In honor of his brand new collection ‘Ugly Man‘ (which I am all kinds of excited for), a couple of video interviews with Dennis Cooper about the book and his career, publishing, and punk, from Harper Perennial’s Olive TV videos.
How could you not love this man?
By this time tomorrow I’ll be at JFK airport, probably getting grilled about my associations by humorless Shin Bet agents. That’s right, kids, they’re sending me to Israel, so this is your last mess of links to my regular obsessions until at least the 15th. Keep my side of the bed warm, wouldja?
MOBYLIVES announces new occasional feature on “unusual book events given by something other than the usual suspects” to be written by MHP-author Zachary German. I’m not sure what any of that means, exactly, but Zachary’s first post is about Dennis Cooper’s conversation with Tony O’neill, which took place at the Bryant Park Reading Room the week of BEA. Also, Time Out New York digs Ugly Man. Also^2, Dennis posted some really good vintage gay porn on his blog yesterday.
Pieces from Mathias Svalina’s “Play” are now available at This Recording. Other pieces from “Play” are available in the current issue of The Cupboard Pamphlet. A future issue of TCP, btw, will feature Joshua Cohen, who has an essay in the current issue of New Haven Review (heads up it’s a PDF): Hung Like an Obelisk, Hard as an Olympian: An alphabet of English-language literature in Paris.
A few weeks ago Dave Eggers gave a talk in NYC wherein he promised to personally email a reassurance that print isn’t dead to anyone who wanted one. He didn’t count on that promise getting leaked to the web, and then being flooded with emails. So personally sort of fell out of the question, but he did send a pretty amazing mass email out, about the future of indie publishing and newspapers. Someone else on this site should/will spend some more time parsing what he said, but in the meantime, Gawker has the full text of his letter.
Finally, the NYT asks “Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft?” There are two possible answers: First, obviously, is “who cares?” The more nuanced approach, however, would be to say, “well, if the Times is covering it now, then the answer must be ‘yes–two and a half years ago.'” Either way, there’s really no good reason to click that link.
Later, kids.
Contributors Mike Young, Chelsea Martin, and myself, along with ‘associate’ Brandon Scott Gorrell will be reading at some places in the Bay Area. This is what is known in the internet world as “irl” (in real life). If you’re around, please come and say hello, but be nice, we are not ready for irl altercations. Mike is coming from Massachusetts [follow his tour]; Brandon is coming down from Seattle [follow his tour]; Chelsea and I live in the area.
Do you have any weird food/eating/drinking habits?
Sometimes I like to put ice in my glass of milk.
This man wants to tell you something. Are you going to listen?
Was anyone else on this blog ever really into Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson), author of such classics as Pirate Utopias, The Temporary Autonomous Zone: Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism, and myriad other political/philosophical/religious tracts and edicts? As I mentioned the other day, I recently re-bought and am now re-reading DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, and one of the most powerful scenes in that novel–which I’d pretty much forgotten about, until I re-encountered it–is of billionaire Eric Packer’s white stretch limo getting caught up in the middle of an anti-globalization demonstration that suddenly breaks out into a Seattle ’99-style riot.
hello everyone. i hope this post finds you well. it is with near tumultuous joy and ecstatic anticipation that i post this dialogue, and uncover the delicate chrysalis which blooms forth young drew kalbach. Mr. Kalbach, scribe of rhythmically sublime texts THEATER and THE ZEN OF CHAINSAWS AND ENORMOUS CLIPPERS, proved gracious, and trenchant beyond his authorship. following the break, for your edification, is the transcript of our mutually scintillating discussion of all things literary, including those marginal to the field (patricide, the loss of virginity and blue slurpees). please do indulge and find fancy.
Just out (today!) from the wonderful Counterpath Press is Jeremy M. Davies’s debut novel, ‘Rose Alley,’ a book ostensibly about an obscure blue film made during the 1968 Paris riots. The book consists of a series of chapters each based on one of the film’s crew and cast, chaining the mostly by turns gristly and sex/violence addled lives and whereabouts in their intersection with the film’s strange creation and resulting aura.
Davies’s prose sings from paragraph to paragraph in that way of Pynchon and Hannah, in that each could stand alone in its music, and each contains multitudes, packed into syllables clearly fought for and refined for their finest parts.
For a more thorough review of the book, please check out my post in this month’s edition of Bookslut, including my claim: “Here is a debut novel full not only of sex and violence, alternate histories, layerings of will, but also in sentences designed to entertain as much as dazzle, making Jeremy M. Davies a great new brain trust for the page.”
Stephen Elliott just got back from BEA (BookExpo America, the “largest publishing event in North America”), and he wrote an essay about it.
I couldn’t agree with this more:
But here’s the thing, I don’t care about those books. I don’t care about the publishing industry that’s concerned with cookbooks and celebrity memoirs. And I don’t believe the people that say they’re publishing celebrity memoirs so they can publish great literature…
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The matured idea is enough in itself to destroy most people.
– Correction, p. 203
