“I just shot John Lennon.”
Nick Antosca—
What books are coming out in 2011 that you’re most excited about? Indie or major press, doesn’t matter. This post is semi-selfishly motivated: I’m making my annual personal list of must-read books coming out in the upcoming year. I want a stack of likely-awesome books to read.
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What happens when you talk about money?
Right now you can pre-order the 10th issue of MAKE.
Pre-ordering is like clapping for a performer before they’ve appeared on stage. You’re clapping for what they’ve already done, hoping that the performance about to begin will be at least as good as that. Or maybe it’s more like buying a ticket, saving your place by saying, I want to be there when it finally happens. Of course you’re saying it, but with money.
Just now, typing this, I’m noticing that what usually happens when I talk about money is happening–I start to listen to myself from a place outside of myself, and the self who goes on talking starts to feel that what she’s saying is lame, and the self who listens gets suspicious of the self who goes on talking even though she feels that what she’s saying is lame. Does something like this split happen to you when you talk about money? If it does, I wonder whether it’s an American thing to feel this. Does this happen for people in China? Russia? The Congo? How do other people feel when they talk about money?
quote-o-the-day
Loafing is the most productive part of a writer’s life.
James Norman Hall
True dat, Mr. Hall. Internet, coffee maker, gazing out the window at the snow—it may seem like not-writing, even now, but the mind stirs the pink shirt that becomes the fish that sings the flamelets of river, also known as words. For all the clatter of the laboriousness of writing, you should be thankful that every time your eye tingles cotton triangles, your lingual papillae meet ketchup (one of the only foods to trigger all 5 taste receptors: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, umami), your hand grips the perfect heft of a green bocce ball, you are indeed writing. Or you could read a book, another form of osmosis, but Hall isn’t talking about reading, me thinks, because reading is not loafing, no matter how far you drift away…so when someone on Facebook pokes you about yet another 8500 words, or when Joyce Carol Oates belches and out floats her 83rd lurid tale of obsession, etc., etc., relax, relax, go take a slow walk through a cow pasture, an interstate, a marriage, take a walk down through a brown couch, or a blog. You are loafing right now. I mean to say writing. Continue.
Some Stuff & Things
New issue of Vinyl Poetry has grocery litsts from the home team: Roxane Gay, Blake Butler, and Kyle Minor…plus a bunch of other good stuffs.
Word wizard Robert Kloss is Writer-In-Residence this month at Necessary Fiction, and he’s dedicating his month to doing some badass literary remixes of work from folks like Amber Sparks, J.A. Tyler, Michael Kimball, Me, James Tadd Adcox, and Andrew Borgstrom.
Speaking of Andrew Borgstrom, he has a new chapbook out called Explanations, from the almighty Cupboard.
This piece I read in Thought Catalog by Megan Boyle called “Everyone I’ve Had Sex With” captivated my attention. If you need or want more writing about sex, especially if you like stuff that might make you feel simultaneously uneasy and captivated, you should check out Janey Smith’s “Total Retard (Or How To Run a Successful Home School)” in the Lamination Colony swan song issue.
Next installment of my series “What is Experimental Literature?” coming soon!
{LMC}: Presentation by Stark and Clear
1 : Introduction
The Collagist comes in with a beautiful image of what looks very much like paint blooming in what was until now pristine water or paint thinner. This is the page’s header, and it’s about as visually rich as the journal gets. The header-bloom becomes the journal’s emblem, and this emblem is usefully repeated at the bottom of the page. (It would be nice if that bloom could double as the journal’s identity icon, replacing that generic isometrically-projected black box — I haven’t tested whether or not the size restriction will allow it.) If you click on the tiny little bloom at the bottom of the page then you’ll be returned to the top. The rest of the site is just as simple and understated, lending itself primarily to the stark and clear presentation of the works themselves, nothing distracting.
Jonathan Safran Foer Police Report
Jonathan Safran Foer, police photo
Facelist Altar Bureau Blood Mercury Swan
I have no idea what's up here but I like it
1. Facebook extends my Xmas list each time I look at it, today: Skull with skull case [via Lincoln M.] & the Nieves catalog [via Molly B.].
2. The 8th issue of Harp & Altar is out.
3. Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch + Grace Krilanovich reading in LA at The Poetic Research Bureau this Saturday, December 11 @ 951 Chung King Rd in Chinatown!
4. 1993 Paris Review Interview w/ Fran Lebowitz: “I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.”
5. Exciting news from Fence:
Fence Books is now a record label. We’re at work on audio-releases from Douglas Kearney, reading thrillingly from his book The Black Automaton, and Ariana Reines, with a guest-starring Lili Taylor performing Reines’ poem “Save the World,” plus a mysterious B-side, in anticipation of the 2011 publication of her book Mercury. Look for these in early 2011. And if you’re in NYC, don’t miss Ariana’s upcoming appearances.
6. Anyone see Black Swan? OK?
A Bit of a Follow Up
It is difficult to talk about race and stressful and awkward and exhausting. To my mind, one of the reasons these conversations are so difficult, particularly between white people and people of color, is because, so often, white people question concerns raised as if the question is not “how do we solve this problem,” but rather, “does this problem exist.” This is not a debate about whether there are racial and class (and gender and sexuality) disparities in publishing. These disparities exist whether you (choose to) see them or not. Instead these kinds of discussions are intended to function like a magnifying glass on a problem so big it should not require a magnifying glass.
And yet, the magnifying glass is clearly needed.