season-o-giving

77. Is it ever a good idea to give your book away?

14. Relatives of writers really tussle with what to give them; who wants another giant book of 500 bad poems? If asked, what do you tell people?

1. What’s the highe$$$t you’ve ever given for a book, any book? Do tale.

9. You know what writers really need? Nothing but time. I once wrote a grant (a process about as fun as boiling gravel) and received that grant and it was worth several thousand dollars and what did I want, those grrrrrr-anters asked? Time. So they paid someone to teach my class that semester while I wrote (and played a smidgen of disc golf). Time. Capital T. (This an argument for the MFA, BTW, but I don’t wanna start that withered face of an apple turning over.)

111. Who gives a shit? (And he read Jest on tape while night-walking Maine highway shoulders)

018. Advice: Don’t give breached things. It’s general knowledge I’m addicted to hot sauce (a key aspect of nachos). Years ago, a student gave me a bottle of hot sauce (though post final grades in this case, the student gift thing is already weird/odd for me. I never know what to do except discourage). The bottle was open, half contents gone. Another time a friend gave me an expensive bottle of bourbon as congratulations for a life event. He then cracked it open, took a preternatural swig, and drank half the bottle his own self. Don’t.

Does the used book fall under this rule?

Random / 13 Comments
December 19th, 2010 / 8:26 pm

This Basque is Badass

Strangest novel I’ve ever read? Obabakoak, composed in Euskara (Basque) by Bernardo Axtaga, who, the jacket copy tells us, had to translate his own book into Spanish so that it might find a broad European readership. (It worked.)

Before we reach even the prologue, the book tells us about The Game of the Goose (el juego de la oca), which is played:

on a circular board of sixty-three squares, the sixty-third being occupied by Mother Goose. The first person to reach square sixty-three wins. Geese can also appear on the other squares and if you land on one of these, you jump forward to the next goose and get another throw of the dice. If you land on less fortunate squares such as the maze, the prison or the square symbolising death (a skull or skeleton) you must either wait for another player to take your place, go back several squares or return to square one.

The Game of the Goose is an apt stand-in for the structure of Obabakoak, which READ MORE >

Random / 6 Comments
December 18th, 2010 / 7:29 pm

It’s Friday Guitars R Stupid, let’s us play them wrong

READ MORE >

Random / 4 Comments
December 17th, 2010 / 8:18 pm

Author Spotlight / Comments Off on
December 17th, 2010 / 6:36 pm

It is Friday: Go Write Ahead

Reason, Magic, Skill and Love
Frankly, I think poorly of

Taste the drink, add a little more whiskey, taste again, now put the bottle aside

Oh, I’ll stagger

An open can spread frank before the sky

Cheap gin, cheap ginger ale, not much ice

The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes

I like to drink and read with my mom

Anyone’s who drunk, I know it myself, they’re likely to exaggerate

Rye whiskey in the green celluloid glass of a bathroom

It’s just the thing for shock

God doesn’t believe in the easy way

Precede into the kitchen

I don’t even drink anymore, just wine

This is one gigantic day

But you’ve got tomorrow to reckon with

Author Spotlight & Random / 7 Comments
December 17th, 2010 / 6:09 pm

RIP Captain Beefheart

Adding to the list of legends taken in 2010, Don Van Vliet dies at 69.

Captain Beefheart on Writing

Author News / 7 Comments
December 17th, 2010 / 6:07 pm

Damn, yeah!

Joseph Young’s Easter Rabbit is re-released with a beautiful new cover. (Just a bit of it above. Link on through for the whole pretty thing.)

Higgs reviewed it here. If you missed it on the first go round, hop on for the new one, you. There’s some new goodness.

Author News / 7 Comments
December 17th, 2010 / 5:49 pm

Enter the Beecher’s poetry and fiction contest and win $500. Judges are Deb Olin Unferth for fiction and Adam Robinson (me) for poetry.

Roberto Bolaño: “Instead of waiting, there is writing.”

“The truth is, I don’t believe all that much in writing. Starting with my own. Being a writer is pleasant—no, pleasant isn’t the word—it’s an activity that has its share of amusing moments, but I know of other things that are even more amusing, amusing in the same way that literature is for me. Holding up banks, for example. Or directing movies. Or being a gigolo. Or being a child again and playing on a more or less apocalyptic soccer team. Unfortunately, the child grows up, the bank robber is killed, the director runs out of money, the gigolo gets sick and then there’s no other choice but to write. For me, the word writing is the exact opposite of the word waiting. Instead of waiting, there is writing. Well, I’m probably wrong—it’s possible that writing is another form of waiting, of delaying things. I’d like to think otherwise.”

from interview in Bomb, 2002

Power Quote / 21 Comments
December 17th, 2010 / 12:39 pm