directly from Ryan Mazer’s really hilarious piece in Monkeybicycle.) To me, summer, this summer–what the hell was it? It was Baltimore, a house of twelve anarchists, sweating while sleeping (what do you do when your fan generates hot air?), reading Faulkner. In the end it seems like all that I read this summer was Witz and Faulkner, with exceptions here or there. It feels like I was lazy, and maybe I was. After I finished “The Bear,” I walked around the house doing stuff, and every couple of minutes I would think about “The Bear” and, without mediation, whisper to myself, “What the fuck?” The gumption it must have taken to write that novella!–which is at first a linear bildungsroman or whatever (even though it’s never simply that), and then once that plot ends abruptly with the bear’s death, the narrative halts and interrupts itself to become this entirely fucked history of the bind between race and religion in the south, which is at the same time a history of… the post-Fall earth, or something? Jesus. How did someone begin to think like that? Fucking Faulkner. What did everyone read this summer? What did everyone do? I want to hear about it.

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August 15th, 2010 / 2:35 am

João Machado’s ‘The Effect of a Book’

Gestures from João Machado on Vimeo.

[‘The Effect of a Book, Extending Beyond The Form’] intends to construct an essay or open-ended process, embracing the participation of the reader as a producer of a book. It relates to the experience and performance of a book, looking beyond intended function.

(via Swiss Miss)

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August 13th, 2010 / 9:54 pm

your friday moment of zen

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August 13th, 2010 / 2:17 pm

Learning lessens

Lamont Library, Harvard

Instead of ivy, mold crawls on the walls of my education. Of the eight Ivy League universities’ mottos, Harvard and Yale’s include “truth,” and Brown and Princeton employ “God.” My favorite is Darmouth’s, which speaks of a crying voice in the wilderness (probably referring to freshmen year in the dorms). In addition to Statistics 101, kids returning library books at Harvard are met with a lesson in the highly improbable. Graduating from where I did with the degree I did was my own lesson in the highly improbable, namely, a good career. I masochistically look forward to The Social Network, which partially takes place at Harvard. The first google suggestion for facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, besides his name, is “Mark Zuckerberg Girlfriend” — for success is not just measured at the bank, but by the lady next to you, her breasts and your eyes ideally pointing towards the same bright future.

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August 12th, 2010 / 6:19 pm

Photo Booth Mask by Mark Pernice

Photo Booth Mask” is an actual mask rendered from a distorted image using Apple’s photo booth application; that he documents himself wearing the mask adds to the disembodied simulacra. The project may point to the absurd narcissism of the affected expressions usually made with the distortion effects, a kind of reverse aesthetic of trying to look grotesque. One is reminded of Francis Bacon, who fucked with faces way back; true, the camera changed painting, and now it changes sculpture, and with the latter, there’s an eerie leap from what ought to be two-dimensional to an actualized object, a transgression of mimesis.

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August 12th, 2010 / 11:57 am