5 back of the turkey thaw gloves

1. Reading includes Brett Elizabeth Jenkins (poetry here) and Christopher Newgent (genius)  in Indianapolis. Friday, July 23rd, 7:30, Calvin Fletcher Coffee Co. While In Indy, you could drop by Kurt Vonnegut’s house (his baby hand print in the concrete of the steps) or not. And so it goes.

5. Pekar on Jazz.

17. This new Adam Langer book/satire (review, review) looks pretty dern interesting and getting buzz for shots at mainstream publishers.

3. Does anyone else read two books at once? Has worked for me lately, and glows best if the two books are vastly different (i.e. I am now reading David Shields death book and Harrison’s desperate prose poem letters to Yesenin). I weave them, usually chapter/chapter and it stays fresh and maybe the compliment/contrast in my brain and also so far the Harrison book is kicking Mr. Shield’s ass.

23. Fuck twitter.

Roundup / 27 Comments
July 13th, 2010 / 11:10 am

At BOMBLOG, a conversation between Shane Jones and me, with an intro by Tom Roberge, Penguin’s editor for Light Boxes.

For What It’s Worth

There were 127 respondents to my survey about publishing, but the free account at Survey Monkey limits results to 100 people. All the other responses are sitting behind some Internet wall, trying to get me to spend $19.95.

So, below, are the responses I got for free. A very hearty thank you to everyone who participated. I won’t argue that this survey was perfectly-composed, but it was at least anecdotally helpful for me, and thought provoking. I assume I’ll be honing these questions over time and coming back with more questions.

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Presses & Word Spaces / 32 Comments
July 12th, 2010 / 1:51 pm

Seriously, 2010. Fuck off.

Harvey Pekar

Author News / 66 Comments
July 12th, 2010 / 12:43 pm

Translation, Representation, and my Confusion

In this week’s NYRB, Tim Parks reviewed Best European Fiction 2010, an anthology published by Dalkey, edited and with an introduction by Aleksandar Hemon and a forward by Zadie Smith. Parks discusses the demographic of contributors, mentioning that Europe isn’t fully represented in this anthology of “best European” writing. Heavy-hitting writer countries like Germany, Sweden, Greece, and the Czech Republic are absent. So I wonder: Would an anthology of “Best American” writing need contributors from every state? I’d examine my copy of Best American, but I don’t own it. Someone else, please, do.

Parks goes on to say:

“Represented” is hardly the right word. Many of the stories do not take place in the writers’ native countries: the pieces from Castilian Spain and Serbia take place in France, the French story in Japan, the stories from Poland and Macedonia in Austria, the story from Croatia in Hungary, the story from England in France; most curiously, the story translated from Gaelic tells of an old blind clairvoyant in rural Bolivia. / I have no problem with this. All the contributions are interesting and some impressive. That is enough for me. But it does make one wonder whether we are learning much about other cultures from this venture, whether it is true, as Hemon claims, that “ceaseless” and “immediate” translation of literature from abroad is a “profound, non-negotiable need.”

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Uncategorized / 79 Comments
July 12th, 2010 / 11:03 am

On “A Handful of Dust”

Evelyn Waugh finished A Handful of Dust by practically stapling his short story “The Man Who Liked Dickens” at the end of the manuscript, lending its somewhat disjointed and unexpected ending, in which our hero is kidnapped in Brazil and forced to read Charles Dickens to his captor for the rest of his life — a tight smirk, I suppose. The novel was first serialized in Harper’s Bazaar (then with literature content), who asked Waugh to write an alternative ending which skipped the ill-fated trip to Brazil. In this ending, often included in the appendix, our hero, having waived a divorce, simply comes home to his adulterous wife under the same charade from which he had tried to escape. In the closing scene, he keeps on dozing off in the car on the way back home. Waugh’s remark, I think, is that both fates — however exotic or prosaic — are a kind of inextricable death, one in which we are all destined towards. A passport is a chapbook offering self-publishings of where we’ve been, which is short for who we think we are. The best amnesty is at home.

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Author Spotlight / 19 Comments
July 12th, 2010 / 8:31 am

A movie called Predators came out this weekend, involving a species of vicious aliens who drop a bunch of humans onto a “game preserve” jungle planet to hunt them.  On the same day, I published a story called “Predator Bait,” involving shlubby men who try to hook up with young girls on the internet.  I now realize both pieces could be improved by combining them, so that Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishbourne et al have to survive on a hostile jungle planet while fleeing shlubby men who want to molest them.

Just listened to Samuel “Chip” Delaney (of Hogg and Dhalgren) read a long, amiable, detail-rich story about a fellow who likes eat his own excrement and semen.  Feel sort of fatalistic, for some reason.

A Literary Science Fair, Chicago, Tonight

The Chicago Underground Library celebrates the return of the “Science of Obscurity,” featuring new, unpublished, and in-progress works presented as science fair experiments. The night will also feature a public “book launch” via catapult, scientist speed dating, and digital readings to warm your hardened techie heart. Left and right brains come together, print <3s digital, everyone wins when the laws of physics and literature collide.

Join an awesome line up of writers, designers, and publishers as they intricately explain the scientific principles underlying their work, real or imagined. Reading experiments with Jen Karmin! Storigami with Zach Dodson! Distress charts with A D Jameson! Teenage taxonomies with Mairead Case! Curmudgeonly cuttlefish with Libby Walker! Hand-cranked projector mad libs with Two With Water! All participants will also have work for sale.

Special projects from the Society of Furthering Truth (SOFT), The Book Bike, readings from Featherproof Books’ iPhone application TripleQuick, surprise musical guests, video interviews with the CUL crew about your favorite forgotten and under-recognized Chicago publishers and writers, and Scientist Speed Dating! Yes! We said Scientist Speed Dating. You’ll have two minutes to ask real honest-to-goodness scientists any burning questions of your choice like why recycled paper tastes better and how quickly to induce vomiting after consuming The Christmas Sweater.

This event is free and for all ages.

Logistics
Saturday, 10 July 2010, 7–10pm
Jupiter Outpost (1139 W. Fulton Market, Chicago)
Food and drink will be available for sale

Events / 16 Comments
July 10th, 2010 / 4:40 pm

Peter Straub, a few minutes ago (paraphrased from memory): “Literary writers working with a surreal or supernatural concept tend to be content to just describe it in detail.  A genre writer is more likely to feel compelled to turn it into a story, which may succeed brilliantly or fail miserably, but has more potential to be a satisfactory turn.”