It is Friday: Go Right Ahead.

I spent whole summers at Neauphle alone except for drink.

I don’t know the medical term for it.

Alcohol was invented to help us bear the void in the universe–the motion of the planets, the imperturbable wheeling through space, their silent indifference to the place of our pain.

I used to work out systems for doing the same as everyone else.

Alcohol’s job is to replace creation.

But alcohol can’t produce anything that lasts. It’s just wind.

We live in a world paralyzed with principles.

I’d forgotten how to walk.

Nor is there any consolation for stopping drinking.

Duras.

Random / 12 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 6:19 pm

Literary Dopplegangers

Justin Taylor and Priestess singer/guitarist Mikey Heppner


Gain some weight. Grow your hair out. Off you go.

(Jimmy Chen blackmailed me into putting this up. Sooooo:

Berobed Jimmy Chen and berobed rapping Buddhist monk Mr. Happiness

Gain some weight. Keep your hair short. Off you go.)

Additional material after the cut. READ MORE >

Author Spotlight & Random / 6 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 5:35 pm

Dating

Behind the Scenes / 22 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 4:57 pm
—

Justin is on Electric Literature and the story’s kinda badass. E.g.: “I don’t know dick about Latin but some things are just obvious and sometimes I think that’s what God is: the obvious, resplendent and intractable and dumb.” (Sorry I didn’t notice this sooner.)

6

Washington D.C. Show: Call + Response

Call+Response poster

Opening tomorrow at the Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington D.C. is Call + Response, a show consisting of the paired work of sixteen D.C. writers and sixteen D.C. artists. According to the press release, the show grew out of co-curators Kira Wisniewski and William Bert’s desire to draw together two groups in D.C.: writers and visual artists.

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Web Hype / 11 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 2:22 pm

FINANCIAL UNREST

“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea — cruising, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.”

– Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

Power Quote / 88 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 1:56 pm

How Do You Deal with Endings?

In an hour, a car service is coming to get me. It will bring to me to La Guardia, where I will wait two hours for my flight to arrive. On that flight, I will hopefully not be seated next to people who smell or who make smacking noises with their mouths, nor people who are feeling talkative. I will probably read and work on some stuff for school. Mostly what I will do, probably, is I will listen to Ryan Adams–it has to be music completely disconnected from any event–and stare forward, and wonder how it is possible that I have left the place where I, only so many hours prior, was.

For better or for worse–when it comes to the everyday, doubtless for worse–endings mean the most to me. Reading, writing, “relationships,” split-second goodbyes, drawn out goodbyes that never satisfy, leaving New York City after what amounts to a month here. While reading, I’ll cover up the last few sentences of a book–any book–with my hand until my eyes get there. I almost hold my breath. An ending is an opening, a deep and unmendable rending. While writing, I’ll ensure that the ending unravels, de-sutures, overturns what precedes it. I can control my endings on the page. I want them to spill the weight of the work into a neuter space or something.

Off the page, I am a masterful botcher of endings.

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Craft Notes / 26 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 1:38 pm

Giant–and I do mean GIANT–Interview with Ronnie Scott, editor of The Lifted Brow

So as part of “Night of the Week of the Lifted Brow” Week here, I asked Lifted Brow editor Ronnie Scott a handful of questions about editing his magazine, about the Australian publishing scene, and about his own work as a writer. What he returned to me, less than a day later, is such an embarrassment of riches that I hardly know what to do–other than publish it, obviously.  Also, in case you missed them, earlier this week we ran excerpts from TLB 6– “Little Cayman” by Christine Schutt, and “Nicaragua” by Deb Olin Unferth and Clancy Martin.

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Uncategorized / 14 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 11:35 am

A Child’s Mind, Travel and Failure

David Yoder

This morning as I was catching up on MobyLives I came across a video of David Foster Wallace discussing the productive failure of traveling. It was filmed in 2006 while he was in Italy and if you watch it you will hear DFW say, “Everything that is a failure is also a victory,” and you will see Jonathan Franzen chuckling to himself and leaning back in his chair, which, as we all know, is Jonathan Franzen’s favorite pastime. In any case, 2006 was the first (as only?) time that DFW had been to a country where English was not the predominate language and his failure to be able communicate caused him to feel like a child, or more accurately an infant. He had to pay closer attention to others faces and gestures. He had to slow down.

I am leaving the country on Wednesday and I won’t be back until winter has left this hemisphere. I’m doing this for a number of reasons but the most interesting of which is to write. I suppose what I’m writing doesn’t matter much because any plans I have now are sure to change. The point, I think, is to put myself in an environment where I am clueless, where I have to pay closer attention to the banal, where I am forced to adapt, to learn and to fail.

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Craft Notes / 12 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 11:29 am

i may be old but i can still read

Alec’s post got me thinking. See: in a couple months, I’ll be a decade older than Alec. A decade! Whereas those of you already past your twenties will kick me for saying it: I’m already mourning the loss of my youth. I’ve been mourning it since I turned 24! (And to be fair, I didn’t really start writing until then…)

But why? Why are people so revved up about Alec’s post? Why is age such a sensitive issue?

One day, I’ll probably look like this:

Well, ok, maybe I won’t be wearing the hat & I won’t be missing teeth, but my point is that one day, I’ll be old & you’ll be old & Ryan Call hopes he’ll still be blogging here when he’s in his 50’s.

I’m getting off point though.

There are virtues in being young, sure. Virginia Woolf thought the best “season” for reading was between 18 and 24. I’m way past my reading prime! And the truth of it is, I care a lot more about my “reading prime” than my “writing prime.” Writers can write whenever. There’s no cap, no time limit. If anything, when I’m as old as the woman in the picture, I’ll look back on the all books I published in my 20s and be appalled. Or at least I hope that happens.

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Craft Notes / 104 Comments
January 22nd, 2010 / 9:59 am