Memoirs are bullshit
James Frey was forced to sit down and let Oprah tear him to pieces before a studio audience because he committed the greatest crime a writer could commit. He made a bunch of people feel something when they read a novel. They thought they were reading something real. They connected with it and felt something. Turned out it wasn’t precisely real. It was embellished. It was changed to serve the story instead of the reality that the story was based on. All those folks who spend their lives vicariously feeling something through other people’s tragedies were angry that they felt something for a story instead of something that happened in the real world. They pilloried the jerk who went and made them feel something over a work of fiction.
This fetish for “real” is the most embarrassing part of the contemporary reading public. The memoir is, for the most part, just exhibitionists flashing their genitalia at voyeurs. Our Puritan ancestry is likely to blame for all of this.
Let’s hope the memoir dies soon and we can get back to the more important writerly pursuit: making shit up.
“What America needs most is tact.”
(Have I posted this before? Am I a broken record? Sorry.)
Wack Bible Stories
You know Jonah – God sent him to Ninevah but he didn’t want to go, so God made a whale eat him. Then Jonah had a change of heart and God made the whale barf him up.
Here’s the rest of the story: in Ninevah, Jonah told everyone that God was going to wipe them out in 40 days. They panicked and dressed themselves in burlap and the king said no one should eat anything. He said no animals should eat anything either, so God spared them. This irked Jonah because he looked like he didn’t know what he was talking about. Surely thinking about the Mediterranean storm, this time he fled into the desert. That night God grew a plant to shade Jonah. Then God sent a worm to eat the plant.
It’s in the Bible: READ MORE >
Day of the Dead Altars
the great blogger?
Today, our plaza’s filling up with Day of the Dead Altars. Flowers, decorations, photos, information about the deceased, cigarettes, and of course, food and drink. And this makes me think about how I’ll be remembered. How any of us will be remembered. As wrestlers, plumbers, lovers, drinkers, writers, bad or beautiful bloggers?
What’s my altar going to look like? And will it be next to Seth Abramson’s? What’s going to adorn Blake Butler’s altar? Justin Taylor’s? Amy McDaniel’s? Adam Robison’s? etc, etc……I’m in a rush to see. But, we’ll be there soon.
So, what’s yours going to look like? What contain? Who will visit it? Who will care? Who will stand in front of your remembered image and paraphernalia and declare “Damn that guy was Amazingly Verbose”??
wrestler or plumber or blogger??
“”There has been Something We Can All Get Behind
Well, MEAN WEEK has been fun–and also deeply damaging, which is as it should be–but the important thing is that it’s over now. Or at least I’m over it. Not sure if it’s meant to carry through the weekend or not, but I’ve personally reached my limit of give as well as take. And so, in the name of reconciliation, I’d like to direct your attention to something that’s bound to unite, not divide-
South Carolina Republican Caught with 18-Year-Old Stripper, Sex Toys, and Viagra in Cemetery.
The best part of the video is Rick Sanchez “reporting” the story by reading user comments off CNN’s twitter page. Later, journalism! You were fun while you lasted. Same to you, MEAN WEEK!
Varieties of Contempt (a guest response from Christian Lorentzen to JC)
Christian Lorentzen sends word post-occasion of Jimmy’s hipster post; via “Varieties of Contempt”:
Would I accept several thousand dollars in exchange for shooting
myself in the kneecap? Yes, and when the bald man asks for my head on
a stake, hand it to him. He didn’t earn his vulgarity, so we had to
mark him a B+. You can blame the 70s, but it was really the 60s. Much
besides your life depends on exhibiting your best behavior in that
brothel. I myself prefer polite mediocrity to rude talent, but there
are plenty of nice restaurants in this city. He’s not a great chef,
he’s a good chef who shined a great chef’s shoes for years. What’s
funny is when they release those studies that show they are reading
less. Wasn’t the first thing we learned in school the fact that
they’re mostly a silly bunch of guys? He must be stopped before I get
slapped with a health-code violation. Mother, may I have a second can
of soda today? No, it will rot your syntax. I feel lonely when I look
in the mirror but not as lonely as I feel when you are here, so just
stretch your toes into the sea. If it demonstrates form, some people
will take an axe to it. Style is the ultimate weapon, and if you can
combine it with authenticity, you’ve got a great scam going. Welcome
to my femininity, and let me tell you about the dental plan. Two
Californians walk into a bar, and a Mississippian tells them their
problem is that they didn’t first love apple pie. I construct
narrative arks, that’s what I do. The crucial hour begins at three in
the morning. He failed to turn his neck as they were coming out of the
shade, so now they’re stuck with each other. I’m sorry about your
baby. The scandal will be good for your health. Look forward to a
cleansing effect. I feel unable to connect with it, so let’s just play
it up really big and make it sell. Hold the center or it will hold
you. Summer’s surprise was a feeling of generalized hatred, like a man
standing over you and threatening your life, or someone who thanks you
for your attention and cites it as a valuable service to the
community. I called it nihilism, and he called it several forms of
negation. You like to say it’s complicated, but actually it’s simple
to the point of crudity. It’s all right, but I wish it was as big as
my ego, which will now take off his shirt. That winter, the worst ever,
all the snowflakes were identical. I gave myself to you but never got
a receipt. Now for the worst moment of your career. Go away, go away.
Remember Alone?
Writers:
Remember what it is to be alone?
Fifteen interviews after XXXX gets his book published by XXXXX XXXX Press. Constant promo. Constant talk. Talk about the work. ‘What brought this book out?’ ‘What were you thinking here?’
Use of words: Great, Beautiful, Amazing, Stunning, Remarkable.
After an hour of thought, I’d say that I’ve read two books that I would consider great in my proportion. Two books. I know it’s nice to be nice. That’s okay. But, please, as an excuse, do not use the ‘it’s tough to be a writer.’ No. It may feel tough, but it is not. Look around you.
To sum: I think that within the internet, writers can easily grab hold of a lot of pages and capitalize and gather attention.
Remind yourself: This is a psychic burden, this page. Is it worth it? Is it worth it for me and for the audience?
It is okay to be alone.
Have you ever said no to an interview? You can! You can, actually. It can be worth the gamble of pissing off the proposer. You don’t even need to tell them that it is because of you, because of your want to sit quietly and think, and work. Talk can be poison.
It’s a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to write or speak very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work. –Henry Moore
It’s easy to feel the frenetic prompts that the internet–and within it the communities–create. Resist them. Action for action is not action at all. It is movement. (Marketing is often the endgame for this movement; you create burden. Burden. Think about what you want to play, what you want to ask. What you want to give. Think long term. Ten moves in chess deep long term. Anything less than that is lazy.)
Resist the movement. Revolution, now, is a withdrawal.
Remeber what it is to write. Remember the seed?
The seed is you. Alone.
This is, as it must be, as much for me as it is for XXXX. For you. For me. One in the same here.
“Let’s talk about something important”
My first year at Bennington, the first thing we did at orientation in a dark room full of the whole student body and faculty was watch the Alec Baldwin monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross. We watched it with little to no introduction from the then head of the program, Liam Rector, who has since taken his own life. Liam played the clip at least every other semester for the new students, sometimes mentioning that it was the only thing they needed to get out of the program, and sometimes just sitting down and grinning wildly at the screen. A lot of people didn’t seem to understand what Liam wanted us to watch this scene for. A lot of them just shrugged it off and kept asking when the panels on publishing would be. You may or may not have seen this bit before, but thinking of it in context of the opening to an MFA program to me seems pretty right on both as in the mind of business and of art, if “mean” in a totally constructive and let’s-save-you-and-me-some-time kind of way. So, for Liam…
Writers like shitty music (a sampling)
1. The Beatles
If these guys
suddenly stopped playing songs written for girls to get wet over and instead started writing ‘serious’ music, I wonder if generations years later would go around quoting and praising these fine young men as the greatest band of all time…
Naw. Ruiners of everything good.
Take That, Mean Week!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUm_SPkxuLo