Notes For Teaching Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee

(Melville House, 2007)

Over the past six weeks, I have been teaching a summer semester undergraduate literature course entitled “Reexamining the Body: Race & Gender in American Experimental Fiction.” After a week of introductory material, we dedicated one week (four days a week) to studying a single novel: Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982), Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School (1978), Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005), and Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee (2007). Each posed a different set of issues, which allowed us to discuss literature as contagion, as colonization, as assault, as enchantment, and as sedation.

To celebrate the last day of class, I thought I would share with you my notes for Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee. These are basically the blueprints for my lectures, or what I use to begin thinking about what I’m going to say in class. In the interest of time, and in the interest of authenticity, I’ve decided not to correct or clean up or organize these notes, but instead share them as they appear in my Word Doc titled “Notes: Tao Lin Eeeeee.” It’s scattershot, sure, but that’s sort of how my brain works.

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Behind the Scenes / 102 Comments
August 5th, 2011 / 1:20 pm

Reviews

Thinking Around gowanus atropolis by Julian Brolaski

gowanus atropolis
by Julian Brolaski
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011
104 pages / $15.00  Buy from UDP

 


 

We no longer reveal totality within ourselves by lightning flashes.  We approach it through the accumulation of sediments.

– Edouard Glissant

 

Every word in gowanus atropolis carries the traces of having been moved, altered, shifted.  Even the undergirding of the lines and stanzas feels rearranged and restructured to create a different kind of progression, far from a logical exposition.  Both syntax and spelling have been remade: “one ynvents a grammatical order / (& haf done).” We are in a specific post-industrial space, the New York City around the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and we are listening to an elegy for the pastoral in a stridently non-pastoral setting, a polluted landscape struggling to survive. The experience of this landscape through words is only possible, Julian Brolaski seems to be saying, once everything has been pushed off its foundations a bit, with everything askance, a little slanted by the inclusion of a slew of portmanteaus, archaic words, macaronics, neologisms, transpronouns like xe, and of-the-moment slang.  Suddenly even the most obvious and brutal contemporary slang seems bizarre and highlighted in the mass of new or n-used words. In the thicket of all these strange words, there are some we recognize, some which very few readers could ever possibly know and then others that no one has ever read on the page before. These (queer) words open up all sorts of possible readings, mis-readings and failed readings, and they also open up a space for play, for contradiction and confusion, for being lost.

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6 Comments
August 5th, 2011 / 12:00 pm

House Wife Blues: Plath, The Bell Jar, and Writerly Neuroses

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I were out walking the dog, and I was feeling shitty about work as usual. Rounding the corner where the Bay meets the roadway, sun setting pinkly, I blurted out, “Sometimes I just wish I could be a housewife.” He looked at me and said, “Me too.”

That was the end of it. Which pissed me off even more. I wanted to have a legitimate conversation about what it means to be a housewife (which, by the way, I could never be in the 19050s sense), the fact that it’s not even an option anymore for most women. We’re worker bees now, too. It’s only fair. If I want to stay home, which I kind of do, I have to figure out a way to pull in enough income to pay the mortgage on the house I bought all by myself. I have to be able to pull my weight. Not to mention take care of the dogs, do the laundry, make dinners–all because I’m home, which somehow still means, not doing anything at all. My boyfriend would  never say or think these things, by the way, but I would. I struggle with these concepts because I would feel guilty if I had the luxury to write. As if writing isn’t work. Writing poetry isn’t work, it’s what you do in your spare time.

In her essay “The Bell Jar at 40,” Emily Gould writes of Sylvia Plath:

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Craft Notes & Random / 18 Comments
August 5th, 2011 / 8:57 am

PEN America Poetry Series

I just started editing a poetry series over at PEN America. If you sign up for the mailing list, we’ll send you new poems from rad poets 1-2 times a month (no adds, newsletters, promotions, etc). The inaugural installment includes two new poems from Chris Martin. Please check it out and sign up. I promise we won’t let you down.

Random / 1 Comment
August 4th, 2011 / 8:20 pm

Author venn diagram

This pie chart illustrates what’s in my head in terms of what I think about writing, and who goes where. This of course is just a partial list, and my apologies for the lack of contemporaries, and women. Again, this is a view into my head, and probably subject to some disagreement. I think of all writing being from the head (pros: cerebral, conceptual; cons: didactic, dry), the mouth (pros: language, poetics; cons: empty banter, pure form), and the heart (pros: empathic, intimate; cons: sentimental, emotional) . My favorite writers, those in the white dashed center, are able to write from all three places. Other writers I admire are writing from two places. Others tend to fall into just one category, somewhat consumed by that point of view. Authors near the outer edges of their category may be seen as my critique of them, for the excessiveness of that sensibility. It would be interesting to see where you disagree, and why, and list those who I’ve failed to mention, and place them accordingly.

 

Author Spotlight & Massive People / 169 Comments
August 4th, 2011 / 5:17 pm

Reviews

I Am Not Sidney Poitier

I Am Not Sidney Poitier
by Percival Everett
Graywolf Press, 2009
270 pages / $16.00 Buy from Graywolf Press
Rating: 8.4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adjectives frequently used to describe Percival Everett include “intelligent” and “hilarious,” and are also apt descriptors for his seventeenth (!) novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier. It is difficult to imagine a funnier book dealing with issues of race and identity, or a more sophisticated comic romp. The humor (and confusion) begins with the title, which refers to the novel’s main character, literally named Not Sidney Poitier. The “ill-starred fruit of a hysterical pregnancy” that lasts two years, Not Sidney is an orphan raised by Ted Turner who comes to resemble the actor Sidney Poitier. The unexpected death of Not Sidney’s mother leaves him with incredible wealth in the form of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corp.

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4 Comments
August 4th, 2011 / 12:04 pm

Ontology of the Cat Poet

THE BIRTH OF THE CAT POET’S CAPACITY FOR PASSION
OR, THE MAKING OF A MAN CAT OF LETTERS

Witness my house’s cat George Jackson pen his magnum opus. Below are some notes provided by Susan Sontag from her essay on Marina Tsvetaeva titled “A Poet’s Prose.”

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Being a poet is to define oneself as, to persist (against odds) in being, only a poet.
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Actually, the frontier between prose and poetry has become more and more permeable — unified by the ethos of maximalism characteristic of the modern artist: to create work that goes as far as it can go.

[GEORGE SAYS: “NO. POETRY IS THE HIGHEST FORM. I REFUSED TO ADMIT THE UNREFINED SCRIBBLINGS OF A NON-POET.”]
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Homage to others is the complement to accounts of oneself: the poet is saved from vulgar egoism by the strength and purity of his or her admirations.
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Poet’s prose is mostly about being a poet. And to write such autobiography, as to be a poet, requires a mythology of the self. The self described is the poet self, to which the daily self (and others) is often ruthlessly sacrificed. The poet self is the real self, the other one is the carrier; and when the poet self dies, the person cat dies. (To have two selves is the definition of a pathetic fate.) Much of the prose of poets—particularly in the memoiristic form—is devoted to chronicling the triumphant emergence of the poet self. (In the journal or diary, the other major genre of poet’s prose, the focus is on the gap between the poet and the daily self, and the often untriumphant transactions between the two. The diaries—for example, Baudelaire’s or Blok’s—abound with rules for protecting the poet self; desperate maxims of encouragement; accounts of dangers, discouragements, and defeats.)
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In prose the poet is always mourning a lost Eden; asking memory to speak, or sob.
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All of Tsvetaeva’s George’s work is an argument for rapture; and for genius, that is, for hierarchy: a poetics of the Promethean.
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To be a poet is a state of being, elevated being: Tsvetaeva George speaks of her his love for “what is highest.”
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There is the same quality of emotional soaring in her his prose as in her his poetry: no modern writer takes one as close to an experience of sublimity.

Craft Notes & Random / 4 Comments
August 4th, 2011 / 7:33 am

I am drinking gin & wrote about 7 songs as they came up on random in my itunes while they played part 3

Dr. Dre, “Deez Nuts,” The Chronic

Damn. The sample after the phone call at the beginning of this song with the dude with the weird voice talking about nuts makes me feel scared. I honestly wish I was black. I just sat here listening for a full two minutes of the song before I wrote that. I don’t think it’s bad to say that. People seem to get mad if you say things about things like that. My friend Ben told me the other day that he realized that all of my characters I’ve ever written are black. I want to believe that. This song is part of the album that made me start drinking gin when I finally started drinking, which wasn’t until I was 26, or maybe 27. I told everyone who drank that they were stupid for it a lot I think. Then I was just doing it. I wish I was the keyboard in this song; actually I wish that the most.

Mogwai, “You Don’t Know Jesus,” Rock Action

That’s a good title for a song. I don’t even care what the song does after the title. I think more people should be attacked for things about god but indirectly like a song title that kids who chill in rooms probably put on and laugh about. Maybe this shitty ass band laughs about it too. I have to check to see how long this song is because I don’t know if I can take guitars for this long. Fuck, it’s 8 minutes and three seconds. That’s the worst. No song with guitars in it should be that long. Guy Piciotto has that songs where he says he realizes that he hates the sound of guitars, and it seems like that’s like me hating books and words. Had a conversation about that last night, like would I hate teeth if I were a dentist, is that my personality, or is it more situational. God, fuck this song. This is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard with all this swirling treble. Who decided Mogwai was okay to think was good. It seems like they were a band that could have just existed in their house playing shitty shows in whatever city they are from forever and self releasing bullshit for whoever forever and never been something people talk about except a guy who works at a label picked them up and then they became whatever they are. Things like that happen. I wish I was listening to “Deez Nuts” again instead of this song…. Let me slow down a second. Maybe things can be good… Just looked, three more minutes left, and noticed this album is called “Rock Action.” I forgot about that, fuck this shithole song. No really, fuck these guys.

Brian Wilson, “Our Prayer/Gee,” Smile

They are harmonizing. They always do that. One of the first records I ever had was “Endless Summer.” My mom got it for me at a garage sale I think. I liked looking at the cover of it a lot and playing the music. I don’t think I understood the music but I understood that my mom bought it for me and that meant more than other things. I’m older now. I am scared of songs that make me remember things because then they can be weapons. They are going “bom bom bom a bom” or whatever. That seems not such a weapon, but maybe more then is one cuz of that.

Wire, “Let’s Panic Later,” 154

When I had a, uh, class at Georgia Tech for web design we had to build a website to show we could do certain things and I made one about how much I hated British music. That’s not so true anymore. I wish I had a pretzel as big as me that I could lay against and hump and eat at the same time. Seems like these guys are “experimenting” on this song, like they said “hey let’s experiment” and like went in the booth and were looking at each other all weird through the glass like surprised what they were doing and yet intense at the same time so the performance seemed legitimate. I wonder if they are proud of this still. Panicking now seems better than later.

The Melvins, “Goose Freight Train,” Stoner Witch

I saw these guys a few times, they were wearing cloaks that looked like dresses. It’s really quiet here tonight in my house except for that I’m playing music. I used to think that music could keep you safe, like if you were playing it it filled the air and if people were outside your house they wouldn’t be able to move through the silence to hurt you because the silence made it impossible for them to come through the same way. I like the name “Goose Freight Train” but I don’t know what it has to do with this song. I see a big goose going on a track through the night kind of smiling and brighter than everything around it. This song reminds me of mowing the lawn. Couldn’t help but just wondering after I paused between that last sentence and thinking about what would be next if I am stupid. I’m probably stupider now than I was three years ago but smarter than I was five years ago. Does aging work like that? I feel like I can feel me aging with this guitar line, like it is counting time in a nonmusical way and more in the way people actually age. I don’t know how I haven’t misspelled anything in this whole paragraph while typing, only the word “Melvins” is underlined in red. I want to get licked in between the eyes by

The Minutemen, “Spillage,” Double Nickels on the Dime

I mean, all their songs sound the same. It’s a cool song, the one song, but it’s all of them. Gian just texted me, “I like that dude. I like his sense of humor.” Trying to remember who he was talking about. D. Boon and Cliff Burton probably chill. My TV seems to be watching me.

Young Jeezy, “Time,” Trap or Die 2

Man his voice is super all tricked out on this song, like he’s over enunciating his southern accent. It works pretty good like when Project Pat does that. There are people singing in the background here, makes me feel like I want to walk out of the house to the church across the street and walk inside it and stand there and see if I can see something. I actually don’t think I’ve ever heard this Jeezy song somehow. My computer is full of a lot of songs I’ve never heard and are just sitting there inside this machine. People worked on them and did things to make them and they are there. Ie9f=0eif0uer-ufadohf a slofjalksjd flkja sld. He is saying “tie-um” when he says “time” and that’s confusing. I feel ugly, but not physically really, just in general. I have eaten tortilla chips for dinner every night this week. Looked at the top of the screen and it says “Chrome” which feels better to see than “Safari.” What is happening to everyone. Stop saying “tie-um,” dude, it feels messed up. I want to go on a really long walk that feels like a short walk at the end of it and I just sit down there wherever seems like the end of the walk.

Random / 41 Comments
August 3rd, 2011 / 11:40 pm
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lol re: “Time spent on the blog is time spent away from something else: writing another book, contacting book clubs, taking a part-time job and investing that money in advertising or a publicist.” from Author Blogging: You’re Doing It Wrong by Livia Blackburne.

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To have your writing solicited, and then to be rejected by said solicitor, is good for you.

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