The Coming Envelope

Compelling format from BookThug’s new literary journal, The Coming Envelope:

The Coming Envelope is BookThug’s new publication of experimental prose fiction edited and designed by Malcolm Sutton. Every issue features work from five writers. It accommodates hard-to-classify work by those already treading various precipices: uncomfortable here, courting the perverse, typographically observant, exposed to the elements, politically not unaware, falling alongside language.

Issue 1 features work by: Jacob Wren, Sheila Heti, Lily Hoang & Debra Di Blasi, John Goldbach, and Lee Henderson.

$10, on sale now.

Presses / Comments Off on The Coming Envelope
July 20th, 2010 / 3:26 pm

McCarthy Lives

In a year of many masters dead, today is Cormac McCarthy’s 78th birthday. Tyler Flynn Dorholt started a thread on FB for sharing some favorite lines in celebration. Really it could be most any of his lines in most any of his books. Add your favorites here?

“Friends row by row watched his passing and waved at him with their fingers and whispered among themselves. Who’d spoke of disorders of the soul and news of the night. When you asked for the shop of the heart’s apothecary we thought you mad. We saw you took down to the brainsurgeon’s keep, deep in the cellar, under the street. Where saws sang in stoven skulls and wet bonemeal blew from an airshaft in the alleyway. Out there in the blue moonlight a gray shecorpse being loaded into a truck. It pulled away into the night. Horned minstrels, small dancing dogs in harlequin garb followed after.” – Suttree

Happy bday, big dog.

Author Spotlight / 74 Comments
July 20th, 2010 / 1:01 pm

THE SICK CITY “CHANGING SEATS ON THE TITANIC” TOUR 2010

Tony O’Neill’s new novel Sick City drops today, and in the wake of it he’s hitting the road. If you are in the trajectory, have a mark! Annotated dates after the break, including NYC, TX & CA…

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Author Spotlight / 28 Comments
July 20th, 2010 / 10:04 am

“I’ve handled colour as a man should behave. You may conclude that I consider ethics and aesthetics as one.” – Josef Albers

Clicking through on the above piece will take you to a magical world where everything suddenly makes sense and nothing is inconsequential. (Jimmy already blogged this here, but I’d like to use it for context here.)

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Random / 8 Comments
July 20th, 2010 / 5:09 am
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The Paris Review is unaccepting previously accepted poems, citing change of editorship. Daniel Nester has the scoop.

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chemically free but not in a straight edge kind of way

“The real story, which we have grown unaccustomed to, is chemically free of explanation. . . . The story is always about something unexplainable. The art of narration declines as explanations are added.” -Cesar Aira

Power Quote / 37 Comments
July 19th, 2010 / 7:39 pm

“You have no idea how repulsive it is to borrow a pencil only to discover it is a mimi kakki”


Sometimes I turn on one of the local Western Massachusetts channels and there is a commercial to promote the news. You see an anchor, then the anchor’s name, then the anchor talking in earnest about their roots in the area. “I’m Slop Slowdorf,” they might say. “I renewed my wedding vows at the Dr. Seuss Memorial. The Slowdorfs have lived in Springfield for six generations. How lucky am I to live and work in the same town where I grew up?” And watching this commercial I grow terrified and throw soup at the television. READ MORE >

Craft Notes / 16 Comments
July 19th, 2010 / 1:56 pm
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I am currently finishing up what will be the final issue of Lamination Colony, at least in its current incarnation. Big machine, this last piece. In the spirit, I am opening submissions to anyone for the rest of today, until midnight east coast time. I will probably only take a couple pieces, as it’s already large and scary, but send me something totally ridiculous and terrifying, please. Responses will be sent if I have room, otherwise likely just thank you in advance. Send to: laminationcolony [at] gmail [dot] com.

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What the heck? Ugly Duckling Presse doing eBooks? Yep, and with Issuu no less. Awesome.

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Do You Mean What You Say?

Are the enemies of God welcome here at the Bay Shore Mennonite church? Verse 11 of Matthew 5 reads, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” But, seriously, what if the enemies of God (whatever that means) walked into church one Sunday morning screaming obscenities or staging a hunger strike in front of the podium? I seriously doubt the Mennonites would be down. Not to mention, this sign is probably not saying what it means (or meaning what it says for that matter). Does it mean, “Praise and worship the enemies of God” or “The enemies of God are welcome here” or “Praise and worship. The enemies of God, with reference to the Beatitudes. Welcome” ?

Look at this (bathroom poetics No. 3):

I believe that someone in the bathroom stall at Smokin’ Joes was tired after a few beers, a few missed opportunities, too much inhaled smoke. I believe it because it’s a likely scenario. But welcoming the enemies of God into your place of worship is not as likely on a number of levels, the most obvious being that “enemies of God” is the dumbest phrase in the world. Not that I am a realist, by a long shot. I like unlikely scenarios when the writer gives me the freedom (leeway, wiggle room) to not believe them literally.

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Craft Notes & Random / 6 Comments
July 19th, 2010 / 9:29 am