Junot Diaz says Obama is a crummy storyteller.

Jonathan Burks, my friend and former Milwaukee roommate, just put out an album of boozey rock songs that you can download free at http://jonathanburks.bandcamp.com. It might be the sort of thing where liking the person affects the way I come to the music, but I don’t feel like I’m overstating it by saying that this is some of the most honest-sounding, unmediated rock/folk/country music I’ve ever heard. And his last record, Brown Paper Bag, may be even better.

Nice interview with Laura Sims about her new book Stranger from Fence Books @ Coldfront.

Hey remember that time something happened about laughing at a poetry reading in New York? Me either. But Craig Santos Perez does. And he sees a connection between Laughter-gate ’09 and the death of flarf–except flarf isn’t actually dead, or something. The best thing about the Perez blog post and/or its comments section–wherein a bunch of smart, otherwise interesting people conspire to take all their (and your) time and energy and drown it in a bathtub of pointlessness–actually occurs in the very first sentence, where Perez links to Dan Hoy’s epic study of flarf from Jacket 29. But again, I stress that flarf isn’t the issue here–nothing is the issue here. There is no issue here. So don’t click the link and don’t read the post. Read Dan’s old essay. Or, if you’re desperately spoiling for a fight, have it about Emerson. That horrendous article that Ken linked to earlier has been drawing fire all day. Our own thread-regular Mather Schneider is tearing it up over there, and I’m on-record as well. No word from the piece’s authors. Yet.

“writers” who don’t actively write shouldn’t call themselves “writers.” true or false?

Brief, but interesting: Lincoln Michel on DFW, Junot Diaz. Begs to ask the novel of the ’80s, the ’70s, the ’60s, ’50s…?

Against Emerson

Brandon Scott Gorrell is moving somewhere. He didn’t tell me where. Wherever he is moving, he will not be taking his books. You can buy his books. Cheap. Buy cheap books.

For god’s sake, “thought to myself” is a redundancy. Can that stop? In terms of personal irritation, it’s just as bad, if in an opposite way, as saying, “Want to come with?”

Today an editor casually told me writers are like small children. Ouch. Are we? Is that good or bad? It had me thinking…