RIP 1927-2010
Ok seriously, this year needs to quit now.
If Alvin Lucier had a Youtube account….
First, the inspiration. Listen to the Alvin Lucier track “I Am Sitting in a Room,” here.
***
Done?
Okay, watch this.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEIzS_27Vt0&feature=related
Now watch what it looks like after 50 uploads and rips:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5hbbsFGDhk&feature=related
And, after the cut, watch what it looks like after 1000 uploads and rips. It’s gorgeous. READ MORE >
Ken Baumann—
The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes. (from an article titled Memory Is Fiction)
35
It’s No Use, Everything Is Fucked: An Interview With Ben Brooks
To celebrate the release of Ben Brooks’s superlative new novel(la) AN ISLAND OF FIFTY, he and I corresponded across the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean via electronic mail.
MLP publisher J.A. Tyler has graciously offered to give away a free copy of Ben’s book to the commenter who gives the most interesting answer to this question (apropos Ben’s book): What would you miss most if civilization were to be dismantled?
Interview after the jump…
Uncategorized / 101 Comments
June 4th, 2010 / 5:31 pm
June 4th, 2010 / 5:31 pm
It is Fry-day: Go Right Ahead
Teenagers, drunk, disheveled, excited…they ruined our party.
What is the feeling when you’re driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?
Like you haven’t slept in the kitchen.
And now listen now old buck old wild sunombitch don’t you get drunk today.
I’ll walk across the damn prairie by myself.
Always staying late, freeloading, shouting, foolish.
There will be no music, just dancing.
I am hightingled on the beer.
All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
Disorderly, lost.
Dude, don’t go halfway.
That’s being blackened, from the inside.
Justin Taylor—
HEY NEW YORK- Tomorrow is the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe Street Fair. It’ll be going all day (10a-6p) with free live music and lots of really cheap books. Last year (six months ago? whenever it was–last time) I got The Oxford Book of Letters, edited by Frank Kermode and his wife, for a dollar. But don’t worry, they’ll also have books that real people actually want, and those books will be a dollar each, too. Plus clothing, records, savory meats, and more. Full details here.
Regarding the Cover Letter Summary
As I remember it, it was once common to write cover letters for magazine submissions that started out like this:
Please consider my 3,444 word story “The Reinvigoration of Ronaldo” for publication in Fine Literary Journal Produced Either Independently or By the Grace of University Support. In “The Reinvigoration of Ronaldo,” the title character is running late for the most important meeting of his career, until he learns that life has more to offer for those willing to forsake punctuality.
It’s the second sentence I’m most curious about here, the summary of the story being submitted, modeled here after dozens of similar cover letters I’ve received at various magazines (but with all of the details being made up). When I first started submitting to literary magazines, this is exactly what books like the yearly Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market suggested you do (although I have to say that I thankfully never followed their suggestion). I haven’t bought a copy of that book in years, but recently had a chance to look through someone else’s, where I saw that they’ve moved to a cover letter that leaves out the summary, a move I certainly appreciate and that I think is generally agreed on. As an editor, I know the summary almost never endears me to read the story in question, partly because any summary of a short story tends to be incredibly (and negatively) reductive.
My question here isn’t whether or not submitters should leave off the summary–I think they most definitely should–but whether or not the summarizing itself is harmful to the writers who practice it.
Dick Context
Last night I told a male co-worker slash friend that I had a lot of good meat for him. I was in a hurry to give away CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) meat that my wife had ordered from an expensive organic farm, as I didn’t want it to go bad like our previous batch. This morning I re-read the text and realized the innuendos, if taken without context. My co-worker slash friend had never received a call or text from me; I had his phone number for some incidental reason. My co-worker slash friend does not know that I am not a homosexual or pervert. I am just a guy he works with, a guy who one night abruptly told him that he had a lot of good meat for him. This morning I texted him explaining that the “good meat” was not my penis, in a diplomatic way that did not explicitly mention my penis. Words have meaning, but so do the areas around those words. There were some wieners though, so cosmic/semantic harmony is not completely lost on us.