Back to Grad School
I used to blog here about getting an mfa in creative nonfiction, but since I finished classes there’s nothing much to report other than I am working on my thesis. Sasha Fletcher, however, just began his mfa in poetry and he’s writing about it over at his blog. He’s got the talented and lovely Sarah Manguso for workshop, Timothy Donnelly for a poetry craft seminar, Marjorie Welish for 20th century experimental poetry, and a lecture from the adorable Richard Howard titled “The Beginning of the End.”
Expect me to crash the guest lectures while I’m still in the city. Hopefully they’ll be as memorable as the Joyce Carol Oates one last semester.
Gigantic Magazine’s new website
Gigantic Magazine has a fancy new website up today and it is good looking. They’ve got stuff from J.A. Tyler, Shane Jones and Chapter 18 of Shya Scanlon’s internet takeover.
And as if the website wasn’t snazzy enough they’re running an art feature of work from Thomas Doyle.
Worth checking out.
Three Good Things for Friday
1. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (Dir. Werner Herzog, Produced by David Lynch)
2. There’s a new champ in town, and he’s into innovation and breaking misconceptions (via Brian Oliu)
3. Remember when major labels put out fucked up music sometimes?
The Frying Of Latke 49
This is pretty great. A writer for The Simpsons gets “conversational revenge” on a Pynchon-obsessed post-doc student who does the whole “Actually, I don’t even own a television” thing at a party. (You know the guy. This guy.)
Oddly, it was television that got me into Pynchon in the first place. Remember that miniseries V from the ’80s? It was totally awesome, and was based on Pynchon’s novel of the same name, which…OK, hold on. I’m being told that’s not true. All right. Well, that makes sense. My literary life is a lie. Great.
/ Lopez Ligon Butler / Book Tour
Forgive the indulgence here, but just wanted to drop a heads up to those in the NE U.S., as I’m about to hit the road for a week up in that area for a small troop of readings in support of Scorch Atlas, along with Robert Lopez, whose new novel Kamby Bolongo Mean River just came out from Dzanc (and is seriously a mindblower of new speaking and emotional wow), and Sam Ligon, whose wonderful Drift and Swerve came out earlier this year (and who we profiled here and reviewed here). It’s sure to be something like this…
9/12: Brooklyn, NY @ Barbes @ 6 PM
9/14: Portsmouth, NH @ River Run Books @ 7 PM
9/15: South Deerfield, MA @ Schoen Books @ 8 PM
9/16: Boston, MA @ Brookline Booksmith @ 7 PM
9/17: Providence, RI @ Myopic Books @ 7 PM
9/18: Clinton, NJ @ Clinton Bookshop @ 630 PM
9/19: Baltimore, MD @ 510 Series @ 5 PM
9/20: Philly, PA @ The Dive Bar @ 8 PM
If you happen to be around, would be awesome to hang out.
Also stoked this weekend that I’ll get to crash in on the Brooklyn Book Fest, hoping to catch Nicholson Baker, Ben Marcus, and Tao Lin all reading together on Sunday at noon. Weirdly awesome.
In the meantime, hope you guys have a great weekend and week. See you soon.
British Library Sound Archives
Check out this unbelievable treasure trove of audio material available for free:
Here are just a few of the talks I found that look especially interesting:
Michael Ondaatje (Discussion and readings of ‘Running in the Family’ and ‘Coming through Slaughter’)
Bohumil Hrabal and Julian Barnes, in conversation
Christine Brooke-Rose and A. S. Byatt, in conversation
Juan Goytisolo and Chris Rawlence, in conversation
Angela Carter discusses magical realism
William Gaddis and Malcolm Bradbury, in conversation
Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, in conversation
Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy through the looking glass
GIANT REVIEW, special gchat collaborative edition: Shoplifting from American Apparel
Drew Toal and I were having such a great time talking about Tao Lin’s new novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel, that we figured we owed it to the world to go public. So we forced ourselves to not discuss the book anymore until we were both finished, then we scheduled a time to meet up online and gchat about it. We ended up talking about a lot of extra-literary stuff (maybe too much?) but given that it’s Tao, and that we know him, that was pretty much unavoidable squared, but I think we did a pretty kickass job with the book when we got around to it. Drew was at his office, in mid-town, and I was at my office, in my bedroom. After the jump, we get down to it.
Who wants to be pissed off and terrified for the next half hour?
Dave Neiwert , the award-winning journalist and managing editor of Crooks & Liars–one of my favorite blogs–discusses his book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etoyumdyRS4&
15 Rich-Ass Authors I’ve Suddenly Decided To Like
I really enjoyed reading Blake Butler’s list of “15 Towering Literary Figures,” and Christopher Higgs’ list of “15 Significant Contemporary Women Writers.” Both were great, and I disagreed vehemently with those who criticized Blake for not putting more non-Americans on his list, because we all know that Americans are the only people who are any good at anything. Sorry, foreign losers! I also disagreed with whoever called Christopher a self-hating sellout to the gynocracy, whatever that means. Actually, I guess I said that. To myself. Just now.
Anyway, there was one glaring problem with both lists: Very few of the writers mentioned are super fucking rich. So I decided to make a list of 15 authors who I am going to pretend to like from now on, in the hopes they will send me money. I mean, Brian Evenson is a good writer, but is Brian Evenson going to keep you in expensive hookers and 40-year-old Laphroaig? No, Brian Evenson is not. So have fun drinking store-brand sodas with Jorie Graham and Diane Williams, guys! I’ll be in Ibiza, pronouncing “Ibiza” pretentiously, with my 15 new best friends:
Dan Brown
John Grisham
Inglourious Bang Bang
Good afternoon to all HTMLGiant readers–
Let me introduce myself as Brittany Dennison. Blake Butler has kindly offered me the opportunity to do some posting here at HTMLGiant. If you’re interested, you can deduce my likes and dislikes from my tumblr, or by googling “Brittany Dennison” (here is a link in case you aren’t familiar with this process). You can also find me on facebook, but I can just tell you now that my profile is set to private. I can also recommend searching flickr or vimeo for additional clues; I’m not sure there’s anything featuring yours truly on youtube, but if there is, please let me know, as I’m curious. I am in two of these photos.
Blake, to answer your question, I saw Inglourious Basterds just the other week, and my feelings towards the film undulated as much as Brad Pitt’s hold on a Southern drawl. To be fair, I have a lot of mixed feelings towards Tarantino in general; glorification of violence seems like a petty trick and a cowardly way out of true cinematic exploration, but I do recognize that he is a genius storyteller and filmmaker. Part of my repulsion is guilty pleasure that leads to mere guilt (yes they’re vile, but I just can’t stop watching), and part of it is the feeling of inadequacy I feel when I watch his films. I have a novice understanding of film, so many, if not all, of his references allude me. So, I was caught off guard when I found a shocking similarity between a scene in Inglourious Basterds and another film…