ToBS R1: announcing yourself as ‘available for interviews’ vs. following several thousand people on twitter

[Matchup #10 in Tournament of Bookshit]

Announcing yourself as ‘available for interviews’ seems fine to me. I don’t see anything wrong with letting people know that you’re available to be interviewed. It’s different than saying ‘interview me’ (command) or ‘I need people to interview me’ (desperate) because it conveys information in a non-obligatory manner that also makes the person announcing it seem busy and ‘prestigious,’ to some degree, via the implication that s/he isn’t always available to be interviewed.

Following several thousand people on Twitter seems like pussy shit to me. Following a small amount of people means you either fuck with people you like and/or follow people based on the quality of their tweets. Following no one means you don’t fuck with anyone else’s tweets. Following several thousand people means you fuck with whomever and/or are trying to garner ‘follow backs’ to increase your amount of followers. To me, following a small amount of people or no one is hard; following several thousand people is pussy shit. READ MORE >

Contests / 32 Comments
December 2nd, 2011 / 1:22 pm

ToBS R1: “everybody has a story” vs. “show don’t tell”

[Matchup #9 in Tournament of Bookshit]

“Everybody has a story”

But I don’t like the story of a woman unsatisfied with her marriage, her greying hair still shoulder length from the 60s, taking a creative writing class at the community college, getting all nervous in her Hyundai parked outside under a leafless tree, going over in pen, again, the final revisions of her 3000-word story: the one about a woman her age, of average median household income, whose husband is also a strong but silent type reoccurring satellite figure in her empty life; who, like the amateur in jean overalls now crying in her Korean-made car, also drinks gin in her pajamas at night while playing solitaire, in an unnamed though evocatively New England-y town, whose racial demographic is similar to hers, except in the story the friendly mail man who dies of cancer because something needs to fucking happen is African-American, which her instructor (a man with both a novel and pony-tail “out”) told her she should include before she submits it to Glimmer Train, because those ladies are into black guys probably. READ MORE >

Contests / 22 Comments
December 2nd, 2011 / 12:02 pm

ToBS R1: ‘is the author of’ vs. bowties

[Matchup #8 in Tournament of Bookshit]

BOW TIES

Seems like boys (girls later) who wear bow ties are either those who’ve never seen their own asshole or they’re so preoccupied with their own asshole they carry a snapshot of their asshole in the leather handbag they refer to as a ‘tote.’ Either a douche or a douche. There are exceptions, of course, as there always is with FASHION, that grand meatus of illusion, and so we’ll give pervs like Pee-Wee Herman a pass ’cause he knew that in order to sport a ridiculous trademark you gotta show a little dick. The tools I’m talking about are the casual bow-tie wearers, the straight twink walking down San Francisco’s Valencia Street with a Vonnegut tattoo whose ‘girl’ owns more accessories than books, and who has never read Tom Wolfe but knows enough to pass him off as a ‘fashionable guy’ and there’s something about that bow around a str8 twink’s neck that makes me think of a half-assed suicide attempt, a bottle of Tylenol PM chased with a bottle of $10 corner store Gnarly Head Pinot Noir, or ‘X marks the spot’ like DECAPITATE ME HERE FOR GOOD HEAD. I’ve attended three readings where the readers wore bow ties and I imagined their soft putty nutsack flesh twisted around the neck instead of the $19 American Apparel polka-dotted cotten. I attended San Francisco’s Literary Death Match and met Todd Zuniga and stared at his bow tie the same way my ex-boyfriend stared at women’s tits. Seems like bow ties would be much cooler if they were made of ball flesh, not to mention pleasing a man’s sack would be easier/more accessible, tho it depends on the dickhead. I don’t really know how I feel about girls in bow-ties. I mean, I like the gender-queer bois who sport ties, but straight girls who sport bow ties seem like bitches who don’t give head and powder their puss. I guess if a girl has to wear something around her neck I’d rather it be a dog-collar attached to a leash, but that seems mean. Maybe if Vonnegut had sold these instead of overrated paperbacks, I’d appreciate the attempt to convey intelligence through neckware. Tie a bomb around your neck and whisper ‘god is in the details.’ READ MORE >

Contests / 21 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 4:42 pm

Reviews

A “Portable MFA?”

The Portable MFA in Creative Writing
by the New York Writers Workshop
Writers Digest Books, 2006
280 pages / $8.99 (electronic) Buy from Amazon
Rating: 4.7

 

 

 

 

 

 

In August, something called “The Portable MFA in Creative Writing,” written by a group of people from the New York Writers Workshop, was offered as a free download on Amazon. Among its claims: “Get the core knowledge of a prestigious MFA education without the tuition.”

Reader, I downloaded.
READ MORE >

15 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 4:17 pm

ToBS R1: Calling yrself editor-in-chief of online jrnl vs posting pics of other people’s books on facebook

[Matchup #7 in Tournament of Bookshit]

Why do you call yourself the editor-in-chief (or even the chief editor) of an online lit journal? This isn’t The New York Times. It’s a fart with a header. It’s a blogspot. You are the editor-in-chief of a blogspot. I hope you cite your role as editor-in-chief of the blogspot when you submit to other blogspots. I hope mad honeys come to your release party for the blogspot. I hope you get a lot of ass.

Lucky for you there is a literary action that is a shade lamer and that is…

Posting photos of other people’s shitty first books on fb with the caption “Look what came in the mail! Going to be a great weekend!”

No. It is not going to be a great weekend. READ MORE >

Contests / 26 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 3:07 pm
—

“Novels Are Fantasies of Powerlessness and Power” — Great interview with Adam Novy & his novel The Avian Gospels up at Biblioklept.

2

ToBS R1: work at Best Buy vs. undergrad Lit 101 adjunct

[Matchup #6 in Tournament of Bookshit]

BECAUSE OF DIRECT HORROR: THESE THOUGHTS CRIPPLE A FLAG AT THE SIGHT OF MONEY, THE WILL TO EXPLAIN, TO FLAP A SALE – I MEAN NIHILISM STANDS ABOVE THE FEELING ATHEISM TOO CLOSE TO ANY BELIEF I MEAN ALL GROUPS DON’T EXIST OUTSIDE THEIR DOOKIE NOTHING IS WORTH BUILDING A COMMUNITY ABOUT BECAUSE WE CAN’T STOP BEING PEOPLE SOME DISEASES ROCK YOU TOW THE LINE SKIPPING POPES DO THEIR FLEAS I AM SO FAR BELOW I AM THE SCALE CHAFED BY ASKING GREAT WRITERS I WILL FURTHER YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH MURDER HOLOCAUST WHATEVER SAYS ‘I AM’ SMOTHER YOUR SPERM BEFORE THEY EXIT SWIPE THE SLIT REAL WAG CONDUCT THE BABIES FROM YOUR ANUS DIP THEIR MUSIC PLEASE HUGS I ONLY WORSHIP ACCIDENTS AND CRACKROCK ANY ADULT WANTS TO CONVINCE YOUR MONIES HIS LACK OF DANCE MEANS WINNING ALL PHILOSOPHY IS CASTRATION ANYONE BORN IS A POSSIBLE RHETORICIAN AND MUST THEREFORE BE SHRED INSIDE THEIR CRIB PLEASE EMAIL ME (TANGOROBOT@GMAIL.COM) A LOCATION TO MEET THERE AND DISCUSS I AM WEAK AND ALWAYS ARMED MOTHERFUCK HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY?

– Sean Kilpatrick

– – – READ MORE >

Contests / 15 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 1:46 pm

{LMC}: January’s Selection: Versal 9

In January 2012, we will be reading Versal 9, a literary journal out of Amsterdam.  The editors of Versal have been kind enough to offer ten  four  two  one remaining free copies of the magazine and a discount for those who buy the magazine. If you’re interested in a free copy, e-mail me with your name and address.

The sale price for LMC members is $10 instead of the usual $14.95. You can buy the issue here.

Versal is a literary & art annual out of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Versal was founded in 2002 by American poet Megan M. Garr to help foster the translocal literary community in Amsterdam. In 2010, Versal was named one of seventeen “Indie Innovator” presses by Poets & Writers Magazine, which called it “the most visible product of a passionate group helping to sustain ‘transnational networks’ for writers.”

Community, wide-reaching aesthetic and bold design have been at the core of the Versal project from the outset. Today, Versal is built by a volunteer team of nearly 20 writers and artists around the globe. The team is currently working towards Versal’s 10-year anniversary, which will be marked by the release of the tenth issue in May 2012.

READ MORE >

Literary Magazine Club / 2 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 1:00 pm

ToBS R1: livetweeting vs. [yourauthorname].com

[Matchup #5 in Tournament of Bookshit]

at first, this seems like a simple issue of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). if we can choose which of these chill concepts is better for SEO, we can make a pretty fucking nice decision.

SEO from Wikipedia:

“As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.”

INTERNET LITURATURE thrives on grabbing the largest possible number of eyeballs from several key market demographics (angry teens, cool moms, depressed dads, etc.) and pushing the solid messaging that has made our community strong – sex, alcoholism, and the [blowjob?] lip-gloss of higher education. these concepts are essentially our core story, being spread across the globe at the speed of light. the key to critical happiness in modern literature is to be the one delivering theses stories in the most SEO way possible. READ MORE >

Contests / 17 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 12:25 pm

Why Audiences Can’t Sit For or Stand The Tree of Life

What is most surprising about the premiere of The Tree of Life and its subsequent box-office failure due to a powerfully negative word of mouth is that if any film was the right film for the right moment (that moment being our living in a time of spiritual, economic, and environmental disasters), it is this wonder of images. The film presents the world as harmonious and cracked (humans are those fractured, nature is another story), yet spatial—intimate in childhood, while thunderingly antiseptic in the present day matrix of skyscrapers and homes equipped with plasma screens. As consumer culture tightens its grip on our souls, here is a piece of craftsmanship so sure of its place apart from imitation art (also known as Oscar bait—Dances with Wolves, et al.), that it happily eschews many drab protocols and the rub-a-dub sentimental stew of traditionally arching storylines and instead, gives us images that aren’t simple, that have to be read, that have to be reflected upon and interpreted, that ask us to share in their beauty rather than be repelled and manipulated by a gratuitous splatter of plot points and snappy, smarmy dialogue where one asshole rips another to bring the audience into the product’s fold, as so many of these products are the brainchild of some starstruck, cash-hoarding producer, or a Hollywood star struck by scandal, needing money to quell attorneys and so gleefully takes a gun or three and blows holes in the bad guys for a few hours more.

READ MORE >

Film / 39 Comments
December 1st, 2011 / 12:08 pm