Some Stuff
Semester is finally over and now I feel like I have so much to tell you about…
Jessica Smith is compiling “An evolving, informal and incomplete list of contemporary female poets writing in (or translated to) English”
David Shields has an interesting interview at 3QD, in which he offers “A Very Partial Reading List” of his 120 favorite books ever written
Fukuyama reviews Julian Young’s biography of Nietzsche
Thalia Field has a new book out, which she co-wrote with Abigail Lang, called A Prank of Georges
U of Georgia Press is holding their annual Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
MLP has announced that anyone who pre-orders Sasha Fletcher’s WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED before June 1st will receive a free copy of a companion chapbook called THE WORLD CHANGES AS IT WRAPS AROUND YOU.
Larry Fondation reviews Vanessa Place’s La Medusa
Bradley Sands has a new book out called My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!
Oh, and here is David Lynch’s short film “The Alphabet” (1968)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmMwKBMse_w&feature=player_embedded
This Wednesday Afternoon in May Triple-shot is brought to you by MIDNIGHT IN NOVEMBER
google image search for "nature is insane"
It is seeyerbreath cold in New York. Also raining. My friend in Denver says they got 3 inches of snow the other day. Dear Mother Nature, WTF!?!?! etc.
Speaking of Mother Nature and WTF, I can’t figure out why Crooks & Liars seems to be the only people to have reported this angle of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill–that the Gulf of Mexico is a major dumping ground for unexploded ordnance (UXOs)–ie bombs and stuff. BP WAS LITERALLY DRILLING IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING MINE FIELD!
Anyway, enough of that. Over at something called Review Fix, Mickey Ehrlich extols the virtues of and provides some contexts for understanding Joshua Cohen’s Witz.
Last November, Sarah Palin spoke to Barbara Walters about the expansion of settlements in Jerusalem: “That population of Israel is going to grow…I don’t think the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.” Israel makes such strange bedfellows. We Jews in America find ourselves building alliances with politicians whose wish is to corral us into the Holy Land, so the Messiah can return, and we sinners may repent or die.
In other news, have you checked out Pop Serial, edited by our own star commenter Stephen Dierks? The magazine can be downloaded for free right here. It features Tao Lin, Joshua “the aforementioned” Cohen, Zachary German, Kendra Grant Malone, I. Fontana, Miles Ross, Donald Futers, Paul Edward Cunningham, and a whole lot more besides. So go get it, yeah?
Speaking of MIDNIGHT, here’s a little culture for nothing extra- What secret ministry do YOU perform?
In Which We Read a Few Good Books, Connect Some Dots, and Have Ourselves a Very Fine Time
I enjoyed David Lehman’s Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man so much when I read it in April that I decided to try my luck with another of his several works of nonfiction. I almost picked up Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection, but I’ve been in a gung-ho poetry mood lately, so instead I opted for The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, a group biography of Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery. I encountered this Ashbery quip earlier today in the book, and was going to share it as a power quote, but that’s not really in the spirit of Ashbery, besides which now I want to talk about something else, too. Anyway the quote goes like this:
Recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing. We would all believe in God if we knew He existed, but would this be much fun? (p. 39)
Lassoing Up Tuesday
James Yeh interviews Diane Williams at The Faster Times.
At The Rumpus, Elissa Bassist wonders, have I earned these cliches?
In a belated look at the NYTBR, the great Harold Bloom reviews a book about the history of anti-Semitism in English literature, Adam Kirsch looks at two books about Heidegger, and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes a satire on Theory, in the style of Borges.
io9 rounds up 35 titles for “The Essential Posthuman Science Fiction Reading List.”
The Nation has a new website! Learn about what’s different here, and about their decision to open source here. Kudos and congrats, guys!
Speaking of new websites, n+1 has one, too. The present feature is new fiction by Dy Tran “about” donuts.
A new issue of the Home Video Review of Books!
And last but absolutely not least, the new issue of Propeller features an interview with Kevin Sampsell, one with yours truly, a review of the latest Nicholson Baker, and a whole bunch of other treats besides. Check it out.
4 Loonmachines
1. New online edition of Gigantic Magazine is now live for May.
2. DC’s exhibits 50 treehouses
3. Mark Baumer is walking and blogging across America from coast to coast (for real, he just started this weekend)
4. Amelia Gray’s constraint writing & media for this week at Everyday Genius
Cuatro de Seis de Mayo
1. Flavorwire posts The Ugliest, Most Beautiful Paintings Ever Made
2. Mike Kitchell posts a compelling list of his Top 50 Movies:
3. Penguin announces Central European Classics series.
4. The master Madlib makes a beat
Late-Mid-Week Early(ish) Morning Roundup
GIANT alum Drew Toal thoroughly enjoys Joshua Cohen’s Witz, and says so in Time Out New York. Also, look for some concise praise of Witz in the Briefly Noted section of this week’s New Yorker (5/10/10 issue). I think things are looking good for my man, and I believe that this is only the beginning. Stay tuned. And, duh, get yours.
Yesterday Dennis Cooper honored a request for a re-print of an old blog post of his from ’06– “Writer vs. Artist #2, Comte de Lautremont, Salvador Dali.” Also in Coop-news, DC’s blog turns five years old on 5/15. Happy birthday to one of my bar-none favorite places on the whole internet!
Peter Orner posts his introduction to Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives (McSweeney’s, 2008) at The Rumpus.
CBS censored/retracted/denied/something’d their story about the use of military spy planes in the capture of failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, but The Nation‘s Jeremy Scahill is on it.
And last but not least, here’s Florida state senator Mike Bennett looking at pornography on his laptop on the floor of the senate while a debate about an anti-abortion bill which he favors is going on. Way to go, you hypocrite woman-hating fuck. Full story at Jezebel, but the video speaks for itself–and for the senator.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p_1E5d5bfE&
And hey, once you’re over at Jezebel, you might as well start “Rethinking Virginity–And Examining Our Assumptions About Sex.” It may also interest you to know that “American Apparel Lies about its ‘Real People’ Models.” And if you’re still not done, there’s “Miley Cyrus’s New Video: An Analysis.” I bet you’re done now, huh?
5 larksons of elly yo
1. Cleaned out under my fridge today and found a fillet knife, dust-gorillas, and a chapbook. It is called “thunderstorms as familial convulsion.” Ryan Call as good as any at using weather as something more than weather.
2. Made me think of this sonnet by Kathleen Kirk. It is “Roof Leaks, Mimi Calls.”
All across the city the tyrant ice
pries up the tar and flashing, disturbs the peace
of shingles, their social order. It’s not the freeze
but the thaw that ruins us, the sudden spies
wiring the closet walls with new secrets,
the trickle-down effect in our kitchens,
cups and buckets competing for attention,
disintegration: sheetrock into dust.The phone rings, your mother with the news.
The ceiling shifts, sure it wants to open.
Nothing falls, not even the sky.
Your voice is like a level, its yellow tube
tipping the bubble of air toward hope
and back. Cancer—just another tyrant.
4. I have decided those who get bothered about quotation marks bother me. Dialogue isn’t about those little cheese curls. Do it right and you won’t have to do it right anymore.
5. Hold up. Tao Lin (actually Kacper Jarecki) wants your money. Wants your money. And then they ate whale.
5 for Freakin
1. Kevin Sampsell’s Book Notes playlist for A Common Pornography, in the style of Joe Brainard @ Large Hearted Boy
2. Alissa Nutting’s writing desk in Las Vegas @ Las Vegas Weekly
3. Lindsay Hunter fucks up some baby @ Everyday Genius
4. Forte Magazine is wtf.
5. Friday po it up with that trunk