Mean
Shit I Don’t Like About Writers & Writing
– Hearing the words “writer,” “reading,” “poem,” “poet,” “the author of,” etc. more frequently than should any human regardless of his or her particular fondness, hobby, or paid work
– Ego, and reflection of ego onto others’ actions because the nature of ego is often that one can only see one’s self in another self
– The absence of self identity that seems to come along with so many of the more flagrant perpetrators of said ego, giving them even more excessive ability to flaunt said ego without losing any sleep
– Twitter and facebook feeds of writers who think about these “tools of social media” as personal sales pitches aimed at you, the “friend,” often unrelenting in their use of the terms of the 1st list item and w/o any form of layering of else that might lead you to believe they are an actual person
– “Tortured” updates on same social networks over how “crazy” today or tomorrow is going to be while editing or writing
– People who retweet Kanye West
– Kickstarter and other similar fundraising systems, which somehow have quickly become the means for acquisition of literary food stamps, even if a lot of people I like have used it to do some cool shit
– The simultaneous bent of many personalities or commentmakers to go on about how evil, ugly, mean, nasty, etc. in general negative or shitty a certain outlet is, matched with an equal to less bent of also complaining that things are “too positive” or “you forgot to include me” when said person or entity has made little to no effort to “get involved” on their own end
– How almost no writer ever has done a good job writing about what it is like to be obese
– How many writers are atheists and yet are proud of themselves as creators
– How the writers who are christian usually suck at writing
– How there are so many books now I can’t think
– How I’ve been reading so many of those books that I seriously am finally starting to get carpal tunnel from holding them up while on the stationary bike and from all this silly typing
– How I don’t quite have enough books now to build a new house out of them so I can sell the place I live in now and get out of this loft complex and live somewhere quieter
– When people don’t mention that their ‘is the author of’ refers to a chapbook, or call chapbooks books, or say chapbook out loud near me at all really
– When chapbooks cost $10 even though they might cost $2 to make most of the time
– People who “won’t read” chapbooks even tho some of them do some amazing shit a full book couldn’t really ever do
– Web magazines who have so little design skill that it actually hurts me more to not look at them than to look at them because I know the damage they are doing to all aura and yet people still submit to them and bitch about their slow response times
– Print magazines that look like they were designed in 1991 by someone who had bad taste even then
– Anyone who bitches about response times ever, usually signifying that they’ve never worked a day on the side of the editing table or even volunteering or trying to pay for the books that sit on the tables often unselling and just trying to break even and hardly reading anyway
– How proud people are of celebrities who talk about a book, like it’s some winged beast descending to kiss their face
– How at least a handful of people will hold this against me at least in a comment and think I think my shit doesn’t stink because I said any of this or that I hold myself to some other standard or that I think I’m special when really I’m just hanging out like anybody else I just sometimes will run my mouth and I like to think I have a lot of faith even when I bitch and this is all a big try
– People who pimp their social state of having or not having on either end, trying to justify lack thereof or surplus because someone has this or that or doesn’t have this or that or went here or there or didn’t or wanted to and didn’t and etc., as if anyone needs to or doesn’t need to experience anything or not anything to write a word down on paper and have it be something, as if those with money can’t think, as if those without money can’t think, as if everyone’s out to kill you because you are male female black white red candy sugar sandwich
– Gmail chat status updates that change every few hours
– Gmail chat’s winking box that goes back and forth until you click it and look at who said what even if you are on invisible and were trying to ignore the thing entirely but don’t have the balls to just log the fuck out
– People who don’t mind saying flagrant things about what other people say or do but won’t do anything flagrant on their own or outside the realm of people who will back them up
– People who think that because you made something that must mean you have to have it or you worship it or yourself for having had it or that you are out for glory in every move
– People who only ‘Like’ or comment on things when it involves something about them
– People with no sense of humor and/or who can’t laugh at themselves
– People who never get crunk
– People who can’t bite their tongue and smile and have a delicious sandwich enough
– People who don’t see more good than bad in a thing that is otherwise devoid of most or all social merit and is performed by people who just like what they do
– “How’s your book doing?” / “How’s the book?” / “How are sales?”
– “What are you reading tonight?” / “How was the reading?”
– Online invitations to readings more than 100 miles from my home
– Online invitations to readings between 10 and 99 miles from my home
– Online invitations to readings down the street from my home
– Thinking about readings
– Readings where it costs money to get in unless you get something cool for coming in because it’s a special occasion or at least some free booze, but really I can buy my own booze
– People who read for more than 5-7 minutes when there are more than 4 readers
– Readings where there are more than 4 readers
– People who at least sometimes don’t just shut the fuck up and come to the reading and enjoy themselves because usually it’s not so bad and sometimes can be really wonderful
– Readers who make no effort to make it wonderful
– The idea that readings should be either funny or sexy
– New York
– Stories involving relationships, sex, dialogue, magical animals, magic at all really that presents itself as magic, metaphor that presents itself as metaphor, metaphor at all really, party scenes, band scenes, scenes that connect the dots, scenes that pretend like they aren’t connecting the dots, exposition I could have figured out on my own, stories about illness that are actually about the illness and don’t have shit in them, dick jokes that don’t involve the dick being slathered or crushed
– Celebrities writing fiction without having put as much work into the writing as any other writer and magazines or writers who pander to those people anyway because it sells and it’s not that bad but it’s not doing anybody good or maybe it really is but the writing still is nothing special but maybe it is
– Not giving someone the benefit of the doubt
– Pretending you have no heroes
– Really having no heroes
– That Juicy J has yet to sit down and write a novel
– People who’ve read a lot in the past and so are well read but really haven’t read much of anything contemporary unless it was free and yet who have all this time to write
– People who ever act like they don’t know you even if they don’t particularly care for you presence unless you like killed their parents or touch their wife or child or something weird
– People who say dreams shouldn’t be in fiction
– Dreamlike fiction that is impressed with its dreamlikeness
– People who find people who will listen to their dreams because sometimes dreams are great but then go way overboard milking the dreamspeak time and smiling a lot with a facial expression that would be the exact same if no one else was in the room
– Similes that make total descriptive sense
– Any writer who has ever said “my fans” except for Stephen King & Jewel
– Editors who sign their emails “Editor of ____” after their name, especially when it’s not just the watermark stamp or whatever you call the auto shit in email
– Editors who specify “Editor in Chief” : what is this, the Daily Planet?
– Editors who think they know better, and thus can overrule, the author, unless that’s actually true
– Writers who never ever think the above is true and would never even think about the idea to see how it feels
– Anyone who has a moral or an idea or point
– Anyone “really funny” unless they are also “real as fuck”
– “Causes”
– Fake evil
– People who turn their nose up with their first book manuscript at the idea of a small press because “they want to make money” as if more books can’t be written and more ground covered
– People who can’t follow easy guidelines because they don’t think outside their shell of how the system operates for them
– The idea “I don’t revise because I try to think about it and get it right the first time” as if you can’t improve even more on that
– Thinking too harshly about anyone else’s process because that’s the way they do what they do and the stakes are so low, just keep it to yourself unless someone asks
– People who don’t buy or talk about or think about magazines unless they are in them
– Books with big or ugly fonts
– Books with no gutter margin [publishers! look at the fucking book! does it look good? you might want to double check! get a second opinion anyway, and not from your blind granny! go find some hipster douchebag you’d normally like to sock in the gizzards, at least they have a little aesthetic taste]
– How there are never free sandwiches at readings
– Poems with numbered sections and the reading of those numbered sections where the number is enunciated and then paused after, or even worse when they put up their fingers to show the numbers because they think saying it is lame
– The way sometimes people so deftly articulate the name of a press as if they are pooping a porcelain orb out of their mouth
– The “Mmmm” people / The overlaugh people
– Dressing up to read unless you’re Tim Jones-Yelvington
– The “I read my shit already, I’m out” people
– Caring what order you read in
– Experimental concepts in performance used to distract from the actual words or something about them
– The long slow sip from the waterglass with eyes rolled toward the god they do not believe is there
– Trying too hard to be gross or controversial without some kind of language or other payoff beyond just heyhey!
– People who refer to themselves in third person online (whereas, comparatively, in person I’m almost okay with it)
– Days and days passing in front of this machine
– Days and days passing refreshing the same websites all throughout those days
– Knowing that I really do like and need those websites even though they rarely seem to change
– How fucked I feel when any site I regularly correspond with or keep open go down even for a few minutes
– Talking about the internet
– Talking about life
– Pretending like you hate talking about writing when you really love talking about writing
– Talking
– Thinking
– How so many days I don’t know why I write. How I really mean that and am not trying to sound melodramatic. How I was at a bar the other night with some people talking about this, and there seemed to be a consensus that writing happens because it just does, that it comes out of you because it’s just in there and it’s an impulse, and you don’t really choose to do or not do. How I don’t even know if I believe that though I used to though now it seems wrong too. How I imagine I could commit myself with as much zeal to something else, and yet I’m such a creature of habit it is the decision to have remained in this childish and selfish place for so long that is the one that has in my blood become ingrained. How that’s okay. How that often makes me a meaner person in general, a more difficult person to be around, towards my family, towards people not at all involved in writing. How that’s not okay. How days keep going by and it’s easy to pretend they aren’t to feel better and so that becomes down. The attachment to the method: daily, like flesh, like how I can’t even relax and go eat Mexican food or hang out and chill with someone cool if I haven’t done the thing for long enough or know I’ll get to later on. How it makes me almost inoperable in certain kinds of interactions. How I’ve seen in the past 3-4 years a kind of lurking in me that was more and more dead set on spending time in silence, as much as I could have it. How any day I don’t get that now is automatically bad day. How it brings me solace and pleasure, all in aloneness. How I find myself googling cult leaders and suicide methods and other stuff that the government has surely brought as reason to flag my IP, if they really do that, all out of some weird self-destructive mode in me that is more than anything angry at myself, angry for being in the midst of something that so locks me out to the pleasure of mostly anything else. How this doesn’t make I love writing any less, how in its best moments I’m uplifted, even knowing spending so much time in the process of trying to be positive and spreading and uplifting, I’ve kind of whitewashed my way into this place where I feel like there’s no longer a way out. How that by now I couldn’t ever even wish for a way out, that’s so gone. How I’m okay with that, and that’s a way.
– What do I not like about writing? Anything beyond keeping moving forward while trying to stay happy, passionate, and chill.
oh, i’ve got a solution alright
i agree
– I don’t like the use of the word “fiction,” especially when pluralized or over-used unnecessarily in sentences (to my mind almost like some sort of fetishistic mantra). I feel like writers/editors who always refer to their “fiction” and “Fiction” and especially “the creation of fictions” are the kind of people who are very prescriptive about how one should or should not write. And also tend to write very polished, but very workshop-y, anthology-y, stale stories, or my other favorite, narration-only stories that take place in an abstract, unrealized but decidedly bleak blurry landscape, the action therein consisting of various self-flagellations, body pulverizations, and general tribal, occult gnarliness and teeth-gnashing. #Mean #Generalizations
Have you ever seen that Spike Lee movie the 25th Hour? There’s this scene where Ed Norton’s character delivers this litany of fuckyous to a whole bunch of different NY types and characters, a lot of it super racialized, but it kinda feels like a super-aggressive love letter. I found myself thinking abt that scene at one point while reading this post, which is gorgeous.
I want to organize a reading w/ free sandwiches.
also in the spirit of mean week shouldn’t we be using the ‘thumbs down’ option at the top more often
i’m not posting anymore this week i reached my limit and i hate it and realize nobody should say anything ever
C’mon, sometimes Kanye is hilarious.
– Print magazines that look like they were designed in 1991 by someone who had bad taste even then
-New York
(Thanks for posting. :))
Please, no more admonishments to “remain in the real world for a bit”.
having been a closetcase, i am stifled by such badge or pride or ego. see blake below, many already are at home, turning their twittering (the old definition, duh) emotions into symphonies surreptitiously.
Mean Week, Brevity Style:
http://brevity.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/mean-week-brevity-style/
i know, we’re jacking the zen of standing on the rocks at the beach with the arms extended to the sky. it’s hard.http://htmlgiant.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/nelson.pngbut, dude! you work for wizards of the coast? that brought rampant terror all throughout my middle school years as i got continually fucked with for playing magic, not cool man! way to inflict me with my own voluntary social displeasure.
I agree with most of the above. Especially all the social networking stuff.
It seems like this is what mean week is about: turning against others as a way of turning against the self, or saying, “Most of ‘us’ are equally guilty of this shit.” And also a way to break through the convention of writing in general and as an act. This post reminds me of a diagnosis or a listing of symptoms, but there’s no call to answer, which is one of my favorite elements of mean week posts. There’s no question being asked when you’re answering stuff no one tacitly wanted to ask or see answered. Reminds me also of Beavis and Butt-head in a weird way.
Writer. I hate the word. Say that you write. You work at Costco. You’re a cashier and you write. Calling yourself a writer is pretentious.
I don’t mind the word, “poet,” because it’s kind of like its own joke. Still, say that you write. Christ.
“- How almost no writer ever has done a good job writing about what it is like to be obese”
Fat Like Me, by Blake Butler
oh, i’ve got a solution alright
Damn, Blake. Feel better now? I can’t even list how many things on the list I have done, forgive me, sire. I also agree with a ton of these. Great job.
I think posts like this kind of are the solution already or something.
Nice post, Blake. Good writing about being obese is comnig. Hang tight.
so much goodness.
Damn, too much here…
Confederacy of Dunces is a damn fine fat book.
Also the shadowy scenes at the end of Apocalypse Now are worthy of introspection, and a book unto themselves.
Oh, and readings should be either funny or sexy, as you know.
Confederacy of Dunces, no. That’s fat romanticized nerdwise.
i know you think that you lazy moneyshot bitch
You forgot people who always have to make it very clear they read a shit-load of books.
Am I over-commenting? You forgot people who over-comment. I am going to go run now.
you should keep commenting. i’m going running too.
And I suppose you have never read the endearing tale of Jabba the Hut?
Fuck, I need to run. Ok, I’m going to run. I keep commenting like this and I am going to be fat like Blake was.
(You forgot people who are skinny that bitch about fat representation)
:)
Fake evil, nice
I like you more and more every day Blake Butler, you know a thing or two
a good piece of writing on being obese, if you can stomach the Blackberry run-on style:
http://www.pitchforkreviewsreviews.com/post/999262114/how-downloading-music-has-literally-saved-my-life
own it or go home, writer.
good job, bb.
this made me feel less alone in the world in my trembling rage, also made me laugh. thanks for that.
“mellowdramatic”
This could be a great name for a hip-hop artist. Or a stoner buddy movie. “Mellow Dramatic: Riding High Across America.” I’m into this.
Poet is the worst, worse than writer. I say I’m a journalist because that’s how I make a living and no one cares or likes journalists.
everyone likes to stroke their own ego by calling themselves writers. i’m tired of being poked by other people’s self-inspired erections. say that you write. everyone’s a god damned “writer.” i own the fact that most writers just sit in coffee shops and update their facebooks about how they’re working on their novel at a coffee shop. i own the fact that most people call themselves writers because it makes them feel good about their lack of output, their lack of reading, and their lack of a job. look, call yourself a writer. just tuck your boner under the elastic band of your boxers when you say it. i don’t call myself a writer but i still do get self-inspired boners.
this is so fucking good
oh i also don’t like runners who can run way further than me like it’s nothing, you olympian
“People who never get crunk”
This list is fucking sweet
i’m having this idea…. lately or maybe just right now… people talk about everything being sped up on the internet. i think eras might be sped up too, might happen online in a couple years as opposed to 10-15.
this post–it gets me thinking we might be starting a new era: of loathing the new artifice of our own escape…
when did everybody get on facebook? ’09, right? up to then i think people still thought of the internet as offfering a way to sidestep whatever they didn’t like about social realities–empty repetitions, insecurity, isolation…… Yes? No? sidestep something….. but i think people have grown into the interface now….. there’s less sense of distance… so the same shit that you experience peripherally at the grocery store, people eyeing you or something–that’s happening online. for me it is. i experience things peripherally here… the result is a loathing of the internet tha t i can pretty much feel growning in me daily….
that would seem ironic, because i ‘work’ here….. but no more ironic than loathing the world where you’ve got to eat…..
Yes, yes, yes. You know what? I hate when any writer posts a status update about writing on Facebook. Do I post all the tasks I’m doing at my job today? Fuck, no. Please stop trying to impress us all with how often you write.
I’d add all university towns to this list. And I’m thankful someone has finally pointed out the stupidity of the term “chapbook.”
do you hate chapbooks or just the word chapbook? I like chapbooks and am ok with the word chapbook.
I agreed with a lot of this but I am trying to hate less. Can see a lot of this comes from love, and talking about love can be hateful, but still, I want love.
yeah, call yourself whatever you like, man, not my business. more reacting to ‘pretentious’ being a hand grenade everyone is worried will go off in their lap. whatever though, it’s good.
Amber I am currently writing a post about the cult of busy-ness and I take this up explicitly. I couldn’t agree more. I don’t give a flying fuck how much you wrote today.
A good chapbook that has been designed well, printed on a good machine, and well made costs more than $2, depending on the number of pages, and if you use a color cover or not. With postage, you’re lucky to break even.
Fat life.
I like how this list is framed in terms of disliking, and not as if it has excerpted from some set of commandments. In fact, thank you for doing that.
Oh my Bertha. Right on.
wouldn’t a writer already be at home?
why not call yourself a walker or an eater?
i can get down with a chapbook
if there’s one thing i am, it’s a walker. if it weren’t raining out, i’d do that right now.
i feel more full having read that.
also, i know now to plan all readings between 1.5 and 9.9 miles from your home.
You people actually read this post?
Put some fucking spaces in between your goddamn bullet points if you want me to give a shit.
Yeah, I’d have to agree that CoD is more into parodying its fatness than inhabiting it.
Blake, it’s beautiful how you don’t bottle this stuff up. As for fat folks in books, Kate Atkinson has a good one recently in CASE HISTORIES, & if you’d spare a thought for Elmore Leonard, he’s got a number.
the beginning of the new hate
I like this way of thinking about Mean Week.
I will demand free sandwiches at the next reading I attend, or leave.
i’m going to try harder to do all of these things because really fuck you
and also i hate people that comment on their own comments just to say more crap nobody really gives a fuck about either way. and people that comment with ‘i agree’ or ‘this rules’ because nobody gives a shit about what you think or agree with except for maybe the author and fuck him/her anyway.
i agree
– I don’t like the use of the word “fiction,” especially when pluralized or over-used unnecessarily in sentences (to my mind almost like some sort of fetishistic mantra). I feel like writers/editors who always refer to their “fiction” and “Fiction” and especially “the creation of fictions” are the kind of people who are very prescriptive about how one should or should not write. And also tend to write very polished, but very workshop-y, anthology-y, stale stories, or my other favorite, narration-only stories that take place in an abstract, unrealized but decidedly bleak blurry landscape, the action therein consisting of various self-flagellations, body pulverizations, and general tribal, occult gnarliness and teeth-gnashing. #Mean #Generalizations
Have you ever seen that Spike Lee movie the 25th Hour? There’s this scene where Ed Norton’s character delivers this litany of fuckyous to a whole bunch of different NY types and characters, a lot of it super racialized, but it kinda feels like a super-aggressive love letter. I found myself thinking abt that scene at one point while reading this post, which is gorgeous.
I want to organize a reading w/ free sandwiches.
also in the spirit of mean week shouldn’t we be using the ‘thumbs down’ option at the top more often
i’m not posting anymore this week i reached my limit and i hate it and realize nobody should say anything ever
C’mon, sometimes Kanye is hilarious.
“…also thank you for everybody that fought for my position on the top MCs list…”
“How they ain’t gone have Gucci on the top 10 list this year???”
“What’s better for devil worshipping Iphone or the Droid… Does lucifer return text… is he or she on Skype? Don’t wanna be sexist”
i’m with you on design sense, blake. also feel like chapbooks should be cheap or FREE, like my friend steve roggenbuck’s chapbook, “i am like october when i am dead”: http://www.iamlikeoctoberwheniamdead.com/
it’s also public domain, so you can steal his shit and claim it’s yours. that probably vibes well with 1&2. #Shameless
I <3 Kanye West. Fuck all yall. You are ungrateful.
well played
i dig the way you laid out Lam Colony, Blake. specifically the author’s pic being behind the text. some striking photographs too, Daniel Bailey for example. plus, any excuse to get Tadd with his shirt off…
#Artifice #BringinSexyBack
Chapbooks can only be ultra cheap or free if you are independently wealthy and can subsidize the cost. Come on. Let us remain in the real world for a bit.
I will never say I’m the author of {my chapbook} again. You’ve saved my soul. Who knows what hell I would have gone to if I had never learned that was wrong. Probably the one where they write on your skin with sharp tongues.
or DONE IN A LOUD VOICE VERY FAST FASTER AND FASTER AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THE HELLISH LANDSCAPES THINGS ARE HAPPENING TO THE UNNAMED PROTAGONIST CIPHER BRO AHHHHHHHHHH LOUD
jk <3 u blake. you guys' readings were very entertaining. and the one-upmanship factor was thrilling.
I am stealing this line of thought and inserting my own diatribe in it’s place. Accurate and funny in parts while accurate and tragic in others. but mostly funny. I’ll credit you.
– or what you’re “currently” writing, agree with, or give a flying fuck about.
Lindsay’s release party? That was one of the best readings I’ve been to.
Crunk.
– The way sometimes people so deftly articulate the name of a press as if they are pooping a porcelain orb out of their mouth
lol
word, Blake. I’m going to remember this and feel out of options when i start a kickstarter next week.
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Madeleine is Sleeping takes on fat in a cool way. It doesn’t quite inhabit obesity but it does something for sure, that brings something human to the surface. Or anti human.
Literary food stamps.
Yes, oh progressive and liberal and open-minded elite, Butler certainly is your golden child.
i like when you break it down, blake. sweet post.
I think kickstarter is a great thing when used in moderation and for things that should be spread in such a way, such as the Understanding Campaign, or bigger projects that are more appropriate for large fundraisers, rather than just everything that costs money.
Juicy J wrote a chapbook about Paul’s gimp’d arm. Real as fuck
– Print magazines that look like they were designed in 1991 by someone who had bad taste even then
-New York
(Thanks for posting. :))
Please, no more admonishments to “remain in the real world for a bit”.
You have a lot of passion, Madore. I wish you would put more of it in a more productive place. I know you try. I try too. I have nothing against you.
yayayayyayayayayay
“Stories involving relationships, sex, dialogue…”
I recently re-read Venus Drive for the first time since its original release (2000 or 2001) and I had sort of forgotten a. What an awesome collection of stories that book contains, b. How awesome it was in the context of being a debut and c. The way, when he’s on his game, Sam Lipsyte is my favorite kind of writer–someone who can be both funny and sad (like George Saunders. Or Barry Hannah. And I think Dennis Cooper is the same way, but people rarely talk about his humor).
The reason I bring this up is because along with drugs, Venus Drive is mostly all about sex, relationships and dialogue. I feel like I’m hearing a lot of younger people talk about how they dislike dialogue in books/stories. Is this a new thing? What’s the hang up with dialogue? Is it just that most people aren’t good at writing dialogue? I mean most people aren’t good/memorable writers so there’s that as well.
I might add, however, that the sentiment of the majority of this is very understandable to every person who gives a fuck, and so I can at least, possibly, concede the point that Jereme Dean made yesterday: Blake Butler might be moderately sincere.
That’s never going to stop, I’m afraid.
good point, goner. there are definitely those, particularly those you mentioned, who can make those tropes not tropes but amazing things. they make look easier than it is, i think, as do people who are good with dialogue. all of those things, like anything else, can be done well, but in the case of sex, drugs, and speech, way so many more are scarily bad at it to the point they’d be better off either thinking about it more, or leaving it alone.
great post. people need to take the ego out of art and just do it because we like it. a sense of humor is vital. art sure won’t save us from the grave or getting old and ugly (or for me, older and uglier). neither will fancy shoes or little “Editor in Chief” bs titles.
Oh my fucking god. And here we reach the absolute apex of soundproof, mirrorless hypocrisy–Roxane, I believe you have never once had a discussion with yourself, and I say that with all sincerity.
yeah that was my attempt at a blake roast. i agree, very sweet reading
I couldn’t disagree more but that’s not at all surprising.
I think a good addition to this list would be “Sychophants who only ever tell me how much they like the shit I’m saying, never adding to it or questioning it or wondering if there is anything beneath the still waters of my prose.”
Man. The stuff people burn their energy on when they have nothing to say.
yeah, i don’t know what i’m talking about, good call. steve found a way to make it very very cheap to make, but he has the benefit of very short poems, small sized chapbook, etc.
I’m not as unproductive as I seem. Most of my published work this year has been under a few other names because this name is ruined. It’s also allowed me to experiment with styles and voices that editors never seemed to let me get away with before. Furthermore, I wonder if you ever considered what an endorsement of Underground Library might have done for the project. That’s a true-blue community-based, productive project. It’s a way for newcomers to not get lost and stuck on any one brand of the indie lit scene–a way of really having a community. If there’s just one place that new people can come and find out stuff without having to learn it the hard way or have it be too terribly skewed, just to figure out what’s what and how things work and who’s who and what happened when or really, anything, I think that the alienation effect our more passionate souls have would be mitigated. Possibly mitigated. Or perhaps fanatic individuals like myself will always alienate people who don’t believe in risk. But either way, I think I’ve done more than one productive thing in my time. There is also the objective-oriented Freshletters project, which aimed to take the bullshit out and put the news on it, as Slashdot did for the tech scene. But nobody wants any part of these things because my name is on them. There is probably at least one person reading this who remembers a time I begged them to steal my idea if only to give it a chance to breathe.
book partially about obesity: Mr. peanut — adam ross.
“I make awesome decisions in bike stores!!!”
“How much is a shit load exactly? I’m assuming it’s more than a piss load.”
“I’m ready to get out of my own way. The ego is overdone… it’s like hoodies”
“On set of the movie… this doe just refuses to sit still… I told the deer… “what would Bambi do?” & she looked at me like I was crazy”
“Sometimes I get emotional over fonts”
What about people who compliment Blake Butler on his blog. Blake, you’re so sweet, man!
Long live the chapbook! I like when I go out of my way in conversation to use the word “Collection” when I could say chapbook because I am a fake-o right thar.
Oh 400 Pound CEO by George Saunders. That shit is about fat people, Blake.
Fuck Twitter.
Fuck those little charred bits at the bottom of Wendy’s fries.
Fuck when you swerve to miss a squirrel and run into a dog.
I think I might love you.
if there’s one thing i am, it’s pretentious. only a pretentious asshole would argue about the merits of calling oneself a writer.
Fat Woman, by Leon Rooke.
having been a closetcase, i am stifled by such badge or pride or ego. see blake below, many already are at home, turning their twittering (the old definition, duh) emotions into symphonies surreptitiously.
hmm…..what i posted earlier didn’t show up. i guess that means i’m not a writer. probably only real ones show up. and you know why i’m not a writer? because i have said
Tantra Bensko is the author of {my chapbook.} but i’ll never say that again, now that you’ve saved my soul. cause, i just didn’t know any better. but i would have gone to the hell where critics write on your skin, where you have cellulite, so it draws attention to that, with sharp tongues and you bleed the word CHAPBOOK. aaauuuhhhhhh!!
and then, everything you have ever written disappears. and everyone says it was actually all bad and they hated it, and there’s nothing you can say back. except the one phrase that will come out of your mouth no matter how hard you try. “That rules.”
Were you born in 1986 or something? Geez, Genius, you get comments like “shadowy scenes at the end of Apocalypse Now could be a book unto themselves”… it’s freakin’ Joseph Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness”. My problem with readers is that nobody reads to be challenged anymore. Everybody wants a quick fix. My problem with writers is blogs AND INANE FACEBOOK REFERENCES. Period. If a person speaks of a novel as a winged beast that has descended to kiss them, so be it, Christ, I’ll read that. But if a person has found redeeming social and critical value in… Twilight, let’s say, or has not much to say outside of Harry Potter witticisms, then I say bah. “Confederacy of Dunces” is a good book, but it’s a book people like that philandering friend in Sideways are prone to read, because the author never did another work. Christ this blog has been a waste of my time. Commenting has consumed moments I’ll never get back.
RT@KanyeWest Ya’ll saw the VMAs and SNL…. I got more ideas. I’m really getting into the concept of Neo-Pop-Performance art!
What in the fuck are you blowing about?
You think I don’t know HOD is the source material? And HOD doesn’t have a fat person in it! You’re off track. Your bailing snot. Snot is filling your blow-boat. Where is the fat guy in HOD?
Are you trying to say Conrad was fat, man?
I hate BLOGS!! Who blogs anymore?
What is twilight? I was under the impression twilight was a time of day.
Are you on drugs?
Mail me some (email offline I’ll give you address and precise instructions about my PO “drop” box.
You blar me toward one-room single-family shacks abandoned when the marsh rose up nachos.
i know, we’re jacking the zen of standing on the rocks at the beach with the arms extended to the sky. it’s hard, all these facebook references…
http://htmlgiant.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/nelson.png
but, dude! you work for wizards of the coast? that brought rampant terror all throughout my middle school years as i got continually fucked with for playing magic, not cool man! way to inflict me with my own voluntary social displeasure.
I like what you said about metaphors that present as metaphors, but not the bit about all metaphors. There are plenty of other figures of speech to pick on. Really.
are we related?
I like the label artist. or ARTISTE. or dipshit.
Great post Blake.
My takeaway from this? When I have my first reading, bring sandwiches and dress in stinkin’ overalls.
i’ve been curious about that one, heard a lot of things. you recommend?
maybe i should be happy i dont have any real writer friends. it’s bad enough to see those cameraphone captions of the microwave pizza “mmm mama celeste” pollution that those empties i went to high school with put up on FB.
monster monster monster monster monster monster-monster, monster. Monster, monster monster monster monster’s monster, monster monster monster monster monster. monster monster “monster monster” monster.
Monster monster monster (monster monster’s monster! monster monster, monster monster monster monster), monster monster monster, monster monster monster monster. monster monster monster Monster monster, monster monster monster monster monster monster monster monster monster monster.
(the next day) (MM): this is cute, but i didnt write that, a moderator turned my “nice guy” comment, a handshake to MM#1, into this. okay, fine.)
respect, king.
right below NEW YORK i would add: NEW YORK WRITERS NOW LIVING IN LA WHO NAME DROP THEIR SHITTY HOME CITY EVERY GOD DAMN CHANCE THEY GET BUT REFUSE TO ADMIT THAT LIVING THERE IS WORSE THAN MASTURBATING TO A PHOTO OF DR. RUTH BLOWING GENE HACKMAN
RG i disagree. it’s all about making ends meet. See “San Francisco Free Print Shop”, an outdated essay I always wanted to revive, “deep tried frees”.
Fair enough. I’m a greedy capitalist.
i concur at ineptitude for good dialogue. I personally talk too much, especially over tea, but writing or reading dialogue terrifies me, it’s quite an irony. also, “the world” and the contemporary pinnacle of ideas (po-mo, eg) is such a murk, politics a mindfuck, that i cannot think of many things worth the pretense of talk.
I’ve never broken any of these rules, can I get a gold star now? Heyhey-Oh fuck Candleja-
are there any homeless people writing about being homeless? Oh, yeah? What about revenge fantasies of causing riots and insurrection? Oh, yeah? Can anyone wire me some money, I need to drink more coffee and not actually write-notthatthisisn’twritingbut-heyhey can i be famous already, I need, I need, I need a new habit that will kill me quicker.
You people actually read this post?
Put some fucking spaces in between your goddamn bullet points if you want me to give a shit.
sean, i’ll send you a care package if you give me your address.
dont know you ’nuff to see if your tongue is in your cheek, but i don’t think your comment is connected inherently with capitalism. And I shouldn’t have made (only) the example of Free/DIY. There are also people who are zealous enough to cut out all their other expenses just to be able to save up for an edition to gift, the way people save up for a new TV or vacation. (that is, you don’t have to be a yard-sale hound to have fancy paper or letter-press.)
I was so hoping this was going to end after “- People who never get crunk,” but then I clicked Read More, like an idiot.
Chapbooks predate novels, dumbass.
Dear Blake Butler, I like your post. Reminds me of how you can be in a local band and everybody worships you and you can come play at my party and it’s really cool, but if I’m an aspiring writer the whole town just don’t give a damn, which breaks hearts like mine. Unless being an aspiring writer means telling lots of good jokes at parties and being super drunk. Then, you’re in. Hmm. Should I call that advice?
Also I have a present for you! You should read this:
http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/winter/wilhelm-fauntleroy-ghost/
It’s so fucking good. I think you might like it.
stay cool,
KKB
I wrote a poem about being an aspiring writer means telling lots of good jokes at parties and being super drunk. Read mine and I’ll read yours
^_- (i’m winking big boy at you)
IF THEY ARE DELICIOUS VEGAN SANDWICHES I WILL BE THERE
Mike Kitchell, when you come back into the city, we will go to Belly Shack, and you will eat the delicious Boricua sandwich:
crispy plaintains, chinese black beans, marinated tofu and organic black rice.
farther, dumbass. Father. fart.
‘Poet’ is hilarious. I know a guy, usually unemployed, who always claims to be a ‘hypothetical….. poet’.
‘With postage’. Jesus. Stamps are cheaper than soda. Cheaper than a can of sugar water.
“‘i agree’ or ‘this rules'”
The new Kanye stuff is weirdly emotional. The part in ‘Runaway’ where instead of doing bad singing about douchebags and assholes he just kind of mumbles/cracks? Wow. Not sure why, but wow.
THAT SANDWICH SOUNDS SO GOOD I NEED TO JERK OFF RIGHT NOW.
also i think i’mma be in the shitty friday night-saturday until i go home
during the day, WHERE IS THIS PLACE.
THAT SANDWICH SOUNDS SO GOOD I NEED TO JERK OFF RIGHT NOW.
also i think i’mma be in the shitty friday night-saturday until i go home during the day, WHERE IS THIS PLACE.
I hate when you people talk about music.
Uhhhhhh, duh, the surely-at-this-very-moment-earth-toned-sweater-clad Wally Lamb wrote a book about an obese lady. I used to read books with my grandparents, always Granny’s pick (…) . I still remember Grandpa: “So she was sad about….she used to be fat? Jesus, Glenice. I pick next.”
a lot of the chapbooks I’ve received in the mail recently have had like 1.50 in postage on the envelope.
It’s right underneath (literally) the western stop on the blue line, at armitage-western-milwaukee. Which is also just a couple blocks from Rebekah’s house.
What are you doing on Friday? I might be going w/ some people to this: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=171932106157597
Get that shit metered, Mud Luscious. dang.
That does sound like a good-ass sandwich.
Two minutes ago if you had texted me that I was about to start posting thoughts on sandwich descriptions I would’ve replied lol, but damn.
human, at best. we’re not what we do. we just are.
“When some fool explodes rage in your breast/ hold back that yapping tongue” –Sappho
She predates novels and chaps.
Troll
deep story, bro.
*Dr. Gene Hackman. honorary.
‘How many writers are atheists and yet are proud of themselves as creators’
interesting!
I mean, you could insert any of those writers that Stephen was referring to–you think their primary ambition was to keep peers out of the fray? Back then they didn’t have an internet to make their clubhouse famous. They had to really let people see how cool the club was, and despite what you say, they liberated, through words on paper, a generation of people who went on to change society.
I don’t need to get his strawman point, kid. Of course literary circle-jerking isn’t new–what’s your point?
“Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of — slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one — who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age, lying in his flannel nightshirt, in a back bedroom on Constantinople Street in New Orleans, who between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective.”
Mary Gaitskill’s Two Girls Fat and Thin might be a good book about obesity, at least half of it. But probably not considering Bad Behavior sucked (except for one story).
Bradley Sands, Editor-in-Chief of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens
P.S. I hate blogs with so many replies to the entries that it’s almost impossible to track down the responses to my own comments so I usually don’t bother reading them.
But maybe this weird disqus thing will change that.
you should have numbered these so I could refer to them :)
-When I read an internet journal run by an HTMLGiant commenter/poster and recognize most of the names from HTMLGiant comments/posts. Makes one wonder sometimes.
Writeous.
yea, it’s like people are friends and have formed a community or something. notable writers throughout history have definitely not done that
Yeah, totally. I’m Paul. Nice to meetcha.
No, fuck-stain, that’s what Mean Week 2010 is all about. Formerly it was about beating up the geeky kids. This thing has archives. Roll it back. This whole taking-responsibility thing is newfound around here, number one, and number two, that’s not a fucking mistake. I won’t have someone like you pretending that shit was intentional on the other side of this wall. Knock it off.
Uh huh…a circle-jerk community….
Look, nobody promised cold professionalism. In fact, cold professionalism would be bad for creative energy. At the same time, Kerouac was always meeting new people, so Stephen can suck my tiny cock.
Does HTMLGIANT look back on the days of “literary lessons from metal bands” with the same kind of regret that I look back on my 90s haircuts with?
Kerouac sucked. Who cares. His biggest fans are 20 year old frat boys.
I didn’t ask for promises, nor does it affect me, since I rarely send to interweb journals. Just an observation. Don’t get your britches twisted.
People who comment before they’re even done reading the post.
A heroic act of missing the point. You sound faithless.
I mean, you could insert any of those writers that Stephen was referring to–you think their primary ambition was to keep peers out of the fray? Back then they didn’t have an internet to make their clubhouse famous. They had to really let people see how cool the club was, and despite what you say, they liberated, through words on paper, a generation of people who went on to change society.
I don’t need to get his strawman point, kid. Of course literary circle-jerking isn’t new–what’s your point?
Oh, so now you think a bunch of little internet writers are going to change society…ROFL…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxcLjA6ZmnI
I don’t know how to make it embed the video like they do the images and stuff. Guess I’m not “internet writer” enough. Maybe this is the appropriate time for somebody to go off on that “Internet Writing: The Best of the First 10 Years” fucking thing.
Ah okay the computer does it for me.
Also, I think there is a distinct irony in your using the “rolling on the floor laughing” net-speak which died out as soon as your parents got a Facebook.
Nigga please. If I got one back for all the handjobs I have given the internet, I would probably have at least a book deal, have flown to Paris with Dennis Cooper, and Hannah Tinti would be soliciting me.
Yawn…knock yourself out…10 years of awesome 100-word flash fiction and found-lists-in-verse. Whatever floats yer boat.
As for your claim that I’m “jumping to conclusions,” how so? Y’all are the ones introducing the “conclusion,” not me. I just find all the posturing behind these “indie” or “underground” writing communities humorous, because they practice the same circle-jerking and inclusiveness as the communities they critique.
Plus, it’s mean week, and I know my comment will generate lots of hate.
Whatever bro. This 20 minutes of my life was for the record, not for a guy who doesn’t even sign his name to his disdain.
Dude, considering the cheap ass template you use for GWI, I’m not sure you have room to talk. I think my Grandma who still uses AOL dial-up would consider that site design fresh.
We like it.
Also, Gene Morgan doesn’t like me. I’d be willing to let Jimmy Chen take a shot at a new design. GwI is a collaborative thing, though, so I’d have to run it by the other associates. It’s pretty functional. We like it. Our writers like it. Our 30 or so regular readers like it. We win, you bitch.
Bitch the verb, not the noun.
Disdain? Did you read the OP? What, his disdain is somehow better because he signed his name at the end?
I find the whole “you-should-sign-your-name-to-everything” sort of funny anyway. At times, it can be liberating NOT to sign your name to every cotdamn thing you put out into the world. Too many of you fucksticks think your commentary is important enough to “sign.” It’s not.
I didn’t realize you were all alone in the world, an island, man. I’m shoving off of you now. Clearly your bigger goal is to satisfy your needless superiority complex. You remind me of this motherfucker Patrick Dilloway who, every six to nine months or whenever the urge strikes him, takes a minute to let me know how much better than me he still is. We were involved together, in 2005, in a short-lived writing/commuity website. It was one of the top google search results. It was called Writer Buddy, and yes, it was that gay, but it got me my start. I don’t know why I just told you all that. Something tells me I’m only feeding your superiority complex because you think right now I am just hanging on your every word and can’t wait until you post another ridiculous comment.
I concede the last word to you, MotherFuckerBomb. If I gave a fuck about you, I might eulogize your sad soul, but it doesn’t matter.
Also, you jumped to the conclusion that I would write about that thing. That project and those like it angers me so much that I cannot effectively, at this point anyway, put into words my rage. I need to cut my teeth on some things a little more first, and so I really was just bringing it up in hopes that a snark monster like Chen or Lovelace would see the signal and toss a molly at those kinds of things.
Gene Morgan doesn’t like you? What’s new? He hates everyone not named Tao Lin and Noah Cicero.
Wish I had a second like or an escalated award to give, like a Wiki Barnstar.
Lime-green hair.
Hand me down my walkin’ cane, I ain’t cut out for war.
“People who say dreams shouldn’t be in fiction”
Harmony Korine
holy sweet god, how about:
– people who use “circle-jerk” to refer to any writing community
be critical of it, that’s fine, but my fucking god can we come up with a new go-to phrase?
Da Vinci code!
There’s a few around here who could give him a proper diet for that.
And no, I have no idea what I meant when I said “someone like you.” But I’m okay with that!
Writer bios/cover letters that; exceed twenty words; list other journal publications; name pets; refer to colleagues; have the letters M, F, and A in succession (though P, h, and D, don’t bother me, rejecting writers with doctorates bolsters my fragile ego); read like a job application; or describe quaint Northeastern towns and the clear middle class bliss that can only spring from something other than writing. Writer bios and cover letters at all, really.
don’t stop commenting now dudes. you’ve worked your way down far enough in the comment cribbing system that you’ve almost officially marginalized yourself offscreen, at last.
You should dress in black face for Halloween.
I hate the overlaughing. It always makes me want to not go to readings again (although I think the people who are overlaughing must believe they are laughing at an appropriate level).
Re: the last one. It’s no so impossible.
i like that part a lot, at the end of the longer version of ‘runaway’ that’s in the film (@19:39 —http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA). i also like that it’s paired with the solo dances by the ballet dancers. there’s one dancer in particular who i think is really amazing. several songs on ‘808s & heartbreak’ were emotional in a somewhat similar way i felt. he’s said in interviews that he’s into wordless noises and like adlibbed sounds that are emotional. at the end of the song ‘love lockdown’ he does what he calls ‘dolphin noises,’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZwMX6T5Jhk&ob=nb_av2e
he also said that at one point in that part in ‘runaway’ he’s breaking down and crying a little into an amplifier/distortion thing.
Wow, you said it…. I’m gonna fix my printer and hang that on the wall somewhere…
grow up. none of this seems very passionate, chill or happy.
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