Martian landscapes, a sample page from the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, David Byrne on the internet & psychoacoustics & privacy, and the most passionate and delving analysis of Eyes Wide Shut that I’ve read.

you can read a new noah cicero book in its entirety on his blog.  it’s called BEST BEHAVIOR.

Eileen Myles interviews CAConrad

“What Blake was to the 19th century, you’re being to the 21st. Kind of an outsider shaking his fist at capitalism and the ludicrousness of it by examining its smallest unit, which is an individual, or the family.” (Eileen)

I’ve taken to writing blindfolded, rolling my head around.  Speaking gibberish, sounding out vowels and mashes of consonants.  All of this, by the way, for a novel (maybe).  Disclosing some history: I wrote my last one, my first first one–as my true first novel is 50,000 words of cliches and will forever live inside a box neath my pillow & bed–in 72 hours, first draft, sleeping six hours total.  I feel like the fugue created by my body struggling to maintain helped me be something really desperate, which fit what was happening in the narrative.  Roundabout way of asking: You perform your writing?  I like to.  Yell at me some, please.

p.s. no sleep is midas touch

p.p.s. The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses.

Dalkey Archive is doing their ‘we will eat your pocketbook and mind’ sale again, which I have now taken advantage of 3 times and will likely a 4th: Holiday Sale at Dalkey! Get 10 books for $65, 20 books for $120, running through November 22.

Chris Higgs interviews Kristina Born for The Faster Times, about her new book One Hour of Television. [BORN: I wanted it to be suffocating. Gertrude Stein thought (mostly in reference to her plays, I believe) that you can’t write emotional arcs, because if the reader is not in the exact right emotional state at the right stage in the arc, you’ll lose him. Her solution was to put everything on the page immediately, like a painting, and allow the reader to pick out what resonated with him at the time. I’m interested in a different solution: a complete monopoly of mood. I want to try to write in a way where the reader can pick up the book, read any sentence, and be immediately crunched down into the mood he should be in.]

Q: Hey, did somebody say “Justin reviewed the new Stephen King for Bookforum?”

A: No, nobody said that.

Q: Oh, okay then.

So everyone knows about writer’s block. But have you ever been scared to write? Have you ever been scared to read? Like, terrified, for no discernible reason.  How long did it last? Was there a solution for you? What was it?

The 15 Most Expensive Paintings in the World seems more interesting than The 50 Sluttiest American Apparel Ads of All Time. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.