I almost told you, we must resist asking what it means when we haven’t yet determined what it is. But I grew bored; I’ve never been much lit up by resistance, a heavy sprinkler on the same clipped lawn. For what is there to resist besides the sun? I prefer insistence. To insist that we won’t know what it is; we will only run our fingertips through the traces. We turn from the spectacle not because it dazzles us but because we want to see the faces of our fellow theatergoers. The trouble comes when they too turn, and they face our glancing faces.
I am a big proponent of electronic and online publishing but there is a permanence to a physical book or magazine that cannot be denied. This is not to say that physical books cannot disappear. They can and do, but it takes time and effort or neglect. When something is published online, it only takes one click of the mouse to remove it. That work might remain in Google’s cache for a while but eventually, it will disappear entirely, like the words were never there.
I love baking. It’s a completely different experience than cooking or anything else, really. I don’t know exactly what it is, but baking is relieving. Maybe it’s the quasi-precision baking necessitates.
See: when I cook, I don’t follow any recipe. Even if I’m cooking something for the first time, I modify the recipe as I go, adding this spice or that, more cook time or less, substituting ingredients whimsically, etc.
But with baking, there are basic rules I have to follow. For instance, the amount of rising element (eggs, baking soda, baking powder, etc.) and flour can’t really change. I certainly can’t arbitrarily decide the temperature of the oven or how long the thing bakes. I like this.
So I’m putting together a book request form for a course I’m teaching next semester, when I came across this Amazon review for Georges Bataille’s “Story of the Eye” that made me chuckle. (In case you aren’t familiar with “Story of the Eye”, I offer an excerpt from the opening pages after the jump, to give you an idea of what this reviewer is responding to in this review.)
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3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
I found this book looking through my wife’s “recently viewed” list and thought it would be an excellent gift for our 12 year old niece who loves R.L. Stein’s “Goosebumps” and “Fear Street” series. Boy, was I wrong! I thought the spooky cover, title, and foreign name of the author indicated a classic horror novel in the vein of Frankenstein or Dracula. I naturally assumed that my wife had found a book for our niece and I would handle the financial end. Unfortunately I found out I had misjudged the book a few weeks later when my sister-in-law called in hysterics, accusing me of sending their daughter pornography! I told her I did no such thing and suggested maybe there was a mix up in shipping as I had sent her a book and not a movie. She told me that they had indeed received the book and was certain it was porn as they owned the book. I apologized profusely and asked my wife about the book. She explained that her sister had recommended it as an inspirational tool for the bedroom. we eventually got around to reading the book and found that these kids are quite imaginative, insane maybe, but very imaginative! Five Stars.
The fifth issue of the always monolithic Unsaid Magazine is now available for preorder, shipping very soon and expected already to sell out. Years later, I am still rereading and recommending the first four issues to people like anthologies of the new: it does not age. #5 features new work by:
(Editor’s Note: A while back Roxane Gay reviewed Ben Greenman’s really fine short story collection, What He’s Poised to Do. Ben has another book coming out in early October, Celebrity Chekhov.)
“As an artist you have to have the confidence that it will be original once it passes through you.”
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker and author of numerous books of fiction, including Superbad, Superworse, A Circle is A Balloon and A Compass Both: Stories about Human Love, Correspondences, and Please Step Back. He also writes satirical musicals about the likes of Britney Spears and Sarah Palin; pens a political column by an earth ball; and maintains a website called Letters with Character that invites readers to write their favorite (or, in some cases, least favorite) fictional person.
This summer, Greenman’s What He’s Poised To Do was released by Harper Perennial; the Los Angeles Times called it “astonishing” and publications ranging from the Miami Herald to Bookslut agreed. His new collection, Celebrity Chekhov, publishes later this month. I met Ben in midtown and we wandered over to Bryant Park, where we discussed everything from a story collection’s “Albumness” to the potentially one-fingered Seth Rogen, whom Ben is famous for writing a comic letter to after the movie Superbad (same title as his book) was released.
There’s a great piece over at The Millions on what it means to be a “best bookstore” and how, contra the insidious “death of books/bookstores/reading/literacy” meme that we’re all always seeing spread around, there’s actually a lot to be excited about on these fronts. Among the other fun stuff in the piece, is this offhand list of “the top 10 booksellers in America … Stephanie Anderson from WORD, Emily Pullen from Skylight, Michele Filgate from Riverrun, Rachel Fershleiser from Housing Works…”. The article also mentions a crucial point first made–by Rachel F.–on the Housing Works blog, that many of the best bookstores in NYC have opened rather than closed within the last ten years. Counter-meme, anyone?
Every time you think you know Joshua Cohen, he finds something else to surprise you with. Apparently, homeboy has been (or is now?) publishing a new unpublished piece of short fiction every week on his website. Check out the Paragraph for Liu Xaiobo.
In 1966, Ornette Coleman did something odd. (Or, well, odder than usual for him.) He sat his ten year old son Denardo down at a drum kit in a recording studio and made a record with him called The Empty Foxhole.
Certainly this may not be the product of thinking something through completely. Having a shaky-timed ten-year-old play drums on your free jazz record plays into the “anyone can do that,” (see My Kid Could Paint That) critique leveled against Coleman’s pioneering musical career. And certainly, listening to the album reveals that the young man—now a respected pro—was, to be generous, a bit outmatched by his dad and Charlie Haden.
But what it may lack in musical virtuosity—a concept I will admit I am only passingly familiar with and devoted to, as I am more in the poorly record punk rock/noise/psychedelic/and black metal records camp—it sure does make up for with ENTHUSIASM! Enthusiasm is the wheelhouse of the ten year old. And the nine year old. And the eight year old. Etc. Working from a bed of this youthful enthusiasm, Coleman finds a way to weave some music I really like in and around the constraints of the young man’s limitations.
Here is a writing prompt. Ask a small person to tell you a story. Take notes. Tease out details when you think necessary. Encourage the small person to expand on promising ideas now and then. Mostly, though, just listen.
Treat the notes you have taken as a outline. Write a story or a poem. Whatever it is you write. Be faithful to your co-writer’s enthusiasm. But be your usual writerly virtuoso self within the outline’s constraints.
So I’m putting together a book request form for a course I’m teaching next semester, when I came across this Amazon review for Georges Bataille’s 
Not for Kids!, January 29, 2008
