Author Spotlight & Reviews

Daniel Handler Loves Joshua Beckman

Which makes total sense to me. I mean what’s not to love? Handler’s extremely enthusiastic take on Take It, Beckman’s new collection out from Wave Books, is in this month’s Believer, but you can read it in full online here. I think Shake is still my favorite Beckman book, but the new one has a lot to be said for it, and Handler gets about as much into the tight confines of a one-page review as you can.

Also, here’s a link to Beckman’s author page at Wave. 

And here’s a video of him reading. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R70778g8DY

12 Comments
May 8th, 2009 / 4:51 pm

On (Fake) Steve Buscemi’s Twitter Feed

stevebuscemi

Sure, Twitter is kind of dull in the hands of most. (See my Twitter feed for an example.) I accept that.

Additionally, lots of ‘celebrities’ (single quote trademarked by Tao Lin, used without permission) have adopted Twitter so as to keep their fans updated on the dull minutiae of their ordinary lives.
READ MORE >

Technology / 52 Comments
May 8th, 2009 / 4:24 pm

YOUR LIFE SUCKS, WHY NOT TRY TO BECOME A CHARACTER IN MR. TYREE’S NOVEL

yo yo yo. this was recently brought to my attention. nate tyree, author of the book “BLOOD MERIDIAN” i think it is, is auctioning off the opportunity to be a character in his next novel. you can bid on ebay. go here for the information. apparently, the book is guaranteed to be published in a year. fancy fuckin that.  i hope that guy who played “al borlen” on “tool time” wins.

Web Hype / 27 Comments
May 8th, 2009 / 1:05 pm

Friday Boobs

dhem1In the early nineties Bono said “We thought we were a punk band, for about 2 seconds”  (paraphrase) and I’ve hated U2 since. (Actually, I didn’t like them before that either, even though I can be TYPICAL and say Boy was a pretty good record.) I felt alienated; they were suggesting that “yeah, we liked what is important to you, we got it and everything, but we’ve moved on and look at us now. Now we’re cool.”

So it isn’t like that when I say I was a feminist for two seconds. I didn’t get it, and I still want to be one. I wish I was a feminist more than anything. I did a semester in grad school for theology because I think feminist theology is maybe second only to queer theology in terms of, you know, solving all of life’s problems. My tongue is set firmly on the bottom of my mouth here.

But my tenure as a feminist was stalled after reading Luce Irigaray and learning that cutting the umbilical cord gives a child its primary name, namely the navel, a sufficient identifier, READ MORE >

Web Hype / 33 Comments
May 8th, 2009 / 11:33 am

Power Quote: Harold Bloom, Virginia Woolf Double Down

Yet who reads to bring about an end however desirable? Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? And is not this among them? I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards–their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble–the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.” 

— Virginia Woolf, from The Second Common Reader (quoted by Bloom in The Western Canon)

 

Those first three sentences have been my credo ever since I read them in my childhood, and I urge them now upon myself, and all who still can rally to them. They do not preclude reading to obtain power, over oneself or over others, but only through a pleasure that is final, a difficult and authentic pleasure.

 — Harold Bloom, The Western Canon, “Woolf’s Orlando: Feminism as The Love of Reading”

Power Quote / 15 Comments
May 8th, 2009 / 10:32 am

Harmony Korine is very adorable while on drugs

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7nrhGQteas&feature=related

I read A Crackup at the Race Riots a couple months ago, after Kevin Sampsell recommended it to me, and I thought it was pretty okay. Harmony calls it a novel but it’s more like typed-up excerpts from a journal, half-funny jokes about celebrities, a few pages like the ‘hepburn’ one that letterman mentioned, and some drawn-on photos.

I mean, I like it. It’s great. I bought it for thirty dollars, I think.
That’s a lot for a paperback. Plus shipping.
I keep it on the part of my bookshelf with all the books I really like. But I don’t open it as often as I open other books.

Here is something Harmony said in an interview:

A bouncer at a strip-club was standing next to a stripper with a balloon. I popped the balloon and he flipped out. So I started provoking the guy. He smashed me in the face, so I picked up a trashcan and went to throw it at his head, but it was chained to a light-post.

Author Spotlight / 23 Comments
May 8th, 2009 / 4:42 am

Literary Cover Songs

Cover songs are fun, when bands you like do them, of bands you also like, or of bands you do not like that then become songs you like by bands you don’t like as interpreted by bands you like.

Here’s Fantomas doing Angelo Badalamenti’s ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ from their album ‘The Director’s Cut,’ a record which I think was all I listened to for 6 months straight the year it came out, and is still one of the best ‘cover song’ explorations, using source to create something truly new, that I can think of.

It seems like the theory of a ‘cover song’ has been approached in fiction, though in a less on-your-face kind of way, more as a series of influences mostly, though there are certainly subjects that approach the more literal ‘cover song’ idea.

One that springs immediately to mind is Gordon Lish’s ‘For Rupert–With No Promises’ in the February 1977 issue of Esquire, which so successfully parodied J.D. Salinger that many thought it was Salinger himself.

So other than via methods of pure imitation or copying (as part of the great thing about covers is the reinterpretation), what are some other great examples that could reveal a ‘cover song’ in text form, or perhaps thoughts on ways that might not quite yet have been explored? Hra?

Random / 38 Comments
May 7th, 2009 / 10:16 pm

Haut or Not: Baby Butler

blake_mk

Blake Butler’s penchant for fascism, literary or otherwise, may have begun earlier than we thought. Is that a two volume set of Adolf Hitler, or does his mom (whose bookshelf this is) just need an extra copy to bear through Yom Kippur? Throw in Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham’s Angels in the mix, and the phrase ‘white power’ comes to mind — of course, I am joking; everyone knows that Blake is the blackest person here (his wicked tongue cadence actually comes from the best rap). What concerns me isn’t the Christian or Nazi fascism — it’s Your Erogenous Zones, probably stained, because, let’s remember, that is his mom’s book. God, I just had a flash of Mrs. Butler discovering Chapter 3 with a bedpost. For those who aren’t catching the allusion, it’s Freudian: we deny our birth by entering the less ‘viable’ orifice. Some people are anal and vacuum all the time. Blake is anus, so let’s not think about what’s inside that diaper.

Haut or not / 25 Comments
May 7th, 2009 / 6:32 pm

What are the 50 best poems on the web?

poetry-sucksThe Dzanc Best of the Web is awesome and the Wigleaf thing is awesome and John Madera’s novella list is awesome but does poetry get short-shrift when it comes to these best-of lists? Is there a list for poetry? I can’t remember.

In case there isn’t, put your favorite poems from last year in the comments.

Random / 90 Comments
May 7th, 2009 / 2:10 pm

First City Review: Call for Submissions

First City Review, edited by Michael Pollock, is in the last few weeks of accepting submissions for the next issue. May 31st is the deadline.( Click here to go to their website). They accept email submissions, they publish an ambitious variety of styles in fiction and poetry and they put out a beautiful journal. Send them your best stuff, people! I plan to. 

Uncategorized / 27 Comments
May 7th, 2009 / 1:24 pm