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“Whose arm is this?”  She said, “That’s my mother’s arm.”  Again, typical, right?  And I said, “Well, if that’s your mother’s arm, where’s your mother?”  And she looks around, completely perplexed, and she said, “Well, she’s hiding under the table.”

– Errol Morris on anosognosia and much much more, in five parts. Starts here.

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ATTN NYC: Firework Release Party

[a guest heads-up for the NY set]

To the New York set of the HTMLGIANT clique,
Today is the official release of Firework by Eugene Marten, and
tonight is the reading/release party. It would be great to see all you
guys and girls. One, because I miss you all so much. Two, because it
would just be nice for you to come out and support the spirit of
independent presses and the release of what my biased ass thinks is
the best thing to run through a printing press for some time. I’m
making this wicked drink called a GARDEN SNAKE (secret ingredients)
and there will be stuff to nibble at for those of us who still pretend
to eat. And Eugene will be reading. The Mercantile Library is a nice
place and it should be a really warm and friendly event. Unless I get
drunk and ruin all of that (it happens). So, you know that guy or girl
that you finally got the nerve to ask out to dinner tonight and they
said YES (ahmagah) you think you might be in love and that they could
be the one? Stand him or her up. Or better yet, bring them along. And
if he or she doesn’t want to come, then that’s a huge red flag that he
or she doesn’t deserve you. You’re better than that and you know it.
And if you just needed someone to make out with, then I’ll be there
tonight for specifically that purpose, so just pull me in the bathroom
at any point and it’s on.

Firework by Eugene Marten Launch Party
7:00, June 25th 2010
upstairs at The Mercantile Library/The Center for Fiction
17 East 47th Street
NY, NY

Any problems finding it, just call me (917-539-3963).

Thanks. You guys are really great.

Events / 14 Comments
June 25th, 2010 / 6:10 pm

The light from outside

The kaleidoscopic light promises us things, that we will be better engaged at some point. Our time is oft useless, but inside the shimmering fragments we find hospice and tentative repose. Yes, that was somewhat manipulative; I was obviously trying to tie biblical stained glass and iPhone apps together, their rows of minutiae narratives. Ever walk into a dark bar and see someone looking down at their dumbphone with a halo of light on their face? The text that never comes is not a writer’s plight, but we who wait at bars. “Be there in 5,” they all say. To the rows of people in cathedrals, praying, praying — they have their share of waiting too. I say no to these broken rainbows, no to these cruel seductive colors. A fly can only see a million shards of the same scene; its world is broken and short lived. I want to have a heart whole enough to stare at a wall for hours, on which a fly rests as some annoying period for a never written sentence.

Random / 12 Comments
June 25th, 2010 / 5:43 pm

“To Be Natural Is Such A Difficult Pose To Keep Up”

Salvador Dali and Gala Dali (1936)

Blockquotes excerpted from Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp,” dedicated to Oscar Wilde.

READ MORE >

Excerpts & Film & Roundup / 50 Comments
June 25th, 2010 / 2:46 pm
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I just bought 4 books from Dzanc for $32.

8
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I love HTMLGIANT commenter I. Fontana’s new story in Juked. Just as I loved his amazing Jean Harlow story in Spork a while back, which I think was the first short story I read of his.

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HORRIBLE POEMS FROM HORRIBLE EMAILS

SOUPBJBB

From an email:

“We’ve started a blog called Horrible Poems from Horrible Emails.

Basically, we take emails that are boring, asinine, tedious, or just plain horrible and turn them into equally horrible poems.

If you or your friends have some emails that fit the bill, please submit them to HorriblePoemsHorribleEmails@gmail.com and we’ll see what, if anything, we can do.

Hopefully we can do at least one a day.

Emails don’t have to be particularly raunchy or obscene. They just have to have the potential to be an awesome (by awesome I mean bad) poem. “

Web Hype / 20 Comments
June 25th, 2010 / 9:59 am

Suggested Pairings: Icehouse and Meg Pokrass/Cooper Renner

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu0uOONkX-E

As I rule I suggest you marry yourself first. Take a moment. OK. Today we will marry a chapbook with a domestic beer.

“Lost and Found” (elimae stories) is glow for the hammock, though I suggest an older model, one swaying for seasons and made of fishing line—as in cutting into flesh–and below it a brush pile with a brown rat you name Brown Rat. You feed Brown Rat crumbling Cheetos. I think these flashes are fragile, about to collapse, falling, as in you/me/us…They disintegrate you forward.

She’s ruined this before.

Abfulled Plank Road (Miller) since 1885, Icehouse pours to a golden yellow, basically the color of human urine in the later stages of renal failure, but don’t let my description (sorry, former RN here) put you off your feed. You probably have some hazy nostalgia—possibly college, a dorm room bathtub full of ice and balthazars of beer?

“I’m not very modern, I’m afraid,” she said.

Outdated things make me sad, like the word, “howdy.”

READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 2 Comments
June 25th, 2010 / 9:55 am
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Emerging Writers Network put together an alternate list of 20.

“There is obviously much to praise about the work that is published by New York houses, and in The New Yorker, as well as the authors on the New Yorker list.  Nonetheless, we feel it is the independent presses who best represent the heart and soul of understanding what is going on in literary fiction today, and the writers included here have all struck a chord with that community. Each of these writers deserves to have his or her work championed and read by anyone who values great writing.”

274
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“When I originally checked “Less Than Zero” out of the library, years ago, I found a pubic hair lodged between two pages, and this seemed significant.”

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