Sasha Fletcher reads it up on Apostrophe Cast.
Science Is Fiction was a big wow for me, I recommend finding yourself a copy, if only to see this in all its glory. I saw it on a projector and very loud, which was a good thing to do. The DVD had been skipping the whole time but for some reason on this one not at all, it reminds me of J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World.
Bear with me. People have opinions about Jonathan Franzen. These opinions are rarely mild. There’s something about his personality and the way he negotiates his public image that invites discussion. I thought I had an opinion about Jonathan Franzen but the more I think about it, the more I realize he is not part of my literary vocabulary. If I never read another book of his again, my life would not come to an end. I loved The Corrections. That seems like a contradiction. I thought The Corrections was a great story, meandering and sweeping and engaging. But I’ve only read it once. I loved it but have never felt compelled to pick the book up again so maybe I don’t love The Corrections. Maybe I just really like it. I am excited to read Franzen’s forthcoming novel, Freedom, which I will be enjoying with The Rumpus Book Club. On Facebook, I think, I saw someone (Kyle Minor?) observe that people seem to enjoy taking down successful, ambitious people in reference to a lot of the recent commentary in various outlets about the VQR “situation.” I do not necessarily disagree. Successful, ambitious people are easy targets because we see them plainly and we have opinions about what they do and how we would do what they do and whether or not they deserve to those things they do and the privileges they enjoy because of how well or the public perception of how well they do the things they do.
Keith Montesano is the author of the newly released and stunningly black and bracing Ghost Lights, his debut from Dream Horse Press. At his First Book Interviews blog, he conducts a series of interviews with writers upon the publication of their first book, detailing the experience and the feeling of the completion of a first work, and I asked him to do the same with his own questions.
How often had you sent out Ghost Lights before it was selected for publication by Dream Horse Press?
I sent the book out 60 times before I received an email from J.P. Dancing Bear telling me that I was a finalist for the Orphic Prize and that the press was able to publish the finalists that year.
Was the title always Ghost Lights? Did it go through any other changes?
A good chunk of the book was my MFA thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University, when it was called About Ravishment. I remember sitting with some friends at a bar near VCU, and when I told them the title of the manuscript I was sending out, which they knew was the title of my thesis, I got some weird looks. I was asked if other titles were kicking around, and I told them I’d been thinking about Ghost Lights. Then I got the looks that said, “I think you found your title.”
Did you read these two pieces at the Poetry Foundation about the prize-winning poet whose prize-winning poems about Hurricane Katrina were mostly stolen verbatim from narratives by the non-prize-winning people who actually suffered through the storm and its aftermath? The first piece is by Abe Louise Young, proprietor of Alive in Truth, the site from which the narratives were taken. The second piece is by Raymond McDaniel, the poet who made use of them, and in it he discusses his process of composing the book and attempts to contextualize and justify said use. Both pieces are interesting, though I think that McDaniel’s is most notable for its defensive tone and refusal to deal directly with the concerns raised about his work. I’d be interested to hear what people think about this, though I want to offer the following caveat: anyone who types the words “Kathy Acker” or “David Shields” in re this is a fucking asshole. There I said it.
Another good piece on the late lamented Frank Kermode- “The Literary Critic as Humanist” at Slate.
There’s a new William Deresiewicz piece at The Nation. It’s about Javier Marias.
Franz Nicolay and Peter Bognanni talking to each other. That’s good.
Tao talks dirty at Thought Catalog. “I remember focusing on doing things with my fingers in a manner I felt would be conducive to her orgasming.” Me too, ‘bro.’
David Backer on Shane Jones: It made me write this in the margin on page 26: “it’s as if we can occupy a fantasy world of two-dimensional humanity hoping that truth will come to us. we sit and read literature like this as if we’re eunuchs in some feudal court, prancing around with velvet clothes and bells attached to our shoes trying out-somersault one another while beyond the windowless walls of the castle billions of people live dynamic and variegated lives, in many cases suffering at our expense.”
Paste magazine has suspended print subscription (read=folded) but their website seems to still exist, and may continue to exist. Fingers crossed.
Oh and hey, did you hear the one about the lunatic who took people hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters? Well, he’s dead now, but his website lives on. Apparently his main demand is for “daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas.” Wow. Anything that starts with Daniel Quinn is going to end poorly; just saying. Read the rest savetheplanetprotest.com.
While we’re on the Harmony Korine again, there is a new short film called Act Da Fool by him on the Proenza Schoulder site. It is retarded gorgeous. In a related Q&A on the site he refers to it as his version of The Ten Commandments. [Thanks to Mike Kitchell for the point.]
Hey, let’s just do this once, okay? This picture was emailed to me by the journalist and photographer Alberto Riva, a man I’ve never met. It came with this note- “Hi Justin – I just read your book on a beach in Corsica, and I thought you might like to see a photo.” You thought right, Alberto, and thanks! Alberto’s got a website, and there’s some great stuff on there, including these images of New York, and a talk about photography with Lou Reed.
Matthew Simmons invited me to talk Apocalypse for Hobart. Our conversation is now live (and has been for a while, but I’ve been lazy/away).
I wrote an essay for the “Selling Shorts” series at Beatrice.com on “The Crazy Thought” by David Gates.
I gave this reading list to InDigest magazine.
I participated in a series called “The Great American Novel: An Honor Roll of Fallen Genres.” This is is in the new issue of Canteen (#6) which is available now or very soon. My response is not online, though Tao Lin’s is. Speaking of which, keep an eye peeled for the September Bookforum, which will feature a review of Lin’s latest by local favorite Joshua Cohen. Worlds collide! I’ve got a piece on Matthew Sharpe’s You Were Wrong in the same issue.
And last but not least, all of Brooklyn hails the return of Drew Toal, former Time Out (New York) books guy, erstwhile contributor to this blog, once and future roommate of yours truly–all his shit is in the living room and he is nowhere to be found. Now I am going to go and drink his beer. (UPDATE: That turned out to not be Drew’s beer.) Welcome home!
And to everyone else, thanks for bearing with. We won’t be doing this again anytime soon.
Sorry to be picking on my hometown blog commenters here, but seriously, does no one understand meter?
I mean, I know I’m just a fiction writer and all, but I at least sort of get it. I think. Maybe I shouldn’t let this get to me, but we’re only talking about a couple of syllables here. And it’s not like the limerick is a sestina or something. It’s really not that complicated.
There once was a man with a stein,
Who thought Coors Light was just fine,
‘Till his friend said “fuck it,
just drink out of the Honey Bucket
you’ll think that shit is wine.”
Posted by Skip on August 25, 2010 at 11:29 am
1. Also officially out today, the amazing The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich, which truly lives up to its hype: it’s enormous and insane + magic. Full review forthcoming.
2. @ Not Coming, a 3 part review of the Back to the Future series. (1) (2) (3)
3. @ the Guardian, Harmony Korine has a list of things he knows, including: “When I hear the song “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” by Three 6 Mafia, it’s like listening to the gospels…” & “I didn’t really research anything for my film Trash Humpers, I just did it – just lived like a homeless person and it was great.”