The &Now Conference of Innovative Writing is happening October 14 – 17 in Buffalo, New York.
Mark Feeney starts off this piece on Thomas Pynchon and music with this sentence: “Music hasn’t really mattered much in American fiction.” Is that even remotely true? I suspect it’s not, but you guys are all smart well-read rock stars. Is Feeney right? Do I just wish music mattered more in American fiction? Will anyone come to the debut show of my band, The Very Special Episodes? Even though my band doesn’t technically exist?
If you Ask Jeeves (British actor Stephen Fry), what to read, he will tell you to read David Eagleman’s new book “Sum.” And he did. On Twitter. Sales went up six hundred percent, and sat on Amazon’s number two best seller list.
Fry, who has more than 750,000 followers, tweeted yesterday that “You will not read a more dazzling book this year than David Eagleman’s ‘Sum’. If you read it and aren’t enchanted I will eat 40 hats.” … Fry later tweeted that when he promised to eat 40 hats if his followers weren’t enchanted by Sum, he was actually referring to the word “hat” as meaning “cashew nut” in a rare Papuan dialect.
The Rumpus has got a piece by the great Jim Shepard at the top of their page right now- An Appreciation of John Hawkes. Apparently, Shepard was a student of Hawkes’s at Brown. Aside from painting a fascinating picture of Hawkes, I really feel like Shepard is getting at something fundamental and urgent about the way that effective writing instruction functions, the inextricable dimension of personality, the deeply human nature of the whole enterprise. I said as much in the comments, which by the way have so far garnered responses from two other former Hawkes students: James Robison and Rick Moody (whose first story collection, The Ring Brightest of Angels Around Heaven, is dedicated to Hawkes), and the Brown-but-not-Hawkes-alum Shya Scanlon. Seriously. Go read this piece. Then order a copy of Travesty.
You know how I’m always going on about Joshua Cohen’s genius? Sure you do. “Oh he wrote something about Jews again,” “oh his books are awesome,” “oh he cooks the best Thai fish balls”–blah blah blah. Well here’s the proof everlasting, kids, as if you needed it. This is what it looks like when JC forwards you a Youtube video.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo
Do you like going to readings or do you think they are boring or useless or something? What do you like or not like about them?
chris higgs’ latest post produced a discussion about audience. i have thought about this before. my question is: can you ever have an audience (outside of yourself) in mind while you are writing? if you have an audience in mind before writing, doesn’t that mean that you are dealing with something that is already common? and doesn’t that mean that you are offering something that is not truly unique? the discussion branched off into the classic “indie small audience” versus the “mainstream big audience” talk. i don’t understand anyone wanting either in advance. audience seems to be something that happens afterward, long after anything the writer does. i understand eventually feeling good about a large group of people reading something you are pleased with, but i don’t understand wanting this in advance of pleasing yourself. again, i am not suggesting that only small audiences are good (good meaning representative of quality) and big audiences are always bad. what i mean is, can you imagine how drained a book that appeals to the whole world would be? i don’t think it’s even possible to imagine a book the entire u.s. would like, or an entire state. which to me, seems to mean that the audience you don’t have is also important. i’m just thinking.
Is Dan Chaon a god? Yes. Yes, he is. This interview proves it. As does his insanely great taste in music. (Seriously, read Await Your Reply, yo.)
New blog: Letters of Note
New art: 21st Century boys & girls golden mountain, by ssin
New issue of The Collagist | Kim Chinquee judges Collagist flash fiction contest | HTMLGIANT designer Gene Morgan redesigns Pank Magazine | Excerpt from Shoplifting from American Apparel at Hipster Runoff | Leo Tolstoy that guy on Led Zeppelin IV album cover