I was really thrilled to read all the responses my last post generated; thanks to everyone who chimed in! And I wanted to post something that clarifies some of the things I wrote there, since it’s apparent I caused no small amount of confusion…
R.I.P. Jiří Gruša
He passed away today, in Germany. He was 72. I don’t know much about him. But I really enjoyed his novel The Questionnaire; Dalkey reprinted an English translation of it in 2000 and I read it upon arriving at ISU:
Originally circulated in Czechoslovakia in an underground edition of nineteen typewritten copies (which landed the author in jail for “initiating disorder”), The Questionnaire is Jirí Grusa’s internationally acclaimed masterpiece.
In completing a standard employment questionnaire, narrator Jan Kepka manages to write a beautifully impressionistic history of his life, his family, and his hometown as he obeys—with mock solemnity—the handwritten command on top of the form: “DO NOT CROSS OUT.”
Here’s a link to it at Google Books. And here’s an interview with him, conducted by my friend and former Dalkey workmate Ana Lucic. In that interview, Gruša mentions some of his other books, and that he planned to write a few more. I don’t know if he ever did. The other books, to my knowledge, haven’t been translated. But The Questionnaire, that’s a good one.
Godspeed, you Czech Emperor.
It Takes Two, Baby
long past the presence of common
by j/j hastain
Say It With Stones, 2011
87 pages / $12 Buy from Say It With Stones
&
Dear Failures
by Trey Sager
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011
28 pages / $10 Buy from UDP
This week I went to an art museum showing contemporary work by two gay male artists. The two exhibits were chosen to put the pair in conversation with each other: Donald Moffett, who worked with Act-Up in the eighties, and Glen Fogel, who was born in 1977. I wandered through the exhibits looking at the projected paintings, arms emerging from holes, wedding rings and re-painted love/hate letters. Afterwars, I walked outside into the cool autumn air and sat down in the sculpture garden next to the museum. I’d been trying to make time to read j/j hastain’s new book long past the presence of common, and I finally had made the perfect moment. The sun was setting through the trees, the air was warm enough.
7 Comments
October 28th, 2011 / 12:00 pm
October 28th, 2011 / 12:00 pm
OCCUPY PRODUCT AND THE MIDTOWN ANTI-PROTEST LIFESTYLE
i remember my father crying at the dinner table during thanksgiving in the year 2006. he was telling me the world was fucked, telling me i had to sell my soul to make money. it was the only way, he said.
***
Adam Robinson—
Melville House site redo. What do you think? To me, their last site was a model of amazeballs. So much PHP. This one is cleaner? I dunno, but I’m about to explore it and find out.
3
Adam Robinson—
Autographed by the author — who gives a shit? What is the best autographed book story you got then?
One sky is dark and one is monochrome
What a sweet week for mice who live in walls. Wait, I mean what a sweet week for this pink skull and crossbones wrist thing. Wait, I mean what a sweet week for all these old MTA bus passes I am uselessly collecting. Wait, I mean what a sweet week for new litmags. That’s it. Adam already posted about LPZ, and since I just got in trouble the other day for accidentally double posting about Ryan Call’s Whiting Award, I’m going to stick to a strictly newsworthy diet.
Dark Sky 14 is out! You should read Dark Sky 14 if you like mustached short Siamese women, a family crawling naked from the sea clutching plastic suitcases, counting bullet holes, Burt’s cans of nuts and screws, broken floating, a horse in a Dumpster, seagulls collecting Styrofoam with their beaks, Mars sex, kicking ants, cashmere moons, warbling accountants, smoke that turns into bears and vice versa, and anonymous book reviews where the book itself is the anonymous.
NOÖ [13] is out! You should read NOÖ [13] if you like dance-offs, Russian salads, laundromats outside of burnt down malls, people who give you their ADD medication for your birthday, Ivan Lendl nostalgia, Hawaiians with machine guns, fake boyfriends, people who marry houses, confused police, sisters who are boxes of snakes, sisters who threaten you with ginsu knives, pummelhorsing social compromise, meat screams, oysters collected by widows, letters to jailed Lil Wayne, hearts too full of apples and wind, slut bags, triangle booth sandwiches, fucktrys, lung balloons, the bicycle in the wrong part of the neighborhood, the fast snapping motion of a neck during the fickle stages of a swan-dive, whiskey & chocolate, roller hockey coaches, furniture apocalypses, people who swallow entire friends, and eerie floating underwear. Plus one review of one giant book, a book written by a person named Adam Jameson Rod Smith Jennifer L Knox Brad Liening Jennifer Denrow Christian Hawkey Ryan Ridge Dan Hoy. Can you imagine calling for that guy in the doctor’s office? Luckily you don’t need a doctor to read either of these two new issues, but you might need a doctor after them.
“A Dozen Dominants: The Current State of US Indy Lit”
[Update: Some reader comments below prompted me to write a follow-up post.]
I was asked over the summer to contribute a critical article to the online UK journal Beat the Dust; they wanted me to write on the current state of US literature. I “narrowed that down” to indy lit (small press publishing, whatever you want to call it)—still an impossibly huge topic, of course. So I ended up proposing twelve dominants that I’d argue govern the current indy lit scene (at least as best as I can see things from where I’m sitting—Chicago, USA, 2011).
“Dominant” is a term I stole from the Russian Formalists; it essentially means a feature or aspect of a text that most people feel that the text, to be valid, should demonstrate or otherwise include. (e.g., rhyme was often a dominant in English poetry until the 20th century and the advent of free verse; now the situation is mostly the opposite.) (See also this.) Below, I’ll list “my twelve” dominants, but please see the full article for a more thorough explanation…
Lyonnais “Dusted at Mount Sinai”
Gorgeous video debut of my favorite band in Atlanta, Lyonnais, on the occasion of the release of their debut album “Want for Wish for Nowhere” from Hoss Records. This has become one of my favorite records to write to. Highly recommended.