What does it mean for a work of fiction to be “experimental?”
It means to depart from the norm and try something new. In every generation of writers, 90% just follow the conventions, while 10% are experimenting with new approaches, new techniques–some of which become conventions and then are imitated by 90% of the next generation. Those who want to be professional writers look to see what’s selling, and try to imitate those; those who want to be experimental writers avoid what’s selling and look to the other arts or disciplines for ideas on how to expand the novel’s repertoire.
Josh Cook interviews Steven Moore
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September 8th, 2010 / 2:35 pm
September 8th, 2010 / 2:35 pm
Eraserhead on One Page
Kim Duchateau portrays the entirety of Eraserhead in a one page comic strip for a weekly feature of such one page cartoons in Belgian magazine Humo. [via Not Coming]
Official Word Made Flesh Book Trailer Now Officially Official (and Live!)
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September 8th, 2010 / 11:37 am
September 8th, 2010 / 11:37 am
Colony Wife Box Fairy Boy
1. A second preview of the final issue of Lamination Colony has been posted in the form of Joyelle McSweeney’s “Welcome a Revolution”
2. @ Writing Prompts, Joe Hall is interviewed about his Pigafetta is My Wife, including writing advice:
Slaughter a pig, plank okra, join the commune, build a structure with indigenous materials, persecute your enemies, embrace your friends.
Most award winning poetry is just awful.
Buy my book.
For every procedure used to write a poem, develop and implement a counter procedure. You can sort it out at the end.
Pray to your god.
Stay in shape.
Don’t buy my book.
Write.
3. At Your Brain’s Black Box, Ben Spivey interviews Sasha Fletcher
4. Red Issue of the Fairy Tale Review has been released.
5. @ Largehearted Boy, Andrew Ervin’s Book Notes for his newly released and beautiful Extraordinary Renditions.
Andre Agassi on Writing
“In tennis you’re on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement, which inevitably leads to self-talk, and for me the self-talk starts here in the afternoon shower. This is when I begin to say things to myself, crazy things, over and over, until I believe them.”
Amelia Gray’s Museum of the Weird
This is one for the decade, and came out today. You are going to need at least 1-3 copies. I’d say more but you probably already know. Or here are blurbs.
“Amelia Gray’s Museum of the Weird is a cabinet of curiosities—a talking armadillo, a serial killer named God, a woman who amputates her toes for dinner, a man married to a paring knife—this collection of stories is so good and funny and wondrous that I couldn’t look away from her dark and curious imagination.”—Michael Kimball
“To say Amelia Gray belongs in the hilariously inventive hallows of Ann Quin and Rikki Ducornet would be to miss her light. This book is gleaming evidence of the author as a trophy case unto herself, wrought of magic equally surprising, wicked, giddy, and loaded with a megaton of Boom.”—Blake Butler
[Here is a sample text from the book: There Will Be Sense.]
Get get now. Do the get. Get the real: straight from FC2.
Or also available here.
Sartre publishes “The Wall” on his facebook wall
54 Comments
September 7th, 2010 / 6:23 pm
September 7th, 2010 / 6:23 pm
Nick Antosca—
The Republican Party in Arizona is recruiting homeless people to run as Green Party candidates in order to siphon off Democratic votes. Short story writer Richard Grayson won the Sixth Congressional District Green nomination with six votes, and says he is now being sued by the Green Party for being a sham candidate.
6
I Learned Important Things in School
I have been in school for nearly 32 years with a few years off during my twenties to solve existential crises and the like. I don’t know much but I do know school and I have gone as far as one can possibly go. In a couple weeks, I will defend my dissertation and I have already started working as an assistant professor at a university in the middle of a cornfield so it’s safe to say that I will probably always be in school in one way or another.
Education is not something that has to happen in the classroom. I often tell my students they will learn just as much, if not more, beyond the classroom, by living life and losing at life and learning what to do with the critical thinking we try to instill in them. Anyone with a library card can get a valuable education. Self-taught scholars abound. Education is also a privilege. To be adequately prepared to succeed in college and to be able to afford college, either through financial aid or having your family pay for your education is a real gift and one not available to nearly enough of the people who want a college education. I believe the education system harbors an inherent bias to people who are white and/or middle class or wealthy but I also believe a good formal education has helped more people than it has harmed. Whenever a student complains about something like the amount of reading or writing I assign (to be fair, quite a bit), I like to remind them that they choose to be in college and if they don’t like it, they can move on to a different opportunity. They can also drop my class. I don’t mind. There are all kinds of things wrong with the education system but I don’t think there’s enough talk about what that the education system does right or at least I would like to talk about what a good education has done for me.
55 Comments
September 7th, 2010 / 5:17 pm
September 7th, 2010 / 5:17 pm
Nick Antosca—
My friends over at RapGenius put up a pretty excellent post on the triple entendre in hip-hop. I tried to think of some triple entendres off the top of my head, and now the top of my head hurts.