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Our newest contributor on Luna Park talking about talking about race.

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Ich bin stumm (I’m dumb)

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World's heaviest Haut or Not

In +90% of my posts, I do at least some research, usually a simple google, a quick wikipedia read, or even a quicker visit to dictionary dot com. In talking about these authors in this public “Land of ideas” sculpture in Germany, I was set on googling each one — reading up on their bibliography to show how smart I was — but then decided to actually be honest and write this post without doing any research. What’s more important in journalism: the ostensible objective truth about a subject, or the actual truth about one’s subjectivity? I don’t know the answer, I just felt like using the question mark. I also recently learned the keyboard shortcuts for the umlaut, so my fingers are ready. Sigh, what follows is all I know.

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Web Hype / 39 Comments
October 1st, 2009 / 8:14 pm
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Wonderful article ‘In praise of the sci-fi corridor‘ via @NotComing.

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The Best of the National Book Awards

Who wrote The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction?

The Stories of John Cheever
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

YOU DECIDE

Web Hype / 50 Comments
October 1st, 2009 / 5:20 pm
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Do you apply for grants for writers? Fellowships? Where do you find out about these opportunities? Any tips or resources?

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Hey, check out this transcript from an NPR report on the idyllic life of poet Jim Harrison. It’s bizarre because it weaves through biographical notes by the host and interjections by Harrison. I suppose it makes sense if you watch it, but reading it is funnier:

JEFFREY BROWN: After years of barely scraping by and refusing offers of academic positions, Harrison made his money and began living the high life in Hollywood, writing films like “Wolf” for Jack Nicholson, who became a friend.

JIM HARRISON: … look at those juices.

JEFFREY BROWN: Harrison also became known for his legendary eating and drinking. Food, for Harrison, is more than just one of life’s small pleasures. His motto is “eat or die.” He wrote a food column for Esquire magazine for many years, and he and Linda, his wife of almost 50 years, still cook and feast together.

They shared with us what Harrison thought of as a modest meal of roasted wild pig, homegrown vegetables, and fine wine.

JIM HARRISON: And it’s an especially flavorful pork. It’s perfectly cooked, Clementine.

Here’s a poem called “Rooster”: “I have to kill the rooster tomorrow. He’s being an asshole,” . . .

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Win Heather Christle’s ‘The Difficult Farm’

The amazing and on-point-to-the-point-of-wow Heather Christle is giving away copies of her very soon to be released debut book of poems, The Difficult Farm, which is coming this month from Octopus Books. Winners will be random, all you have to do is comment on her blog, and for the winners’ books Heather “will draw your home state on the title page from memory.” Well, shit, you better get on that.

heather

You can also preorder the book now.

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Author News & Contests / 16 Comments
October 1st, 2009 / 12:29 pm

Lick Your Finger and Stick it in The Outlet

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The fine folks at Electric Literature have launched a blog. The first two posts at The Outlet are a chapter of Shya Scanlon’s Forecast and this short essay by Jim Shepard about writing non-fiction-based fiction.

The first worry writers have when they consider working with something like historical events has to do with the issue of authority:  as in, where do I get off writing about that?    Well, here’s the good and the bad news:  where do you get off writing about anything?   Where do you get off writing about someone of a different gender?    A different person?   Where do you get off writing about yourself, from twenty years ago?

Uncategorized / 10 Comments
October 1st, 2009 / 11:46 am

More talk of Joyce, because we all know y’all love Joyce.

Lucia Joyce: Troubled Spawn

Lucia Joyce: Troubled Spawn

Speaking of James Joyce, check out this post on MobyLives about the latest on the Joyce estate’s “disgusting” attempt at censorship.

Here’s a little quote from The Stanford News about some of the nastiness that’s been going on:

Stephen Joyce has stopped countless public readings of his grandfather’s works and discouraged a generation of research. At one point, he told a prominent Joyce scholar that he was no longer giving permission to quote from any of Joyce’s work. He told one performer, who had simply memorized a portion of Finnegans Wake for an onstage presentation, that he had probably “already infringed” on the estate’s copyright, according to a 2006 New Yorker story.

Author News / 20 Comments
October 1st, 2009 / 11:36 am
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Jim Ruland wrote a great open letter to Matthew Simmons about A Jello Horse at The Believer. It starts:

 

Dear Matthew Simmons,

I am writing today to ask you a question about your book, which I read with great pleasure: what is it?

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