‘I Will Smash You’
Michael Kimball and Luca Dipierro have been working for a while now on a video project, ‘I Will Smash You,’ which entails, essentially, videos of people smashing stuff, most often items germane in some way to their life.
A new trailer for the film features Michael Kimball going to town on a desk, which is a dark fantasy I live through almost every day. It is nice to see the release contained:
Criticizing Criticism: Matthew Zapruder suggests you SHOW YOUR WORK!
Matthew Zapruder in action.
A few days ago, the Poetry Foundation published “Show Your Work!” an essay by Matthew Zapruder, in which he calls for a sort of renewal of the spirit of poetry criticism. You should read the whole piece for yourself, but here’s the part that I take to be his thesis:
Critics can do one of at least two things. The first is simply to insist that something is good, or bad, and rely on the force of personality or reputation to convince people. The second is to write, with focus and clarity, about how the piece of art works, what choices the artist has made, and how that might affect a reader. Only then can the reader grow to meet work that is unfamiliar, that he or she does not yet have the capacity to love.
In short- Yes, absolutely. For more, flip to page A16.
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March 31st, 2009 / 10:31 am
March 31st, 2009 / 10:31 am
Happy Birfday, Dear Millions
I stole Max's books cuz he's a boy and he is dumb n ugly.
Popular book blog The Millions turned six yesterday. I really enjoy reading The Millions and think it’s a hell of an achievement to consistently provide entertaining and intelligent content for six years. Also, pretty much everyone on the staff that I’ve spoken to has been cool, helpful & genuinely nice. Head over and show them some love.
Today at Coop’s Place: Modern & Contemporary English Language Fiction Judgment Day
Here’s something everyone here should be able to get down with fighting about. Today at The Weaklings, Dennis put up a long list of writers and invites you to name each of their best and worst work. You can add your lists to his comments section if you want his response, or to ours if you want ours–or both, I guess. He’s smarter and better-read than all of us put together (that’s a guess) but there’s more of us and we have cat-like reflexes (those are science facts). Anyway, here’s his list:
Burroughs: B, The Wild Boys. W, The Western Lands
Faulkner: B, The Sound and the Fury. W, The Town
D. Williams: The Stupefaction. W, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
Vidal: B, Myra Breckinridge. W, Hollywood
De Lillo: B, The Names. W, Cosmopolis
Woolf: B, Mrs. Dalloway. W, The Waves
Foster Wallace: B, Infinite Jest. W, Oblivion
Ellis: B, Lunar Park. W, Rules of Attraction
Amis: B, Money. W, Yellow Dogs
Wharton: B, The House of Mirth. W, The Glimpses of the Moon
Joyce: B, Ulysses. W, Dubliners
White: B, Nocturnes for the King of Naples. W, The Farewell Symphony
Morrison: B, Beloved. W, Love
Sotos: B, Selfish, Little. W, Special
Roth: B, Portnoy’s Complaint. W, Everyman
Gaddis: B, JR. W, Agape Agape
Brautigan: B, Revenge of the Lawn. W, An Unfortunate Woman
Updike: B, Couples. W, Gertrude and Claudius
Rechy: B, City of Night. W, Marilyn’s Daughter
Beckett: B, Watt. W, Ill Seen Ill Said
McCarthy: B, Blood Merdian. W, Suttree
Moody: B, Purple America. W, Garden State
Nabokov: B, Lolita. W, Ada or Ardor
Tillman: B, American Genius: A Comedy. W, Cast In Doubt.
Dick: B, Ubik. W, The World Jones Made
Palahniuk: B, Fight Club. W, Lullabye
Hemingway: B, The Sun Also Rises. W, The Garden of Eden
Acker: B, Great Expectations. W, Kathy Goes to Haiti
King: B, Pet Sematary. W, Hearts in Atlantis
Vonnegut: B, Slapstick. W, Hocus Pocus
Capote: B, The Grass Harp. W, Summer Crossing
Didion: B, Play It as It Lays. W, Run, River
Pynchon: B, Against the Day. W, Vineland
Barth: B, The Sot Weed Factor. W, Sabbatical: A Romance
Mailer: B, The Naked and The Dead. W, Ancient Evenings
Welsh: B, The Acid House. W, Porno
Gibson: B, Neuromancer. W, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Delaney: B, Hogg. W, Madmen
Ballard: B, The Atrocity Exhibition. W, The Kindness of Women
Faulkner: B, The Sound and the Fury. W, The Town
D. Williams: The Stupefaction. W, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
Vidal: B, Myra Breckinridge. W, Hollywood
De Lillo: B, The Names. W, Cosmopolis
Woolf: B, Mrs. Dalloway. W, The Waves
Foster Wallace: B, Infinite Jest. W, Oblivion
Ellis: B, Lunar Park. W, Rules of Attraction
Amis: B, Money. W, Yellow Dogs
Wharton: B, The House of Mirth. W, The Glimpses of the Moon
Joyce: B, Ulysses. W, Dubliners
White: B, Nocturnes for the King of Naples. W, The Farewell Symphony
Morrison: B, Beloved. W, Love
Sotos: B, Selfish, Little. W, Special
Roth: B, Portnoy’s Complaint. W, Everyman
Gaddis: B, JR. W, Agape Agape
Brautigan: B, Revenge of the Lawn. W, An Unfortunate Woman
Updike: B, Couples. W, Gertrude and Claudius
Rechy: B, City of Night. W, Marilyn’s Daughter
Beckett: B, Watt. W, Ill Seen Ill Said
McCarthy: B, Blood Merdian. W, Suttree
Moody: B, Purple America. W, Garden State
Nabokov: B, Lolita. W, Ada or Ardor
Tillman: B, American Genius: A Comedy. W, Cast In Doubt.
Dick: B, Ubik. W, The World Jones Made
Palahniuk: B, Fight Club. W, Lullabye
Hemingway: B, The Sun Also Rises. W, The Garden of Eden
Acker: B, Great Expectations. W, Kathy Goes to Haiti
King: B, Pet Sematary. W, Hearts in Atlantis
Vonnegut: B, Slapstick. W, Hocus Pocus
Capote: B, The Grass Harp. W, Summer Crossing
Didion: B, Play It as It Lays. W, Run, River
Pynchon: B, Against the Day. W, Vineland
Barth: B, The Sot Weed Factor. W, Sabbatical: A Romance
Mailer: B, The Naked and The Dead. W, Ancient Evenings
Welsh: B, The Acid House. W, Porno
Gibson: B, Neuromancer. W, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Delaney: B, Hogg. W, Madmen
Ballard: B, The Atrocity Exhibition. W, The Kindness of Women
Selby Jr.: B, Requiem for a Dream. W, The Willow Tree
Barker: B, The Books of Blood. W, Coldheart Canyon
Brite: B, Exquisite Corpse. W, Plastic Jesus
Oates: B, them. W, Bellefleur
Dzanc Creative Writing Seminars
New from the always creation-forward Dzanc Books comes the DCWS, a pay-by-the-hour series offering 1 on 1 creative writing tutorials online with a wide range of incredible authors.
Dzanc Books is pleased to announce our newest program: the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions. The DCWS is an online program that will allow writers to work one-on-one with published authors and editors to shape their short story/novel/poem/etc.
Oh Yeah, Sweet, Sure: A New HTMLGIANT Series of New Online Magazines Posted About So Chelsea Martin Doesn’t Have To (Featuring Pindeldyboz)
I told Chelsea that she didn’t have to worry about posting new issues of online magazines because tennis bullhorns like me did that and she was the Tom Bombadil of HTMLGIANT.
In other words, there’s a new issue of Pindeldyboz out which you should read. Thoughts about Pindeldyboz’s aesthetic I wrote behind this here clicky-link, so I’m just going to list the stories and gently suggest you read them all, gentle as a tazer made of marshmallows:
New Magazine Monday: A Dog Keeps Chasing Itself Into the Funeral Home Parking Lot And Then Retreating Into the Mysterious Gray Snow
There’s so much going on in the literary world right now like dude. To wit: I ate all of a hip young author’s string cheese, but I’m going to replace the stock before she’s back from vacation, so she’ll never know. Pretty soon I’m going to buy dish soap and headphones, so I can clean my plates of bacteria and listen to country music in hunkered intensity, which will up my chug-a-lug and keep me fit to perform services for you, the literary public, including but not limited to announcements of three new online magazine issues:
WRITE UP AFTER THE BREAK
READ MORE >
DAKOTA FANNING!! NEW MEMBER OF OULIPO???
CHECK OUT THIS VID!!!
She was probably inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style (in which he tells the same inconsequential story of a bus ride using 99 different literary styles).
I am excited about Dakota’s project.
Duotrope Joins the Marketplace
Duotrope’s Digest has made a few changes. In addition to what the webmasters call a ‘fresh coat of paint’ for the site, Duotrope has opened an online store with Zazzle to sell a variety of writer-related things.
Here are a few pictures of what they’re selling.
(after the jump):
Anthropology Lessons from Metal Magazines: A Variation in a Series
This Guy is Metal, but not from Wino.
Perusing Metal Maniacs, I happened upon the band Wino’s new release, Punctuated Equilibrium (check them out on myspace)! My minor in college was in anthropology and it really should have been my major, but I was too lazy and cheap to go back and take all the pre-requisite stuff. In my evolutionary theory class, punctuated equilibrium was well discussed. Stephen Jay Gould and the lesser known Niles Eldredge (good link to Gould’s work here), beyond coining the phrase, developed largely the most radical variation on Darwin’s theory of natural selection and specifically, the idea of gradualism (although since then, I think other stuff has come about in the field. I was in college, um, 20 years ago). I read so many xeroxed papers that Gould wrote in obscure academic anthropology journals! He was supposed to come speak once to our class- he didn’t, though. I thought he was rad. And I think Wino is rad. Here’s a brief description of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, taken from Wikipedia, but it explains the theory well enough: READ MORE >