That’s a Wilde form for a novel

wilde[Via The Book Design Review]

This is the cover of a new version of The Picture of Dorian Gray published by Four Corners Books in London. It’s published like a magazine, I guess cuz first it was published in a magazine. Any good books coming out in magazines nowadays? Is everybody enjoying Shya Scanlon’s “book,” Forecast? (Speaking of nice design and serialized novels?)

I mean, get outta town, that’s the cover of the book. It’s got a nasty font and a word-
break and it don’t got the title or author or nothing.

Fn-A right, that’s pretty dang wapow. (Even it was reviewed in Financial Times.) I gotta go back to school.

I checked out Four Corners. They have other awesome looking books.

Presses / 8 Comments
September 3rd, 2009 / 9:02 am

Top of the NYT website right now: a feature story on the troubled production of Where the Wild Things are, the new Spike Jonze movie based on the classic and beloved book of the same name, by Maurice Sendak. Reads the subhead: Spike Jonze is known for making videos and movies his way — fast, cheap and dirty. Sounds like Shanes Jones to me! Anyway,  here’s to the future. If WB tries any funny stuff with Light Boxes, Team Giant will be here to lead the ALLCAPS consumer revolt. We’re here for you, boys.

2 New Titles from Ellipsis Press: Lock and Ruocco

Two new titles from the incredible Ellipsis Press are now on presale. After their first two titles by Eugene Marten and Eugene Lim being two of my favorite new releases last year, Ellipsis is already a monolith, and I’ve been drooling for these both since they were announced. For those that for some reason did not pick up the first two, you can get the entire set of 4 Ellipsis titles together in a bundle for $40, a ridiculously nice and limited-time deal. Shit, I’m doing the package just to be able to give the first two as gifts. I guarantee it is worth twice as much in mind. They are also all available individually, and shipping soon.

Here are their two latest titles:

Shadowplay by Norman Lock

shadowplaydraftcover

In Java, a master of the shadow-puppet theater seeks to possess—by his art—a woman, who perishes as though by the contagion of his unnatural desire. Shadowplay is a meditation on story-telling as an act of seizure, a parable of obsession and of the danger of confounding the real with its representations.

“Stories compensate for lives unlived. They are what Norman Lock, or his avatar Guntur, calls shadows, negative reflections on a backlit screen, comprising, through artistry and brief illumination, ghosts. Lock’s teller is imprisoned by darkness, captivated by warriors and princesses no longer, if ever, living. Death becomes a distance from which the voices of these unliving return. It is a journey as delicious as it is threatening.” —R.M. Berry

READ MORE >

Presses / 9 Comments
September 2nd, 2009 / 1:46 pm

Giancarlo DiTrapano day on Everyday Genius, still featuring the guest editorialship of Michael Kimball, a monthlong+ reign of great work by a long list of good people. From Gian’s piece: “If the mind is a terror gift, he is an opener.”

Hate Mail

hate mailEd Champion has started this new series on his blog where he does dramatic readings of user-submitted hate mail. Who here has gotten (or sent) hate mail?  You should send it along.The new one he posted is really funny. You can hear it here.

Random & Web Hype / 34 Comments
September 2nd, 2009 / 1:00 pm

Lily Hoang wins the 2009 PEN / Beyond Margins Award for her book Changing, because she is a badass. There are excerpts from the novel on the site. You can buy it here, and should. Congrats Lily!

I Like Howard Finster A Lot.

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

Howard Finster on why he did what he did:

JC: How did this start?

HF: Well, you know. Like, if you had a place itching up here on your head, Johnny? And the first time you put your hand up here you put your hand where it is—don’t matter where it is, you put your hand on it, you know? And if you was to ask me to scratch it, I wouldn’t know where to look. See, I just had a feeling to build this garden, like you know when you have a feeling right where to scratch.

The other half of the interview after the jump.
READ MORE >

Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes / 10 Comments
September 2nd, 2009 / 11:46 am

Reviews & Snippets

Another dispatch from the Axis of Who Gives a Shit? Michiko Kakutani’s s just not that into the new, apparently Poe-inspired E.L. Doctorow novel.  To save everyone a lot of time and effort, I put MK’s thesis through the Translation Party engine that seemed to make everyone so happy when I posted about it last week.

Poe’s stories and complaints, his psychology, pathology Pejidokutoro for some new facts will be generated using a mixture of the first patent.

4 Comments
September 2nd, 2009 / 9:15 am

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit

The Last King Of Scotland

The Last King Of Scotland

The Guardian says that Scottish literature has been split in two by comments made by James Kelman, who over the weekend attacked “writers of detective fiction or books about some upper middle-class young magician or some crap.” My first reaction to this was “Man, it is apparently super fucking easy to split Scottish literature in two,” but upon further reflection that seems petty. American literature gets split in two pretty much every other week, and usually Oprah Winfrey has something to do with it.

I should refrain from discussing what this whole contretemps might do to Scotland’s collective national psyche, at least until I can fake a better Scottish accent. But it got me thinking about the old “literary fiction” versus “genre fiction” debate, which leads me to this question: Does this debate make you want to (a) shoot yourself in the head, or (b) stab yourself in the face? If someone brings this topic up, do you usually (a) cry, or (b) vomit blood? Either way, it sounds like Scotland is kind of fucked, which is a shame, because I like that “Belle and Sebastian” band. (By the way: Hi! My name is Michael.)

Random / 44 Comments
September 1st, 2009 / 10:00 pm