New on many levels: Opium 8 (not to mention that the line up inside promises to be just as good as the body).
Paragraphs I Admire So Much I Can’t Believe I Get To Type Them Out (4): Lynne Tillman
Some of the acts I’ve committed have been illegal. When I was five, I stole candy inadvertently from the candy store several blocks from my house, on a main road, in the suburb where I grew up, because its sign said, Take One, and later I stole lipstick from the town five and dime, and then shoplifted clothes from department stores, packing a skirt into the voluminous shoulder of a ratty fur coat, and purchased small amounts of cocaine, all relatively mild infractions of the law. Other people, who have scant education, less economic or skin privilege, might have been arrested, convicted, and sent upstate for the same relatively harmless but illegal acts, and other people have records against them that are public, so that anyone can find out what these people have done wrong, and while I have no record of crimes against property or person, nothing that would show up on police blotters or computers, nothing that I am aware of, or that might hurt me, though I am not aware of everything that might hurt me, I have committed illegal acts that have gone undetected, but I know what I have done, and I know what was wrong and illegal. Legally, I am sane.
* from American Genius, pg. 42
** (I could pick literally almost any graph from this book and feel just as happy sharing it. In my top 20 books of all time, I think. Just too fucking good.)
The Circle is Now Unbroken
You knew this day would come. As anyone who has ever watched a serial TV drama knows, epic feuds are always bound to reverse into epic loves, because the same engine–passion–is what drives them both and draws the players inexorably to one another. Shall we recap for the latecomers?
Prurient’s ‘Rose Pillar’
Goddamn, I want this:
After two years in the making, Heartworm Press is proud to present Rose Pillar by Prurient.
The Rose Pillar in traditional Roman culture is used to mark the graveyard or mosualueam, as a signpost of death. Usually they contained carvings of birds and plants signifying rebirth. Taking inspiration from authors like Whitman, Lechev and Rumi, Prurient delivers its first major literary endeavor in Rose Pillar. Prurient combines text, image and sound in this uniquely packaged and presented release by the Heartworm Press.
What separates Dominick Fernow’s Prurient project from the rest of the contemporary underground cannon is its unyielding personal subject matter. From the inception of Prurient the concept has always utilized intimate details, photographs, letters and other ephemera culled from places where most artists would choose to obscure. Prurient draws these details into focus more than ever on Rose Pillar, a 180-page hardbound book of Fernow’s collage work and text supplied by his mother Jean Feraca from her previously published memoir I Hear Voices. Feraca tells the story of the death of Stephen, the brilliant but troubled older brother, an anthropologist who was adopted into a Sioux tribe.
Power Quote: Harold Bloom Brings it All Back Home
The motives for reading, as for writing, are very diverse and frequently not clear even to the most self-conscious readers or writers. Perhaps the ultimate motive for metaphor, or the writing and reading of figurative language, is the desire to be different, to be elsewhere. In this assertion I follow Nietzsche, who wanred us that what we can find words for is already dead in our hearts, so that there is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking. Hamlet agrees with Nietzsche, and both might have extended the contempt to the act of writing. But we do not read to unpack our hearts, and so there is no contempt in the act of reading. Traditions tell us that the free and solitary self writes in order to overcome mortality. I think that the self, in its quest to be free and solitary, ultimately reads with one aim only: to confront greatness. That confrontation scarcely masks the desire to join greatness, which is the basis of the aesthetic experience once called the Sublime: the quest for a transcendence of limits. Our common fate is age, sickness, death, oblivion. Our common hope, tenuous but persistent, is for some version of survival.
–Harold Bloom, The Western Canon, “Elegiac Conclusion”
I THINK SHANE JONES IS NOT A GOOD PERSON FOR DELETING HIS BLOG BUT I KIND OF UNDERSTAND
what the fuck mang? am i typing in the wrong address? shane jones, no longer blogging? does this mean no longer writing? no longer blogging but still writing is ok. no longer blogging and no longer writing sucks the water out of shit and boils it mang. say it ain’t so shane. after reading light boxes and an excerpt from the failure six , i would be genuinely bummed if this were true. it’s like, fuck. then again, who doesn’t think about deleting his/her blog and just running into the woods forever.
Some people are retarded, and some people are sad
You’ve probably noticed there’s been more youtube clips than usual; contributors have recently been ‘granted access’ to post their own. I figure I’d do one too.
The following clip is beautiful — and as facetious my tone usually is, I swear I’m not trying to make fun of these people, or glorify their disabilities. I just found it mesmerizing to watch. They are remarkable human beings, and by ‘remarkable,’ I mean exactly that. They make me want to remark about them, which is what I’m semantically chasing my tail about. ***Please note that the person who uploaded/edited the clip is an asshole, and that the fake ad/sponsor ‘Fart Inhaler’ at the end is a sad and cruel attempt at being funny.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDa5G0czkTY
Five Star Literary Stories
I love people. (And then there are those I don’t love, but that’s another post.) A year ago or so, I was “discovering” online writing and discovered some writers that blew my mind. The list is long but I’ll be brief and incomplete: Tony O’Neill, Elizabeth Ellen, Scott Wrobel, A.S. King and T.J Forrester were writing stuff that effectively made me put down the print journals I was reading for a while. T.J. Forrester’s stories showed me (read this great one on Storyglossia, a journal I keep meaning to post more about) a man so thoroughly talented and and so heartfelt in his work that I sort of cyberstalked him. He handled it pretty well. He also runs this great site called Five Star Literary Stories, where an editor of an online literary journal nominates a story that he/she loves for review and then T.J. has another writer write a review of said story. It’s a wonderful addition to the rich world of online lit. Right now, they have a fantastic review by Clifford Garstang of an E.C. Osondu story from Guernica. Check it out.
Uncategorized / 15 Comments
May 9th, 2009 / 12:04 pm
May 9th, 2009 / 12:04 pm
Tin House Giveaway and Sexy Stories
In a few hours, I’ll wake up and tour a handful of houses that my wife and I are thinking about seriously purchasing. We’re looking at a ‘move’ this summer, and I’m looking at my bookshelf and wondering how many books I’d like to carry around in big boxes and how many books I can afford to give away.
So it’s about time for another HTMLGIANT giveaway promo contest thing. What I’d like to do is offer four back issues of Tin House: the Winter Reading issue (30), the Evil issue (31), the Hot and Bothered issue (32), and the Fantastic Women issue (33). To be eligible, all you need to do is email HTMLGIANT your full name and mailing address by Noon CST on, let’s say, Tuesday the 12th. If you don’t hear from me afterwards, then that means the random integer generator did not favor you. But look out for more giveaways this summer, as I’ve got a shelf of books that I can’t pack up.
These four issues are pretty good. Highlights include Steve Almond’s essay “Condifreaks,” which is basically letters to Almond regarding his resigning from Boston University after the administration invited Condoleezza Rice to speak at graduation (he responds to them as well); an interview with a former member of the Manson Family; and, basically, the entire Fantastic Women issue, with stories by Aimee Bender, Miranda July, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, etc.
I need to part with these issues, but wish to give them to someone who will enjoy them. So if you’re interested, please don’t hesitate.
Sexy writing after the jump.
Friday ‘Fuck Books Let’s Dance’ Thang
In case you never caught this’n, one of the earliest virals around, of a dude totally ripping new-brain dance shit in a youngins contest, well, please enjoy (the first two dancers are not the highlight: you will know when the One to See begins):
The strobe moves at the end is enough to make me say Barry Hannah who?
OK not really. But that kid rips. Let’s have a Friday night evening or something.
Odds are I’ll stay home. :)