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Earlier today, my friend Rebecca im’d me with the message, “Barth died.” I inquired, “John Barth?” She said, “Uh, sure.” The Internet turned up nothing on this, so I asked her where she heard this distressing news. Turns out she was talking about Barth from You Can’t Do That On Television, and just assumed that was his full name. Barth: Gone too soon.

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Hey, want to be in a book? … Get in the chair.

Dear Whoever this is a picture of, Call me?

THE WORD MADE FLESH:

Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide

Edited by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! We are seeking high quality photographs of your literary tattoos for an upcoming book. Send us your ink! Submissions are open to all kinds of literary tattoo work: quotations from your favorite writer, opening lines of novels, lines of verse, literary portraits or illustrations. From Shakespeare to Bukowski to The Little Prince in a Baobab tree, if it’s a literary tattoo and its on your body, we want to see it.

All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. And of course, you are heartily encouraged to credit the artist who did your work.

We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. How much (or how little) you choose to say about your tattoo is up to you, but a paragraph or two should do the trick.

Please send clear digital images of the highest print quality possible to tattoolit@gmail.com. Pixel resolutions should be at least 1500 x 1200, or a minimum 300 dpi at 5 inches wide. Text should be included in the body of the email, not as an attached document. Also be sure to include one or more pieces of contact information, so we can let you know if you’re going to be in the book.

Web Hype / 64 Comments
July 24th, 2009 / 9:32 am

Moon Publicity

I found this bit on the Writer Beware blog: supposedly, a company called MegaNova is planning to sell the rights to robot technology that would allow one to embed a message/logo/advertisement into the robots’ programs so that the robots could then trace the message/logo/advertisement into the dusty surface of the moon. Call it MoonPublicity. What does everyone think? Hoax?

Really really hope this is real. Really want to live to see the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment finally happen.

Technology / 4 Comments
July 23rd, 2009 / 10:42 pm

Significant Objects

Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Rebecca Wolff

Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Rebecca Wolff

THE IDEA

A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!

This sounds interesting.

It was created by Joshua Glenn, a cultural semiotics analyst and independent scholar. Click here for the “About” page & here for the list of items.

Uncategorized / 7 Comments
July 23rd, 2009 / 10:11 pm

You Haven’t Known An Easy One Exactly

The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle ships August 2009

The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle ships August 2009

Once while I was eating some Pop Tarts, everyone was saying that they always went around wishing they were something else. Like ants or marmots or Joshua trees. Not me, I said. Really? Heather Christle asked. She seemed very incredulous, an incredulity of startling emotional intensity. You never, she said, want to be anything else? Not even a boat? Well, no, I said. Then I said something like: there are so many trick ends and trap cliffs in being human; it takes all my time figuring out how to be human; why would I want to waste that time wishing I were a boat?

READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 12 Comments
July 23rd, 2009 / 6:49 pm

Dalkey Archive Interviewed

dalkey_archiveThe LA Times blog, Jacket Copy, interviewed John O’Brien, founder of the amazing Dalkey Archive Press. Here’s an excerpt:

JC: How important do you think awareness of form, or a sense of play, is to telling a story in contemporary fiction?

JO’B: I think it should be, and I do emphasize “should,” at the heart of contemporary writing, but this playfulness is not always foregrounded as such. Fiction writing began with this strange consciousness of itself and the possibilities of playfulness, as though it were an inside joke with a great deal of eye-winking going on. The critic Viktor Shklovsky spent a lifetime tracing and exploring such things in relation to fiction, even as related to what would seem to be the un-playful writing of a Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. The fiction that I find unreadable is that which seems unaware of anything that has been written before, and the reader is supposed to go along with what is truly a “suspension of disbelief.” I find this fiction to be boring and condescending to the reader, though apparently many people like it.

Part two of the interview here.

Behind the Scenes & Presses / 8 Comments
July 23rd, 2009 / 5:03 pm

Attention Houston HTMLGIANT Readers

Kaboom5200NANO Fiction will launch a monthly reading series this September at Kaboom Books.

The editors write:

To commemorate the series, there will be a limited edition mini-chapbook produced combining each month’s readers. Chapbooks will be available for purchase for a dollar a piece.

Visit their site for details.

Uncategorized / 2 Comments
July 23rd, 2009 / 4:35 pm
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What do ya’ll think of the brand new Octopus #12?

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Poetry trumped, once again, by universe: dogs can be allergic to cats.

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The Lifted Brow 5 has arrived

THANK YOU RONNIE & TEAM TLB FOR SHIPPING MY COPY TO HONG KONG!!!

Got in from the Hong Kong Bookfair this afternoon (more on this later/tomorrow) and found a package waiting for me. It was my contributor copy of The Lifted Brow, the badass “biannual attack journal” out of Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia. This issue includes Joe Wenderoth, Blake Butler, two short-shorts by Jennifer L. Knox, a massive piece by Tom Bissell, twelve poems by Tao Lin, Ellen Kennedy’s short story “Probably Going to Die Alone,” something by a dude named Glen David Gold called “Pornography Available for Download from the United Dairy Council,” and a whole lot more besides. Also, a CD insert on the inside cover, accompanied by a note from no less than Daniel Handler, who harangues all readers to not make the usual CD-in-a-litmag move of totally ignoring the CD forever. Apparently, what the CD contains is an “epic rhyming sci-fi audio drama” written by Thomas Benjamin Guerney, who also narrates. Finally, my copy also included a sticker announcing THIS IS NOT ART as well as a little white string. Why don’t you get linked through to their website and order yourself one?

Uncategorized / 2 Comments
July 23rd, 2009 / 6:04 am