HTMLGIANT | the internet literature magazine blog of the future | Page 787

Fellner Speaks

I’m a little late on this, but if you’ve not already seen it, Fellner’s “Final Words About the ‘Firm'” has been posted.

Abramson posted another long response, saying of HTMLGIANT

(unfortunately it may be the least constructive, on the whole, of the dialogues out there, largely because at least one recipient is continuing to insist that I threatened to sue Steve Fellner; I guess Steve and I will have to agree–jointly–to disagree with her on that)

I’ll also update the original HTMLGIANT post with links to other discussions as I find them.

Mean / 11 Comments
August 4th, 2009 / 8:32 pm

Jimmy Chen

Home Alone by Raymond Carver

I was standing in front of the living room window, my reflection half transparent, drinking a gin and tonic. My family had left me alone for the holidays; I just didn’t feel up for the motions and devotions necessary to complete the season. That was the thing with years: there were always more. My face through the window seemed lakelike; each squint, as I tried to make myself out, a little ripple moving outwards towards the world at large. The failed hail of snow had fallen. Two men knocked on the door and I started to run away.

That was mine, yah, sorry. Now it’s your turn to give it a go in the comments section — nothing too long, just a couple of sentences. Others are welcome to critique entrees; why is it or isn’t it Carver? Let’s try to find out what it was he* did, and how he* did it. (*Yah, Lish, I know.) For me, Carver is romantic without being romantic. It’s reticent emotional hyperbole, which is like, uh, really difficult. Good luck!

Cover to Cover: The Atlantic, Part 2

I love maps. I like to travel. I dont genrally like The Atlantic, though.

I love maps. I like to travel. I don't generally like The Atlantic, though.

I feel like a piece of shit today. Self hatred is an interesting thing in that it allows oneself to feel a sort of disproportionate amount of self importance and partake in self involvement, albeit one of loathing. From this thought, I’ll segue into the issue of liking or not liking, hating or loving, characters in stories. READ MORE >

Uncategorized / Comments Off
August 4th, 2009 / 5:59 pm

Blake Butler

Visceral Readings: The Sluts

TheSlutsbyDennisCooper1 I’ve already read a lot this year, maybe even more than most other years. Though lately, in the past few weeks, I’ve found my attention kind of skewed up, which I guess is part of the pattern of reading: it comes and goes.

When I get out of the dire want to spend hours on my back looking at sentences, certain moods will come where I can’t get more than a page into something, no matter how strong, and it will take something of really strong aura, a riveter, to get me excited again. Something visceral, that grabs me by the throat and says, Bitch, you are going to read this.

This week, for me, it was Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts. I picked this up randomly, realizing it was I think the only title of DC’s that I hadn’t read for some reason. I brought it home in the rain and, having put down the last 8 or 9 books I’d tried to start in weeks beforehand, picked it open just to get a taste.

Lish

However, I can tell you this with complete certainty: Had I had any bright editorial ideas, Lish would have summarily rejected them. His control-freak obsessiveness redoubled itself when it came to his own work. He demanded that he get to pick the art director for the cover. We strategized over the sending out of galleys like Ike planning D-Day—”Howard, I have enemies everywhere,” he said ominously, and he was right. And no author I have ever worked with concentrated more compulsively on the precise way each line of type fell on the page, driving me and the production department almost nuts. (This is a pattern of behavior, I have learned, that he’s repeated with his other editors.) He wanted what he wanted, and that was that. He was a living no-editing zone. Except, of course, when it came to his author’s work; then out came the pick and the shovel and the scalpel and the drill.

Power Quote / 174 Comments
August 4th, 2009 / 2:56 pm

Justin Taylor—

Wow, this might actually be the absolute nexus of things I don’t care about. Who among you dares gaze into the Borgesian Aleph of nobody-gives-a-shit?

Justin Taylor

APOCALYPSE WEEK AT SLATE: How is America Going to End?

#140, "Rods from God"

Slate offers up their top 144 US-centric Armageddon scenarios. (I assume that’s one scenario for every thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses admitted to Heaven.) I am especially fond of #69, “Vermont Independence,” because I’ve actually read Thomas H. Naylor‘s bat-shit crazy book, Secession. I also dig #87, “Opt-in Government,” a scenario wherein “government becomes divorced from geography. People who live in the United States can choose to be governed by the laws of Sweden and vice-versa.” And honorable mention to #107, “Climate Wars,” wherein certain countries conduct experiments to try and stop global warming, some of which trigger (or we suspect they trigger) bizarre and possibly disastrous weather, which causes all the nations of the earth to start attacking each other because everyone thinks everyone else made the weather. Please vote for your favorite or suggest your own in the comments section. Also, a big hat tip to my friend Alice Townes, who by the time she sees this post will have forgotten she ever sent me the link.

More Slate-pocalypse:

Josh Levin introduces Apocalypse Week at Slate

The world’s leading futurologists have four main theories about the demise of the US.

“Choose Your Own Apocalypse” interactive feature

PS- some of you might recall that I edited a little book about the apocalypse. Just throwin’ that out there.

Web Hype / 7 Comments
August 4th, 2009 / 9:26 am

Justin Taylor

Jim Shepard’s “Your Fate Hurdles Down At You” video trailer

Kudos, Electric Literature.

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

Technology / 5 Comments
August 3rd, 2009 / 9:09 pm

Matthew Simmons

Gary Coleman teaches me something about writing.

knightrider&arnoldjackson

A buddy of mine wrote to say that he had read somewhere that David Hasselhoff credits many of the choices he’s made in life, and much of his own ability to overcome the difficulties he’s face to his very close relationship with God. Included in the choices and overcoming is his decision to be on Knight Rider.

Some of my best friends are theists, so I’m not trying to bag on that sort of thing here. I will, however, suggest that maybe that voice talking to him and telling him to stick the TV show out for another season could’ve been KITT. Not all disembodied voices are the Lord. (“Remember when there was only one set of tire tracks? That’s when I was carrying you, Michael.”)
READ MORE >

Craft Notes / 15 Comments
August 3rd, 2009 / 7:50 pm