O Captain, My Captain: Lish Power Quote #1
It’s like listening to something nobody else is. Which is what it is when you’re supposed to be the author of it.
– Arcade, p. 136
The best HTMLGIANT posts as chosen by you the readers of HTMLGIANT or at least some of you
Last November, I put out a call for the best HTMLGIANT posts. Folks responded, and then the thread devolved into a perplexing debate about Noam Chomsky and Gilles Deleuze. Nonetheless I combed through all of it to bring you the results (which I think especially appropriate now, after No Comments Week).
By far, the most votes went to:
In Which We Read a Few Good Books, Connect Some Dots, and Have Ourselves a Very Fine Time
I enjoyed David Lehman’s Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man so much when I read it in April that I decided to try my luck with another of his several works of nonfiction. I almost picked up Perfect Murder: A Study in Detection, but I’ve been in a gung-ho poetry mood lately, so instead I opted for The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, a group biography of Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery. I encountered this Ashbery quip earlier today in the book, and was going to share it as a power quote, but that’s not really in the spirit of Ashbery, besides which now I want to talk about something else, too. Anyway the quote goes like this:
Recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing. We would all believe in God if we knew He existed, but would this be much fun? (p. 39)
Don’t Bitterness! Be Happy–You Sellout! Now with Banjo, Accordion, Wallet Chain, & Jack Spicer
[Jeremy Schmall, by way of reply/addendum/rejoinder to Jim Behrle’s essay about how to become a famous poet overnight that Ken linked yesterday, sent me the following – JT]
(1) To ease the bitter bitter cynicism: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEMGe9JkRqU
(2) This power quote from Jack Spicer seems especially resonant now:
“But the point is that most people will exploit poets. They’ll exploit the older ones for the knowledge they have, and they’ll exploit the younger ones for the promise they have, which somehow or other gives the people some kind of thing that maybe they have promise too, which they don’t.
“Essentially, what I mean is, stay loose. Stay absolutely loose, and don’t accept any offers whatsoever.
“But you’re not just a poet. You’re also a human being who wants to be recognized and everything else. One of the best things that I heard on that was last night on KCBS where some guy–his name was Anderson–was talking about peach farmers, and he said the peach farmers didn’t know a good goddamn thing about the number of peaches that were needed in the market. In other words, they would send in peaches, and peaches would go down to one cent a peach, or whatever it was, and that this had a great deal to do with farm labor.
“What I’m saying is that you’re going to sell out eventually. You have to, just for economic reasons. But when you sell out, know exactly what your peaches cost. Know exactly how many peaches there are on the market. Know exactly what is the price you can sell out for.”
– from Lecture 4, “Poetry and Politics,” July 14th, 1965 (page 154)
Happy Birthday, Captain Fiction!
Today is Gordon Lish’s birthday. On behalf of everyone here (not just on HTML, but on the whole internet): SALUTES TO THE CAPTAIN. … And thanks to David McLendon, whose Facebook post reminded me. So what will you do for Lish’s birthday?
You could buy a copy of Extravaganza.
You could listen to these Don Swaim interviews with GL.
You could review the complete history of our coverage of Lish and Lish-authors (warning: may not be complete), including the original series of Lish quotations for which I coined the Power Quote category. #1, #2, #3, #4+#5, #6.
Youtube Teaches Me Something about Writing: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TYY7jflz8
This is one of my favorite documentaries. The quality of this Youtube transfer is not great, but it’s worth it for the voice over.
I have trouble writing accurately about the way large groups of people congregate. This means my stories tend to cut away as many characters as I can, leaving singles and duos and trios doing all the work. I depopulate, and sometimes I think maybe I should try to populate and maybe even over populate a story. But I’m hesitant. You, too? Maybe repeatedly watching this will help.
Power quote from about three and a half minutes into part two: “This artifact is a design object the purpose of which is to punctuate architectural photographs. It has some utility as a bench but is usually placed in isolation.”
How often do you, as a writer, favor an object, a character, a fleeting moment’s emotional eruption for it’s aesthetic beauty instead of its utility to a story? Is it wrong to do this? Is it right? Is there a middle ground?
Steve Albini Bucks You (Me?) Up About Your (My?) Life Choices
I traded books with the hot girl who works at the coffee shop across from my house. She’s got my Collected Jack Spicer and I’ve got her copy of the pictured-above: We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet, the Collected Interviews. (Though not the “complete” interviews. This book came out from Akashic in 2001.) So far my favorite thing in it is this interview that Steve Albini gave to Luis Illades of Pansy Division. The whole thing’s worth reading, but here’s a power quote for you (me? us?).
At this point, being a musician as well as an engineer and a producer, it seems as though you’re pretty satisfied with where you’re at and what you’ve done. Are there goals you still have that you want to meet?
[…] The way I operate now–and this is what’s bred contentment in me–is that I know how I’m going to behave. I know how I’m going to interact with other people and weigh the importance of the things in my life and the things I have to do for other people. I don’t know the results; they’re going to be a surprise. That’s true of almost everything in my life. I know how I’m going to live. I don’t know what my life will entail.
Elizabeth Ellen Rules
I’ve written about her before, but frankly, I could write about her every week. Check out her website for all thing Elizabeth Ellen, including contributions to A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness (Rose Metal Press and a forthcoming chapbook with Paper Hero Press. Here are some power quotes from the woman who was largely responsible for my change in opinion of “online writing”:
From an interview in 3am magazine (linked here):
As for getting noticed…I don’t know. You can always try to be controversial, I guess. That’s certainly one way of getting noticed. Initiate a public feud. Be a dick. Write about it on your blog. That sort of thing. Other than that, I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing. This is going to sound like total, lameass bullshit, but I swear it’s true: I enjoy writing. I love it. I get off on it. I don’t do it to be in a particular magazine or to get a particular publisher’s notice. Not that I wouldn’t be stoked to be in The Paris Review or Tin House or with a major publisher. Of course I would. That’d be awesome. It’s just not something I think about on a daily or weekly basis.
