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This essay about the book Intermere in The Believer has me thinking about the old, weird Utopian novel. Like this one. Or some of the other books from Health Research Books. Question: do you readers have a favorite oddball Utopian book? Let’s hear about it.

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Matt Bell, EXPLAIN YOURSELF!

I mean, EXPLAIN YOUR HUSBAND!For sheer wtf, you gotta read Matt Bell’s story “Cain, Caleb, Cameron,” recently in Wigleaf. It’s like one man’s personal Beowulf. (I’m not sure that holds up, but it’s funny, and if an enterprising composition student wants to put it in a paper, alongside a list of all the kennings in the piece, he can site this post as substantive material.)

Here, I’ve excerpted a good grossness, for the click-weary:

. . . First there was the push, push, then the blood, then my mistake-toothed firstborn howling in the nurse’s arms: chubby, too chubby, too covered in mother’s gore.

And then my wife continuing to push. And then the doctor’s begging her to stop. . . .

Anyway, uh, I met Matt Bell’s wife briefly in Ann Arbor. So for this installment, I’m asking her to EXPLAIN YOUR HUSBAND! [applause]

Author Spotlight / 14 Comments
November 9th, 2009 / 5:49 pm
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Do you feel like there is a singular ‘best thing you’ve ever written’? What became of it? What happened to the thing that was ‘the best thing you’ve ever written’ before you wrote the current one? What do you do when you feel good about something you made?

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Htmlgiant Caption Contest

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xr_CARTOON_CAPTION_CONTESTIn the spirit of New Yorker‘s caption contest, we are having our own. Jeffrey Brown has graciously not only accepted our invitation to judge it, but will be procuring the prize: an original artwork by him (no details — maybe a doodle, maybe more).  Just comment what the fish on the ground is saying or thinking. (I made the cartoon as a nod, however awkward and unworthy, to the style of B.E.K., my favorite New Yorker cartoonist.) One entry per person. Only comments with valid links to contact information, or accompanying the entry, will be considered.

Contests / 100 Comments
November 9th, 2009 / 3:22 pm
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Justin, my love, I’m not sure what to say about Tuesday’s event at the NYPL. It’s at the NYPL. The big, main one, with the lions. Patience and Fortitide, bitches! It’s our only big event in celebration of I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets, the only Six-Word Memoir book written entirely by 13-19 year olds. We’ll read from the book, talk about the project, show videos, take questions, and lead the room in a six-word slam. The best part will be the young writers who will share their six-worders and the stories behind them. They are brave. They are 13. They make your spring chicken ass look as old as Philip Roth.

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Our facebook page for the event says: The ultimate six-word memoir slam — Larry and Rachel, friends and fans, teens and adults alike take the venerable New York Public Library by storm for a celebration of all things six. Share your stories and support the amazing teen writers braving the stage to tell theirs.

The library says:
http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/eventdesc.cfm?id=5829

I say: Peeps should come. Support the youngest readers and writers in their debut publications. I’ll bring candy.

Love,

Rachel


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Like Prions: An Interview with Terese Svoboda by Shya Scanlon

Svoboda_Terese_cTerese Svoboda is one of the best writers of her generation. HTMLGIANT readers especially will notice at once the tell-tale signs of the pee-free classroom commanded by one Gordon Lish, but her work operates on a global level as impressively as it does syntactically. It has the concision and dark, domestic play of Christine Schutt and the scope and moral outrage of Don DeLillo. But of course she is an author all her own—as much a product of her work in The Sudan as she is of her time in the classroom—and her wry, canny, and cosmopolitan sensibility is tempered only by a rooty ease and kindness—surely a farmer’s inheritance. At home in a multitude of different forms, she’s received prizes both for her fiction and poetry, taught all over the place, produced video work for PBS and MoMA—the list goes on. She’s just released a book of poetry heralded by Thomas Lux as “goddamn terrific,” has a reissue of her third book of prose coming out this month, and two (TWO!) novels being published in 2010 and 2011, one comprised solely of pirate dialogue. If you haven’t read her yet, you’re lucky: it’s superb stuff, and there’s a lot of it out there to discover. If you’re already familiar with her work, it’s always worth revisiting. I asked her a bunch of questions about her craft, her practice, and her politics. Fan Club line forms here. — Shya Scanlon

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Author Spotlight / 101 Comments
November 9th, 2009 / 1:27 pm

Ariana Reines Week, Part 1: My Heart Laid Bare

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All this week I’ll be posting small chunks of the thousand and one new books translated and/or written and/or published by Ariana Reines. We begin with Reines’s new translation of Charles Baudelaire’s My Heart Laid Bare, published in newspaper format by her own Mal-o-Mar Editions.

In a brief introduction to the work, Reines explains: “The text of My Heart Laid Bare consists of notes toward an autobiographical work that Baudelaire did not live to complete, according to Poe’s dictum ‘If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment the opportunity is his own–the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple–a few plain words–“My Heart Laid Bare.” But–this little book must be true to its title.’ […] None of these fragments was prepared by Baudelaire for publication, and though they appeared posthumously under various expurgations, their intimacy and ultimate incompleteness will make misprision and outright error, with respect both to interpretation and to translation, more or less inevitable.” What else could you ask for, really? Below the fold, I pick out some favorite fragments.

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Author Spotlight & Presses / 21 Comments
November 9th, 2009 / 12:13 pm
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You can now submit to HTMLGIANT. Sorry.

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Zizek Op-ed on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall falling.

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Critics on Criticism: Oscar Wilde

oscar wildeFrom “The Critic as Artist”:

To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticizes. The one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see; and the Beauty, that gives to creation its universal and aesthetic element, makes the critic a creator in his turn, and whispers of a thousand different things which were not present in the mind of him who carved the statue or painted the panel or graved the gem.

Author Spotlight & Power Quote / 2 Comments
November 9th, 2009 / 11:00 am