Power Quote: DFW

Felt better putting this up a couple of days after the anniversary:

This is the great nightmare when you are doing something long and hard—you’re terrified that it will be perceived as gratuitously long and hard, as some “avant garde for its own sake” exercise. And having done some of that stuff, I think, early in my career, I was really scared about it. The trick of this—I’ve got this whole rant about it—I think a lot of avant garde fiction and serious literary fiction that bitches and moans about readers defection, in blaming it all on TV, a lot of the avant garde has forgotten that part of its job is to seduce the reader into being willing to do the hard work.

—David Foster Wallace talking about Infinite Jest on Bookworm.

Congratulations to anyone who enjoyed an Infinite Summer.

(Can I express my quiet dismay over the idea that a fine tribute to a great writer is moving on and, sans name and domain change, becoming a book club? I have nothing against book clubs. I have nothing against Dracula. I guess I don’t really understand, though, why a thing can’t have a single focus, carry out a task until completion, and then just end.)

Power Quote / 15 Comments
September 15th, 2009 / 12:23 am

Reconsidering Stereotypes


My brother sent me this link to the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders, along with a note saying: “one of the questions is what book are you reading?”

I began clicking through the profiles.

READ MORE >

Random / 68 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 10:29 pm

Internet quantity perspective

via Creative Cloud

Printing-the-internet-bed1

READ MORE >

Web Hype / 8 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 6:52 pm

Back to Grad School

poetrymfaI used to blog here about getting an mfa in creative nonfiction, but since I finished classes there’s nothing much to report other than I am working on my thesis. Sasha Fletcher, however, just began his mfa in poetry and he’s writing about it over at his blog. He’s got the talented and lovely Sarah Manguso for workshop, Timothy Donnelly for a poetry craft seminar, Marjorie Welish for 20th century experimental poetry,  and a lecture from the adorable Richard Howard titled “The Beginning of the End.”

Expect me to crash the guest lectures while I’m still in the city. Hopefully they’ll be as memorable as the Joyce Carol Oates one last semester.

Web Hype / 6 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 5:45 pm

Who wants to go on a midnight run to Barnes & Noble later? Anybody? Uh, anyone at all?

Aw, Jim. We salute you, brother.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7QyMoh01A

(No snark here. I love this song.)

Author News / 18 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 4:35 pm

Creative Writing 101

19322-004-EFF15ABDellenkennedyjunot_diaz

For Thursday (9/10) we read “My Dog is a Little Obese” by Ellen Kennedy, “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie” by Junot Diaz, and “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. The theme was DIRECT ADDRESS and INSTRUCTION. As on Tuesday, we spent most of the time on the fiction piece. I think this is because fiction feels “easier” to talk about than poetry, like you’re not going to screw up the technical terms or something. And I think that having a teacher who is primarily a fiction writer contributes to this atmosphere, so I’m going to work harder in the future to check myself. But I think there’s a second reason as well, which is that a relatively straight prose narrative like the Diaz story (or Hemingway last week) yields itself to a kind of knee-jerk cultural studies reading, where the text is really just a pre-text for the themes and politics it evinces or brings to light. Especially with a piece like this one by Diaz, where the narrator is giving “you” instructions on how to re-arrange your apartment so you don’t look as poor as you are, and then impress the various girls you might have invited over, with particular race-based instructions for each one. I hate this way of reading.

READ MORE >

Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes / 57 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 12:59 pm

Gigantic Magazine’s new website

giganticGigantic Magazine has a fancy new website up today and it is good looking.  They’ve got stuff from J.A. Tyler, Shane Jones and Chapter 18 of  Shya Scanlon’s internet takeover.

And as if the website wasn’t snazzy enough they’re running an art feature of work from Thomas Doyle.

Worth checking out.

Web Hype / 11 Comments
September 14th, 2009 / 11:47 am

Book titles, if they were written today; including:

ThenWalden
Now:  Camping with Myself: Two Years in American Tuscany

EDIT: And here are a lot more.

Jenny Holzer temporary tattoo set for sale at the Whitney. They might make a nice party favor.