Contests
Win Evan Lavender-Smith’s From Old Notebooks
As Chris Higgs discussed a while back, ELS’s recent hybrid memoir-philosophic mania-idea machine-joke book-power assemblage From Old Notebooks is simply out of control. In the vein of Markson or D’Agata, but with a manic, hilarious, intense vision that makes it so singular it’s almost its own genre, this is the kind of machine you could keep returning to at any point inside it, any line as much its own as it is a contribution to same insane whole.
Here’s a line at random: “What if God had said to Phil Mickelson, Would you rather shit your pants or shoot a double bogey on the 18th hole in the U.S. Open?”
I have an extra copy of FON to giveaway to the commenter who tells the most compelling something he or she should probably keep hidden. Winner will be selected Saturday morning.
Excerpt reading and purchase here.
Tags: evan lavender smith, from old notebooks
lol @ that phil mickelson line…
love this book. Have a copy already, otherwise I’d say something about wet dreams or drug use.
i sort of really want this book after reading that promo for it.
man, do i get to do multiple entries?
go for it
I do not know how to ride a bike.
I lied to Gordon Lish.
I am afraid of middle-aged men who do handstands on the beach.
I care very deeply about winning this contest.
I have a terrible fear of waking up blind, and so on nights that I sleep alone, I sleep with my cellphone in my hand so that I will be able to find it should I need to call for help.
I go sort of manic when I wear matching clothes, like sometimes I make these weird and barely perceptible little whinnying sounds when I ‘color coordinate’ or just generally congrue my sartorial patterns.
When I whistle I feel lonely and vaguely perverted.
man what i want to post i can’t. it has a future home.
i like this question though. essentially you are asking for a show of intimacy–you are wanting a person to present their genuine self in spite of possible anti-social consequences.
i think this is intimate knowledge:
i have only had sex with two women.
For the past two years I have collected on a mirror all of the puss and blood that has come out of my body. It looks like tiny fireworks.
I have a foot fetish
I didn’t call my father after his first stroke because I was afraid of how he would sound. I carried the phone around for days thinking about what I could say if he didn’t remember who I was. A few months later I heard he died.
I’ve had sex with only two women.
Just kidding.
I pee in the shower.
A few weeks ago I ate a McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger Mini-Meal for lunch.
thank you for making fun of me.
i like to pee on women in the shower.
as you can see, i have not done much pissing.
mimi eats a mcdonald’s mini-meal.
lol @ that phil mickelson line…
love this book. Have a copy already, otherwise I’d say something about wet dreams or drug use.
i sort of really want this book after reading that promo for it.
man, do i get to do multiple entries?
go for it
I do not know how to ride a bike.
I lied to Gordon Lish.
I care very deeply about winning this contest.
I have a terrible fear of waking up blind, and so on nights that I sleep alone, I sleep with my cellphone in my hand so that I will be able to find it should I need to call for help.
I go sort of manic when I wear matching clothes, like sometimes I make these weird and barely perceptible little whinnying sounds when I ‘color coordinate’ or just generally congrue my sartorial patterns.
When I whistle I feel lonely and vaguely perverted.
man what i want to post i can’t. it has a future home.
i like this question though. essentially you are asking for a show of intimacy–you are wanting a person to present their genuine self in spite of possible anti-social consequences.
i think this is intimate knowledge:
i have only had sex with two women.
For the past two years I have collected on a mirror all of the puss and blood that has come out of my body. It looks like tiny fireworks.
I have a foot fetish
I smelled my dog’s breath and it made me hungry
maybe you’re gay.
*daps all around*
I didn’t call my father after his first stroke because I was afraid of how he would sound. I carried the phone around for days thinking about what I could say if he didn’t remember who I was. A few months later I heard he died.
maybe you’re a pussy for being anonymous.
I’ve had sex with only two women.
Just kidding.
I pee in the shower.
A few weeks ago I ate a McDonald’s Double Cheeseburger Mini-Meal for lunch.
wow, mimi’s is deep.
how does that go over with the ladies?
thank you for making fun of me.
i like to pee on women in the shower.
as you can see, i have not done much pissing.
mimi eats a mcdonald’s mini-meal.
ive only had sex with one woman.
i watch the stock market everyday and think about retirement.
I smelled my dog’s breath and it made me hungry
maybe you’re gay.
*daps all around*
the mirror takes up one side of a revolving bookcase. they do not get to see it.
For two years, I went out (non-exclusively) with a girl — 15 years my junior — who liked to call me daddy during rough sex play. She would often say, “No!” and “Stop!” but she really meant YES (and yes, I asked for clarification, often). She was a virgin when I met her. I would usually go home feeling awful about myself and vow to never see her again, but then she’d email me (she never called) and I’d eventually cave. The turn-on was like nothing else I’d ever experienced, equal to my repulsion. She used to make me listen to Bon Jovi and (gulp… here’s the real disclosure) I grew to like some of the songs. Oh, and she’s still a virgin, as far as I know. This is not a love song, but it is a true confession.
good luck with that.
Brutal.
I stole a copy of Spice World on VHS from K-Mart. I surreptitiously removed the tape from the box (not hard—the store was practically deserted) and tucked it in one of my baggy cargo short pockets. I practically ran home because the plan was to rub one out as soon as I put the movie on. I got distracted, though, upon hearing cryptic lines like “When the speeding melon hits the wall, it’s Christmas for the crows,” and the fact that Meat Loaf plays the Girls’ tour bus driver. Not to mention the fact that my hard-on was non-responsive by the time the Girls encountered the muscular Italian dancers.
maybe you’re a pussy for being anonymous.
wow, mimi’s is deep.
how does that go over with the ladies?
I always wear a secret glass vial around my neck. Inside, mixed with water, is aspirin, cayenne pepper, and a crushed-up niacin pill — things that will blow-open your arteries after a major cardiac event. I think I have a bad heart. The doctors think I have anxiety.
I…. I love this.
ive only had sex with one woman.
i watch the stock market everyday and think about retirement.
the mirror takes up one side of a revolving bookcase. they do not get to see it.
For two years, I went out (non-exclusively) with a girl — 15 years my junior — who liked to call me daddy during rough sex play. She would often say, “No!” and “Stop!” but she really meant YES (and yes, I asked for clarification, often). She was a virgin when I met her. I would usually go home feeling awful about myself and vow to never see her again, but then she’d email me (she never called) and I’d eventually cave. The turn-on was like nothing else I’d ever experienced, equal to my repulsion. She used to make me listen to Bon Jovi and (gulp… here’s the real disclosure) I grew to like some of the songs. Oh, and she’s still a virgin, as far as I know. This is not a love song, but it is a true confession.
good luck with that.
Brutal.
I stole a copy of Spice World on VHS from K-Mart. I surreptitiously removed the tape from the box (not hard—the store was practically deserted) and tucked it in one of my baggy cargo short pockets. I practically ran home because the plan was to rub one out as soon as I put the movie on. I got distracted, though, upon hearing cryptic lines like “When the speeding melon hits the wall, it’s Christmas for the crows,” and the fact that Meat Loaf plays the Girls’ tour bus driver. Not to mention the fact that my hard-on was non-responsive by the time the Girls encountered the muscular Italian dancers.
I always wear a secret glass vial around my neck. Inside, mixed with water, is aspirin, cayenne pepper, and a crushed-up niacin pill — things that will blow-open your arteries after a major cardiac event. I think I have a bad heart. The doctors think I have anxiety.
hahaha, man and you guys think i am the mean one.
for the record, i was actually thanking mimi for making a joke.
jokes are good.
people who don’t joke are uptight pussies.
hmm, no i don’t think i am gay.
i have given it a lot of thought.
like if blake butler turned to me suddenly one lazy afternoon and said, “dude, i can’t handle it. i can’t keep it in. i’m gay! i want dick. dick, dick dick dick dick dick! dick all the time! dick in the morning! let’s do homosexual shit and not tell our wives!”
i would be flattered but say no. i love blake but i’m not gay.
i would probably kiss gian. like a long awkward kiss.
that’s it. no gay shit beyond that.
(this comment is 100% honest and entry #2)
Hi jereme!
I always enjoy reading your comments, and I consider you someone who is always “brutally honest” and that is a good thing to be.
I think we understand each other in an internets sort of way.
Still circling “Frowns”. I’ll be in touch!
– mimi
i made out with a older guy, maybe about a decade+, when i was 17, in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. his stubble pricked my face.
I get off to incest themed pornography.
Yeah, this is amazing.
A love song to a confession, maybe?
What I should probably keep hidden is that I hate this book because I read the review of it on this website and it made me more jealous than I’ve been in ten years since I found out that everybody in my workshop class liked my story a lot but thought I was stealing from Steinbeck since it resembled Of Mice and Men but I was 18 and had never read Of Mice and Men and I was just writing about a retarded giant manchild in the Dust Bowl just like I’ve kept notebooks and filled hundreds and hundreds of pages of things like this that if I’d only just known could be considered a “memoir-philosophic mania-idea machine-joke book-power assemblage” I could have maybe published them and and been doing something good and been validated but instead I’m not doing something good and I’m not validated and what I might do if I win this book is rip out its pages one by one and put each page into a bonfire in the hopes that if I burn this book I will burn out my stupid useless jealousy and realize that I write in fragments but so does everybody, that I could never be Evan Lavender-Smith, that his name reeks of what’s cool and I only wish I reeked of what’s cool, that I could never publish my fragments, because the real reason I hate this book is that it should never have been published because its fragments are just fragments and philosophy has already over-taken Schlegel and joke-books are for fucking idiots and assemblage is for lazy post-modernists, and the real reason I hate this book is that I hate my own fragments, I hate their fractures and fissures, I hate that I’ll never write a book and I hate writing not-a-book but I could never burn what I have because I love what I have even if I hate what I have (plus they’re in a word-file, and it’s easier to burn a book than a computer). Thank you for considering my abominable use of the run-on-sentence as an entry into this contest.
I bought a Guitar Hero guitar without the game, and exclusively use it to pretend i’m Eddie Vedder by playing Pearl Jam records really loud, “playing” the guitar and singing along. Sometimes, i “talk” to the “audience.”
I have come close to getting caught masturbating in a marsh.
My first “first kiss” attempt resulted in the girl turning her head away. We dated for another four months without me trying again. Three years later, my english teacher found out and told my entire class.
I have had two enormous boils that have each persisted for months before bursting gobs of pus multiple times before subsiding.
On a high school bus trip, I was the only one to poop in the bus bathroom, and this was pointed out to everybody on the bus.
I once begged for money inside a Best Buy so I could afford all three of the cds I was looking at.
When I was renting videos on my parents account, I was not authorized to rent R-rated movies even though I was 18, and had to have the clerk call them for permission. This happened as a group of younger, more popular teenagers were entering the video store.
When I was in elementary school, I used to grab my testicles when I got excited. Any time, any place.
hahaha, man and you guys think i am the mean one.
for the record, i was actually thanking mimi for making a joke.
jokes are good.
people who don’t joke are uptight pussies.
hmm, no i don’t think i am gay.
i have given it a lot of thought.
like if blake butler turned to me suddenly one lazy afternoon and said, “dude, i can’t handle it. i can’t keep it in. i’m gay! i want dick. dick, dick dick dick dick dick! dick all the time! dick in the morning! let’s do homosexual shit and not tell our wives!”
i would be flattered but say no. i love blake but i’m not gay.
i would probably kiss gian. like a long awkward kiss.
that’s it. no gay shit beyond that.
(this comment is 100% honest and entry #2)
Hi jereme!
I always enjoy reading your comments, and I consider you someone who is always “brutally honest” and that is a good thing to be.
I think we understand each other in an internets sort of way.
Still circling “Frowns”. I’ll be in touch!
– mimi
i made out with a older guy, maybe about a decade+, when i was 17, in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. his stubble pricked my face.
for you, sistah? anything.
I get off to incest themed pornography.
Yeah, this is amazing.
A love song to a confession, maybe?
What I should probably keep hidden is that I hate this book because I read the review of it on this website and it made me more jealous than I’ve been in ten years since I found out that everybody in my workshop class liked my story a lot but thought I was stealing from Steinbeck since it resembled Of Mice and Men but I was 18 and had never read Of Mice and Men and I was just writing about a retarded giant manchild in the Dust Bowl just like I’ve kept notebooks and filled hundreds and hundreds of pages of things like this that if I’d only just known could be considered a “memoir-philosophic mania-idea machine-joke book-power assemblage” I could have maybe published them and and been doing something good and been validated but instead I’m not doing something good and I’m not validated and what I might do if I win this book is rip out its pages one by one and put each page into a bonfire in the hopes that if I burn this book I will burn out my stupid useless jealousy and realize that I write in fragments but so does everybody, that I could never be Evan Lavender-Smith, that his name reeks of what’s cool and I only wish I reeked of what’s cool, that I could never publish my fragments, because the real reason I hate this book is that it should never have been published because its fragments are just fragments and philosophy has already over-taken Schlegel and joke-books are for fucking idiots and assemblage is for lazy post-modernists, and the real reason I hate this book is that I hate my own fragments, I hate their fractures and fissures, I hate that I’ll never write a book and I hate writing not-a-book but I could never burn what I have because I love what I have even if I hate what I have (plus they’re in a word-file, and it’s easier to burn a book than a computer). Thank you for considering my abominable use of the run-on-sentence as an entry into this contest.
I bought a Guitar Hero guitar without the game, and exclusively use it to pretend i’m Eddie Vedder by playing Pearl Jam records really loud, “playing” the guitar and singing along. Sometimes, i “talk” to the “audience.”
I have come close to getting caught masturbating in a marsh.
My first “first kiss” attempt resulted in the girl turning her head away. We dated for another four months without me trying again. Three years later, my english teacher found out and told my entire class.
I have had two enormous boils that have each persisted for months before bursting gobs of pus multiple times before subsiding.
On a high school bus trip, I was the only one to poop in the bus bathroom, and this was pointed out to everybody on the bus.
I once begged for money inside a Best Buy so I could afford all three of the cds I was looking at.
When I was renting videos on my parents account, I was not authorized to rent R-rated movies even though I was 18, and had to have the clerk call them for permission. This happened as a group of younger, more popular teenagers were entering the video store.
When I was in elementary school, I used to grab my testicles when I got excited. Any time, any place.
for you, sistah? anything.
I bit-torrented All in the Family but it wasn’t what I thought!
I bit-torrented All in the Family but it wasn’t what I thought!
I don’t know how long it has been since I have satisfied my wife. I do know that not making my wife come has been a slippery slope. I used to be focused lover. I performed exercises that were said to prolong one’s performance; I read books and asked friends what their techniques were. For a while, for a few months, I was getting her every time. But then I got complacent, I started to think that every other time would be enough because hey, I’m not a machine. My attention waned, I let my little thoughts and the heat and the passion take over. I’ve essentially turned into a 16 year old again. One thing about my wife is that she does not fake it, but I can understand why some women do. Me not getting my wife has taken me to a place where afterwards, the first words out of my mouth are “I’m sorry.”
I don’t know how long it has been since I have satisfied my wife. I do know that not making my wife come has been a slippery slope. I used to be focused lover. I performed exercises that were said to prolong one’s performance; I read books and asked friends what their techniques were. For a while, for a few months, I was getting her every time. But then I got complacent, I started to think that every other time would be enough because hey, I’m not a machine. My attention waned, I let my little thoughts and the heat and the passion take over. I’ve essentially turned into a 16 year old again. One thing about my wife is that she does not fake it, but I can understand why some women do. Me not getting my wife has taken me to a place where afterwards, the first words out of my mouth are “I’m sorry.”
When people ask me what my book is about, I tell them what they want to hear.
When people ask me what my book is about, I tell them what they want to hear.
[…] When the book was first released, Christopher Higgs characterized it like so: “It is fiction, nonfiction, poetry, theory, anecdote, aphorism, and probably a bit of whatever other thing you can think of. There is no plot. There are no scenes. It is, quite literally, a collection of notes. Most are only a couple lines long. None are longer than a page. It is exhilarating and stirring and compelling and engaging and fascinating at every turn.” Blake Butler called it a hybrid memoir-philosophic mania-idea machine-joke book-power assemblage. […]