Michael Earl Craig’s third book, Thin Kimono, was recently published by Wave Books. He is one of my favorite poets. I asked him some questions when he was traveling in Michigan, but normally he is in Montana. -ZS
ZS: What brings you to Michigan? And what do you think about Michigan’s fudge?
MEC: The Michigan trip is for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We’re in Leland, Michigan. In addition to my parents, my brother and his wife and their daughter are here, as well as my sister, her husband, and their three kids. Susan and I brought our Chia Pet, Nancy. When we were kids we’d vacation for a week (sometimes two) in this part of Michigan, so we have a lot of family history here.
And the fudge is big time in Michigan. My favorite is Murdick’s Fudge—the store in Traverse City, specifically. There are a few other Murdick’s stores but the Traverse City one is the best. I normally don’t eat fudge. Fudge is usually gritty and makes me want to knock my front teeth out on a banister. But this fudge is different. It’s creamy. It melts in your mouth (or wherever you put it). My favorite flavor is Black Cherry. Also Vanilla Chocolate Chip. And the Maple is very good. And the Chocolate/Peanut Butter. I know I sound like some sort of candy hillbilly here but it’s all true. When you eat this fudge it changes you.
All the books I read in 2011: go to your local independent bookseller—if such a thing exists in your town—and reserve a copy of Patrick deWitt’s dark, deep, and deadly funny upcoming novel The Sisters Brothers. It’s a western. It’s spare and has existential undercurrents. The narrator is a husky-bodied, quiet-talking killer. It’ll be out in May.
Madras Press has announced the release of four new titles, each in short run, short sized book copies, sold with all proceeds going to the charity of the author’s choice.
Among these is the first new standalone work by Ben Marcus in a long while, a 72 page book called The Moors:
The Moors is the story of a man, Thomas, whose understanding of reality leaves him at the prospect of encountering an attractive colleague while refilling his coffee at work; more so of the contents of his mind over the course of those feet from his desk, and the ensuing minutes. Along the way, shadows loom and bend, backs are turned, walls seem to move, and the passage of time is marked by the sounds of living objects colliding just beyond the sight of those who are listening. A breathtaking and claustrophilic story by Ben Marcus, written at a terrifyingly close point of view.
Also available is A Manual for Sons, an excerpt from Donald Barthelme’s The Dead Father; a volume of three new stories by Ken Kalfus; and The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman. I have the first series of releases from Madras and they are beautiful little objects, and each toward a great cause.
14. Off The Internets for 8 days and what does that do? Doesn’t make you write, I say. I didn’t, sans two checks and an entry in a running journal. But it do refill the synaptic bathtub, me thinks, possibly with bubbles. Things brighten, shard, slow. I would like to write today, I’m saying. So. I ponder what happens when you leave The Internets?
If I were a person who coughed at such a performance, or held a screaming baby, or whose cell phone rang, or who owned the corporation that operated the train which whistled as it went past the concert hall, I’d probably be embarrassed. I noticed that between the movements, people coughed more than the whole room of people had probably coughed in the entire day, probably because all of them had been so intent on holding their bodies still and holding their coughs during the movements. But the coughs they coughed between movements and the laughter they laughed after they coughed certainly represented the most enjoyable part of the performance, other than perhaps the conductor’s ad lib between movements, when he theatrically took a rag and wiped his forehead as though he had been working up a sweat with his conducting. (Maybe he had, but not because of exertion, but rather because of the tension that attaches to publicly not doing anything, and that was part of the gag, too, when he wiped his forehead with the rag.) READ MORE >
Some of you might know Ross Simonini from his work at The Believer (and elsewhere), but he’s also an incredible musician, and his band NewVillager just signed with IAMSOUND, to release their debut full length early this year. I can’t stop listening to it. Below is the magical stutter-video for their first single “RichDoors”; the rest of the album is just as addictive and inventive, and beautiful.
Ryan Ormonde (zillakiller) writes a blog called Text Messengers that I found randomly. He has discussed, in a heavily stylized form, the work of Leslie Scalapino, Ulises Carrión, Juliana Spahr, Craig Dworkin, Danielle Collobert, Jackson Mac Low, Rosmarie Waldrop, Stéphane Mallarmé, Gertrude Stein, and Samuel Beckett.
I like the idea that I am floating on a bunch of other people’s ideas and the idea that I am one of them. I like the idea that we pass these things from one to another like money from a country that doesn’t exist and has no name, or like gigantic translucent rings that arch into the sky. I like thinking that people care about other people, that’s cute. It’s cute to care and caring is sharing ideas.
The St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in New York maintains (or at least used to maintain) the custom of inviting a stranger, often a non-Christian one, to deliver a sermon once each year. (The most famous of these sermons became the centerpiece of Kurt Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday.) READ MORE >
I woke up this morning and sat on a stool in the kitchen and watched a cat named Jim watch a squirrel. I did not know the squirrel’s name. It was on a fence post.
Last night, I went to a party. Joanna Ruocco was there. I started talking to her and told her I really liked her books and she said, “Publishing on a small press is like being the best at something that no one else has ever bothered to think of doing. In my head, I picture thousands of people doing really unique things that no one has ever done or will ever do again.” I laughed. When I stopped laughing I realized the person I was talking to wasn’t Joanna Ruocco. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t see Joanna Ruocco the rest of the night.
Michael Earl Craig’s third book, Thin Kimono, was recently published by Wave Books. He is one of my favorite poets. I asked him some questions when he was traveling in Michigan, but normally he is in Montana. -ZS
