ARTISTICALLY DECLINED PRESS

new press run by paula bomer and ryan bradley, ARTISTICALLY DECLINED PRESS.  (on their first book):

  We are very excited to announce our first book, Ken Sparling’s elusive second novel, Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt, will be published in early 2010. Sparling is the author of three other novels, Dad Says He Saw You At The Mall, For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers, and [untitled]. Previously Hush Up and Listen was available only in handmade editions by request, we are looking forward to bringing this fantastic novel of fatherhood to more readers.

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Presses / 32 Comments
October 23rd, 2009 / 4:01 pm
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Yesterday, my composition students brought up something called ‘writer’s block’ and shared with me different ways they try to overcome it. Some said they liked to eat a snack. Another girl said she liked to take a nap. Another girl said she liked to return to her research and read more. I said that during the summer of 2007, if I felt stuck on something, I took a shower. This led to my taking several long showers each day. I ceased this practice once my wife showed me the utility bill. What do you do to overcome ‘writer’s block’?

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Usedbuyer2.0 Brad Craft (recently published in Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read) has a really interesting response to John D’Agata’s book The Lost Origin of the Essay.

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What’s Right & What’s Wrong #1: Reb Livingston

reb

(This is the first in an interview series: What’s Right and What’s Wrong with the Small Press World ?)

QUESTION ONE (Rauan Klassnik):  What’s right and what’s wrong with the small press world?

ANSWER ONE (Reb Livingston):   There’s a lot that’s right.  There’s thousands of gatekeepers and thousands of others sneaking in the side.  I like that.  I like that on an almost daily basis I stumble across a magazine, press or website I never heard of before.  Try as I might, I can’t keep up.  That’s good.  Nobody should be able to keep up.  I like that the traditional publishing tower is beginning to topple.  It’s time to start over.  Tear that shit down.  I’m waiting for someone to radically change how literature gets to readers.  Or what it means.  Or something I can’t even comprehend at this very moment.  Yes, it’s changed a lot already this past decade and changing right as I write this, but I’m talking about something few of us can imagine.  It’s going to come from an individual or a small group of people.  That’s the only prediction I feel comfortable making.  It’s not going to come from Amazon or Random House or Conde Nast (snort!) or a university (which these days are run more and more like wannabe corporations, despite some of the fabulous people they employ as teachers and staff).

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Author Spotlight / 48 Comments
October 23rd, 2009 / 1:44 pm
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Very excellent post over at Johannes’s Exoskeleton about ‘experimentalism’ and the &Now Conference ‘Hipsters, Kitsch and the Specter of Mass Culture’: “Complexity is the new Negative Capability.”

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Derrida & Animals

As I was saying to Darby recently, after he commented over at my spot about the frequency of my posting artworks of human-animal hybridity, in academia right now Animals are all the rage.

A recent edition of PMLA focused on Animal Studies, and a glance at the Penn CFP page reveals a growing number of conferences on the topic of Animals in literature, art, politics, etc.

Further proof of this growing trend can be seen in the rise of websites like The Inhumanities, as well as the swarm of books being published on the topic, including this new book of Derrida’s lectures being release on November 1st by University of Chicago Press:

The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 launches the series with Derrida’s exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from 2001–2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine’s fable “The Wolf and the Lamb,” Hobbes’s biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake,” Machiavelli’s Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau’s evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract.

Excerpts / 15 Comments
October 23rd, 2009 / 12:58 pm
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Soupy Sales, the first great anarchist of children’s television, has passed away. In tribute, go home, fill a pie tin with whipped cream, and hit some motherfucker in the face with that shit.

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Has there ever been a good book about skateboarding? I was just watching Thrashin’ for the millionth time the other day, and thought, “Man, this story of Corey Webster and his one-man skate crusade against nemesis Hook (and his band of loyal Daggers) as they battle first at the joust and then at the big downhill,” would make for a riveting read. I had hopes for that When Skateboards Will Be Free book, but it turns out that it wasn’t really about siiiick Acid Drops at all. Disappointing.

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Next week at HTML Giant is Mean Week 2. If you have any specific requests of things you want to hear about meanly, suggestion box is open.

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The 2nd Outlet

Blake, famously, illustrated his poems. Henri Michaux was an accomplished and renowned artist as well as a “master” prose poet. Archie Ammons painted (my friend Brian Clements owns a bunch of originals). Flannery O’Connor too. And she recommended it for writers.

And I recommend “it” too. And by “it” I mean some other form of creativity besides writing. “Real” writing (ha ha). Even blogging (??) can be this 2nd outlet of creativity.

I draw and smear around on paper. And take photos of it. And I find it quite rewarding. And in some way(s) I am sure this enhances and complements my writing.

But, as with anything else (wine, women, werewolves, etc) the 2nd creativity can become too much. An obsession. A distraction. (Blogging !!!!)

I’m not sure how successful I am in keeping the different disciplines in good check but one solution for me is to write and smear at different times of the day. And, in general, to just keep an eye on the situation.

I’m guessing that many of yall have a 2nd creative outlet and wanted to know how you keep it useful without it becoming a harmful distraction ? (that being said some writers may well be better artists or whatnot and, so, the 2nd creative outlet SHOULD take over…..)

Craft Notes & Random / 20 Comments
October 23rd, 2009 / 11:53 am