[matchup #46 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Coming off their tedious win over those posting constant facebook photos, those Trolling for spelling errors in blog posts were feeling self-important & in the zone going into their game against Sewage Treatment Technologies. Little did Trolling for spelling errors in blog posts know, Sewage Treatment Technologies had a secret weapon they had not revealed in their win against The Pulitzer Prize, in the form of the lanky Roman center, Chiara Barzini. She quoted a passage from her forthcoming book:«If you attack, make sure you say things that really creep under the skin. A threat that always scares Romans off is: “Your sewage goes into pipes laid in 735 B.C. You are shitting into the past.”» And then she preceded to divulge the intricate inner-workings of Rome’s sewage system. Trolling for spelling errors in blog posts were thrown into confusion—not only was this sequence of words unseen previously in any blog post, but by self-revealing such vulnerabilities in the Roman sewage system, Sewage Treatment Technologies took away the sense of discovery from Trolling for spelling errors in blog posts, rendering them mute. Taking a cue from the movie Brazil, the all-purpose guard-forward Harry Tuttle (played by Robert Deniro) rerouted the online sewage pipes to flood all blog posts, leaving Trolling for spelling errors in blog posts to drown in their own shit. READ MORE >
Contests / 4 Comments
February 17th, 2012 / 3:40 pm
Seems like some authors just disappear. They publish a great book and then nothing for five years until I’m starring at my bookshelf and come across their book and think “Why didn’t so and so publish another book?” This happened recently when I found ICELANDER by Dustin Long in a stack on my bedroom floor. I love this book. It’s weird and whimsical and there’s puzzles and snow and murder. I read it twice when it came out in 2007. But what happened to Dustin Long? My prediction was he was either in grad school or got an office job. To find out what happened I stalked Dustin on Facebook and asked the following questions.
I’m a huge fan of Icelander. It’s one of my favorite books. I remember reading it and kind of feeling my own writing open up to new things – maybe it was the playfulness, the energy in Icelander, that broke things open. I’d like to think so. Then last week I was thinking, what happened to Dustin Long? Where is a new book? So, what’s up? Everything okay? READ MORE >
Behind the Scenes / 13 Comments
February 17th, 2012 / 3:11 pm
Perfect Lives
by Robert Ashley
Dalkey Archive Press, 2011 (Reprint)
240 pages / $13.95 Buy from Amazon, Dalkey Archive
Premiering on television in 1984 and first published in book form in 1991, Perfect Lives is several texts at once: a comic opera libretto, a novel about a temporary bank heist, a blurb-billed epic poem ranging through small town Midwestern vernacular and Eastern metaphysics, and a kind of textual final resting place for the titular performance in the form of notes, a preface, a synopsis, some notation from the score, and an edited conversation with writer, composer and director Ashley during which he explains the genesis and outcome of the project. (Ashley: “I had this practice: I’d go into a room, close the door, and start singing.”) It’s a good thing that the book is several texts, because while it’s a success as an engaging epic (experimental) poem, it would be a stretch to call it a novel and as a libretto it leaves you having missed out on the three-hour television program that it became with no idea of what it sounded like unless you’re familiar with Ashley’s work and no idea what it looked like except for a still of the production on the cover of the book and a frontispiece featuring Ashley himself playing narrator. Ultimately the loss of context doesn’t make the text suffer because as a set of eight experimental poems obliquely describing a bank heist and an elopement among more metaphysical things it wins at being an engrossing read and at capturing small town Midwestern vernacular and widescreen philosophy in very crisp but entertainingly malformed ways.
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6 Comments
February 17th, 2012 / 1:00 am
Cathy Day is doing a survey about the place of the novel in MFA programs. Both students and faculty are encouraged to participate. You can do so here.
The Millions has assembled a nice compendium of literary Tumblrs. Also at The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone, writes about compensation and literary magazines.
Starting here, The Believer hosts a three-part conversation between Vanessa Veselka and Lidia Yuknavitch.Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.
There’s been some conversation across different magazines and websites about fact checking, truth, and creative nonfiction. The New Yorker chimes in.
Sugar of Dear Sugar renown has revealed her identity–it’s author of Torch and Wild (forthcoming), Cheryl Strayed. She talks to Book Bench.
Scientists are uprising! Against Elsevier! Pocket protectors unite!
Michael Chabon co-wrote the screenplay for John Carter. This article looks at money and writing and Chabon and such. Ayelet Waldman responded on Twitter and that was awesome.
Here’s a little something on the history of monsters.
Publishing via Facebook….
I don’t like pennies.
Roundup / 8 Comments
February 16th, 2012 / 6:05 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnPix6cunzo
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Random / 19 Comments
February 16th, 2012 / 5:44 pm
1. Wild women are still writing in cafes. They worship Le Creuset. They speak la langue Francaise et la langue chandelier et la langue Manolo Blahnik.
2. Telephones weigh a lot.
3. One girl is two girls.
4. Men are Russia.
5. Sometimes it all comes down to Orange Julius vs. a tall styrofoam cup.
6. Beware: Mercury retrograde.
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5 Comments
February 16th, 2012 / 11:26 am
Blake Butler’s domination in the lit world seems so assured that now not only can he call himself Blake Butler again, but he ruthlessly admits his ultimate internet and political designs. A section of his laptop openly owns itself to be a nightmare, yet even here it lies. For while his publishers try to make the rest of the world believe that the internet consciousness of Blake Butler finds its satisfaction in the creation of an online lit world, the Blake Butlers again slyly dupe the dumb reader. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Blake Butlerish lit world online for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their internet world swindle, endowed with its own blogging rights and removed from the intervention of other lit worlds: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Blake Butlerish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting twitter follower whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the literary foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and twitter followers, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Blake Butlers who bring the unpublished into the htmlgiant comments, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white laptop by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.
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Author Spotlight / 7 Comments
February 14th, 2012 / 2:34 pm
14.78(2.90%) : APPLE STOCK ABOVE $500 USD. Is