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The Internet Is For Anger

And really, it makes perfect sense. The pseudo-anonymity of virtual interactions and the anarchic vibe the Internet has going makes it easy to be angry online. Venting about any number of subjects, finely tuning our snark in a witticism dicksizing competition is the perfect panacea for the impotence of quotidian life. I don’t mind anger. It often amuses me, the way people froth at the fingertips to rail against the end of, well, everything. Today, the Internet is angry about Justin Bieber, the 16 year old with the bowl head haircut. I like to think of myself as pop culture savvy but I don’t know much about the Bieber. I know he’s young and cute. I know he sings though I’ve not heard one of his songs. I know tween girls lose their minds over him because he’s just so dreamy. He’s their Ralph Macchio. I swooned over Ralph. I had a Tiger Beat poster of the original (and one true) karate kid on my wall.

The Language of Summer: A Photo Journey

I’ve just been road-tripping and hiking for a week around parts of the South I somehow missed as a kid growing up…in the freaking South. I was struck by the shards of interesting (inter-sting) language I came across. There was the odd sign that read “Paches” instead of “Peaches,” and the randomly hyphenated “To-day” along winding country roads, but also the above wonderfully descriptive poster from Yee-Haw Industries in Knoxville, TN (and also online here). They have great stuff, and their shop is 90% letterpress studio with only a storefront sliver of retail space.

2. The Knoxville Museum of Art had a fabulous exhibition called Vision, Language, and Influence: Photographs of the South by Baldwin Lee, Walker Evans, and Eudora Welty. Great stuff. Some photos from the now-closed exhibition are here. I didn’t know Welty was also a photographer, but I discovered in her photos a wonderful sense of composition, a writerly eye, if you will, creating character and mood and narrative in one shot. The dean of the library I work in uses the phrase One Stop Shopping. I like that for the feeling of completeness I get from her photos.

Here’s one that I loved:

3. Have you ever been to Gatlinburg, TN? What a redneck Disney World. Some t-shirts from a storefront in Gatlinburg:

DeWitt Dark Side Shoplifter eFuck eYourMachine Black Breath

1. Fantastic essay from Helen DeWitt on habit and death @ The Incongruous Quarterly [via Bookslut, who just posted their 99th issue, and includes my interview with Adam Robinson].

2. This dude remade Dark Side of the Moon as if it had been written 8-bit for the Nintendo.

3. A list of the most stolen books at McNally Jackson at the Awl.

4. I kind of love that certain coffee shops are banning eReaders from their premises.

5. Just in case you happen to be looking for some solid new satanic thrash, Black Breath’s Heavy Breathing is helping me get busy this week.

Roundup / 6 Comments
August 3rd, 2010 / 11:46 am

Adam Robinson—

Yesterday I posted the trailer for Eileen Myles’s new book. The book looks amazing, although I don’t disagree with Steven Augustine’s comment that the trailer comes off like a teaser for MTV’s 120 Minutes. Still and all, get that book. You can probably buy it from the author herself at next Thursday’s Belladonna/Dusie reading at Brooklyn’s Book Thug Nation. The reading also features: Cara Benson, Mairéad Byrne, Caroline Crumpacker, Susana Gardner and Kate Zambreno.

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Guest Posts

David Berman and Epistemological Closure in the Propaganda State

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"There is no leisure with dignity in an unfinished world." – DCB, at NYU Writers House, 7/25/10

by Jeremy Schmall

David Berman’s life has been one of failure and refusal. At least, that’s what he said at the very rare talk he gave at NYU on July 25th, the concluding event of the inaugural Open City Summer Writing Workshop. Although the idea of Berman being a failure was news to me—I am an enormous fan of his book of poems (Actual Air) and his former band (Silver Jews)—he does have a point. He didn’t follow up his book with another book, he refused to tour with his band for years, and when he finally capitulated, and the touring started to eke out money and win over a committed fan base, he quit music to fail at writing a memoir, and then nearly created a TV show based on his life, but walked away when he realized what that would look like. But both writing and music are behind him now. What he’s after instead—and which he communicated through a wide-ranging, associative, often sublime speech marked by long, meditative silences—focuses on his father, Richard Berman, a high-paid PR man who creates and disseminates misinformation on behalf of corporate giants. His work effects the choices we all make everyday.

“Every word was once an animal. – Emerson” – Marcus

Today, at Community Thrift on 17th and Valencia, I bought these books for $2.50. The first page of Dear Mr. Capote says “Ed Seifert” in pencil. Wonder if he’s related to George, who won the Super Bowl. Jaroslav won the Nobel Prize. My family farmed the rim of the Dust Bowl and nearly made it stinking rich off a bunch of black sand but didn’t. It seems “Seifert” comes from “cipher.” Encoding words is a form of mathematics. “Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.” – Michael Marcus

Tomorrow I’m reading at Amnesia, at nine o’clock, with Lindsay Hunter, Amelia Gray, and Aaron Burch. Wearing a coonskin cap and a corduroy suit, I will read from my novel for the very first time. The novel is called A Dog On Onondaga. I vow to never finish writing it, but to self-publish new handbound editions whenever I feel like it. Maybe you think that’s vain. Sometimes I stare in the mirror for oceans of time, for no reason. Your opinion of me is so much sand on the beach of yesterday. Three days ago part of me did something immoral; the rest of me has only begun to feel bad. Another part of me wants desperately to be lost in the desert with a backpack full of books; but that can probably wait until the winter of my content. I plan to go to the community pool tomorrow, so that my body will remember what it was like when it was a word. READ MORE >

Excerpts & Roundup / 31 Comments
August 2nd, 2010 / 11:18 pm

Blake Butler

Richard Yates Contest

Tao Lin’s Richard Yates contest, encouraging entries of video or chats about his forthcoming novel, ends tomorrow. Alongside this, Tao has offered to give away copies of Richard Yates to the first 5 people who comment here with 200+ words about one of the people appearing in one of the video entries so far (below). Comment with your email included so prizes can be received. Also, entries to Tao’s contest, with cash prizes and such, remains open until 10 PM Eastern Tuesday.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Contests / 93 Comments
August 2nd, 2010 / 5:23 pm

Jimmy Chen

Grow a spine

Artist Jane Mount paints other people’s bookshelves in her wonderfully playful and strikingly accurate “Ideal Bookshelf” series. That they are (I presume) actual collections and not imaginings, augments the idea of what is “ideal.” A quick click through is very enjoyable. Book designers may find it very instructive how identifiable a book’s spine is, a condensed version of the cover’s visual syntax.

I Like __ A Lot / 4 Comments
August 2nd, 2010 / 5:08 pm

Lily Hoang

All made up

Today’s some made-up holiday, which means places are closed, so to celebrate, here‘s a new story by Nick Mamatas. It’s a weird little ditty with lols a-plenty, I mean, if you like that kind of stuff, laughing, I mean, out loud.

And here, Johannes Goransson says a metaphor to explain his vision of an ideal poem is an “infestation of language.” I like that.

And here, Michael Kimball says he likes pizza and ice cream. I like pizza and ice cream too.

And, just for holiday kicks, she got married yesterday, and seriously, the big story is about her dress.