Let’s make a list.
Kevin commented on my Letters to Wendy’s post earlier today that he thought the book is one of the most “stunning pieces of art to appear in the last ten years.” It occurs to me that I tend to agree with that assessment. Letters to Wendy’s really did change the way I thought about poetry and fiction. It changed the focus of my reading. It changed the way I approach writing, too.
The writers and readers of this blog seem to have a taste for innovative work. If asked to name one book that permanently and significantly rewired the way you read or write, what would it be?
In a few days, I’ll update this post with a list.
UPDATE:
Actually, what the heck. Let’s open this up. A piece of music, a film, a photograph, a painting. What piece of art significantly rewired the way you think of art or create art.
Letters to Wendy’s Q &A
Recently uploaded to Joe Wenderoth’s Youtube channel is a fourteen part q & a with students about his book Letters to Wendy’s.
Question one: “What inspired you to write Letters to Wendy’s?”
After a long pause, Joe’s answer is: “Umm, a desire for power.”
Follow this link to see the first video. In it, Joe reads a few selections from the book after the teacher takes role. (Can anyone identify the teacher. A prize to anyone who does.)
Links
John D’Agata’s review of Letters to Wendy’s.
Letters to Wendy’s, the musical.
A review of Bruce McCulloch’s live version of Letters to Wendy’s. McCulloch was a member of Kids in the Hall. (Whose theme song was written by Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet. I used to listen to Dim the Lights, Chill the Ham in the car!)
Letters to Wendy’s Myspace page.
Unrelated article about letters sent to the families of victims of a 2000 massacre at a Wendy’s in New York.
Snopes article about a finger reportedly found in a bowl of Wendy’s chili.
Page where you can learn more about adoption, a cause beloved by Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas.
I am buying one of these with my six figure advance
Visit terrafugia.com for more information on this experimental carplane.
Has anyone read this?
Has anyone read this book? It comes recommended by Stanley Crawford. I’m hoping to cull a concise summary from someone here so I can avoid buying it. Ahh, the irony.
Also: You can look forward to an HTMLGiant contest/giveaway. Big and soon.
A Celebration of the Chapbook at the CUNY Grad Center in late April
For Immediate Release
We are excited to announce a wonderful event upcoming on April 23-25 in New York: A Celebration of the Chapbook, a three-day festival featuring panels, workshops and a bookfair. For a full schedule of events, visit http://centerforthehumanitiesgc.org/festival .
This festival celebrates the chapbook and highlights its rich history, as well as its essential place in poetry publishing today, as a vehicle for alternative poetry projects and for emerging authors and editors to gain entry into the literary marketplace. The festival hopes to forge a new platform for the study of the chapbook inside and outside the academy.
We invite you to visit the fair and attend the panels and workshops, all of which are free of charge. Please note that the workshops require registration, and will fill up fast, so reserve your seat now. Visit http://centerforthehumanitiesgc.org/festival for instructions on how to register.
Pardon this brief interruption…
News television is a socially and morally robust medium.
On Influence: ‘DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!’
I was at a reading end of last year or sometime, this guy, reading words on paper, talked between the things he’d written previously, to explain the things he’d written previously, though in a way so that the lead-ins were way better than the things themselves, making me huddle in the head some for the idea of making words, at least in there.
Word schools. “My father was a steel man: me, I’m in syllables, ones that don’t quite say.”
Me too, me too, I’m sure.
Regardless, during one of these monologues between glossies the dude said something about how when he teaches fresh writing students, the first thing he tells ’em is how they have to get out of the mode of imitating what they love. How they needed to stop trying to mimic other writers in the mind of ‘using their own voice.’
I seriously had to grab my pitching arm from grabbing a book off the shelf of the store the reading was in and lobbing it at dude’s head.
I bit my mouth and forgot about it for a while, so I could get out without hemorrhage.
All this acting as a lead-in for the real post I wanted to post, my current favorite viral video of the month:
Mos Def in admiration for his man the MF Doom
Magic begets magic, like how I get up any day at all, maybe.
Those ones that make you glow.
Tattoo Lit?
The print form is dying. Online publishing is diluting good literature.
What’s next?
Maybe we could learn something from this Swedish tattoo magazine, Tare Lugnt, which ‘published’ its latest issue on some guy’s leg.
I give you Tare Lugnt Nummer Tre.
See the rest of it here.
(via Chunnel.tv)
Lish on Cavett: A Task
According to his Wikipedia page entry, Gordon Lish appeared on the Dick Cavett show in 1991.
Dear readers, let’s us not rest until we have found a full transcript or video of that interview!
Primordial Theory Question
1. While any subject can be interesting to any bozo at any given time, history indicates that there are a limited number of topics that are always immediately and profoundly engaging to everyone, all the time.
2. These issues are what is referenced by the term “the human condition.”
3. They are: death, love, and the idea that I am alive and did not ask to be.
4. Death meaning, I am going to die and I don’t know when or how to behave in the face of that.
5. Love meaning, for instance, I am lonely and drawn to other humans, and yet I am human and drawn to inflicting pain.
6. I am alive and did not ask to be meaning I don’t know if you are, too, or if I made you up.
7. So my question is, what is all this other crap that people are writing?
8. In other words, how far from these issues can I take a story and still have a story that anyone will care about?
I defer to your expertise.