Harper Perennial and Congrats to DearLeader

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Fifty-Two Stories with Cal Morgan is a ‘New Delivery Service’ from Harper Perennial intent on publishing a short story a week for an entire year. Of the site, Cal Morgan writes:

This year we’re celebrating the thriving art of the story by sharing a new one every week: most of them new, a few of them classics, from authors you know and some you don’t, each of them treasurable in its language or wit or human insight.

This week, Morgan has posted ‘The Copy Family’ by our own Blake Butler.

About the story, Morgan writes:

Here’s the first story we’ve selected from the wide array of submissions from our readers. Blake Butler writes to say that “The Copy Family” is from a book he’s just completed, not yet published. It reminded me of some of Poe’s comic stories, or of Tom Neely’s graphic novel “The Blot.” Could I describe exactly what it’s about? I’m not sure I could do this odd family story justice. But it will stay with me for a long time.

Click on over to have a read, everyone, and good work, Blake Butler.

Author News / 20 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 5:56 pm

Haut or Not: “Worst of” (w/ digression)

What I could see happening has happened: satirical Haut or Not entrees — and from whom other than ‘TTB’ aka ‘Two Tears Boye,’ from Jaguar Uprising Press. (Circa 07-08 TTB and his partner Golden Bear were lamented/admired for their satirical takes on Bear Parade titles.) TTB writes this:

Hi, My name is jimmy chen. I wuz wundering if u could review my current reads bookcase on yur super duper website thingy! THANKS A BUNDLE!! hehe lol.

Empathetic satire or pure derision? I’ll opt for the former. TTB’s jest was followed by no doubt a found picture of some girl’s stack o’ chick books. TTB’s derivative impulses are arguably haut, but this stack of books may be the worst stack of books I’ve ever seen in my life.

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Haut or not / 81 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 1:56 pm

“Church and State” (guest posted by Rauan Klassnik)

or “Michael Schiavo’s Negative Review of Matthew Dickman’s All-American Poem” (“The Anti-Whitman or Out of Many, Me, Me, Me: Matthew Dickman’s All American Poem.”)

[A guest post (hopefully the first of many) by Rauan Klassnik -ed.]

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Michael Schiavo has written a very passionate and very negative review of Matthew Dickman and his poetry.

In the aftermath of his review Michael Schiavo has stated that he doesn’t “plan on doing negative reviews, especially of this intensity, often. But (he) will do so when necessary. And this was necessary. Big picture.”

Michael has also since written that Dickman’s poetry is not even worthy of being called “shit.”

“To even describe these poems as shit is to assign value to them. Shit is the root of things, rids the body of toxins while building up the natural world that surrounds us. It’s part of nature, part of a process that has meaning and power behind it. It’s disconcerting to hold in your hand something that rightly shouldn’t exist.”

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Uncategorized / 45 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 12:13 pm

Literary Doppelgangers: Douglas Coupland/Norm MacDonald

Levi Asher, over at Literary Kicks, linked to Jimmy Chen’s post on literary doppelgangers, but seemed disappointed by Jimmy’s not having mentioned Douglas Coupland/Norm MacDonald.

Well, Levi, it took me a long time to find a suitable Douglas Coupland picture, so here you go.

I have never read any Douglas Coupland, though I have seen some Norm MacDonald. Men At Work is one of my favorites. Man, when they shoot that guy in the butt with an air rifle. And then they think they killed him. And so they stuff him in a trash can. Hilarious.

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Author Spotlight / 25 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 11:27 am

Today at Coop’s place: a post about wrecking your couch (also, Bookforum)

So I thought it was long past time we checked in with Dennis Cooper’s blog, and it just so happens that today there’s a guest-post by Steven Trull, who is also something of a somewhat regular reader/commenter on this blog.  Trull presents “The Kill Your Couch for No Reason Post.” As you’ll notice when you get over there, the title is preceded by “Steven Trull presents (part one)” which seems to me to suggest that there will be more Trull posts coming, possibly on topics unrelated to couch-killing. But for now: COUCH-KILLING. Click on over and watch the YouTube-culled videos of couches being burnt, run over with a station wagon, and otherwise KILLED.

So that’s all well and good, but else has been going on at Coop’s?

Well yesterday we looked at Notable Male Escorts of the World for March 2009

And the day before that was a Varioso Day (#18), which contains–among other things–an animated adaptation of James Tate’s poem “The Search for Lost Lives.”

And this picture of a Tom Friedman piece:

And a link to this Mary Gaitskill interview in the new Bookforum. It’s a short interview, but a good one, and it contains the possibly news-to-you that MG has a new collection out (it was news to me). So once I had clicked over there I got to browsing, and have the following further Bookforum recommended readings: William T. Vollmann on the ethics of photography, David Gates reviews the new Antonya Nelson, David Haglund reviews Andrew Porter, Mark Sarvas on John Haskell, and Wendy Lesser takes on both the O’Connor bio AND the Library of America Collected O’Connor.

Random / 8 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 10:18 am

Richard Yates Reads a Story

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I found this while poking around the discussion below. Alicia, who is putting up a good fight in the comments section for Narrative Magazine, has linked on her blog to an audio recording of Richard Yates reading “The Best of Everything.”

If you’re tired of reading about Narrative, take thirty minutes to listen to Yates.

Thanks, Alicia.

Author News / 2 Comments
March 16th, 2009 / 11:09 pm

Mean Monday: Narrative Magazine Again! A Comment That Takes Things One Step Further

 

I was starting to understand Blake Butler’s argument regarding the amount of solicited writers that Narrative Magazine publishes versus the money they take from the unsolicited pile. And then David Kemp left this in the comment section, which spreads the responsibility even further than the editors of Narrative and I found his comment more or less convincing:

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Uncategorized / 109 Comments
March 16th, 2009 / 8:29 pm

New Magazine Monday: A Dog Keeps Chasing Itself Into the Funeral Home Parking Lot And Then Retreating Into the Mysterious Gray Snow

There’s so much going on in the literary world right now like dude. To wit: I ate all of a hip young author’s string cheese, but I’m going to replace the stock before she’s back from vacation, so she’ll never know. Pretty soon I’m going to buy dish soap and headphones, so I can clean my plates of bacteria and listen to country music in hunkered intensity, which will up my chug-a-lug and keep me fit to perform services for you, the literary public, including but not limited to announcements of three new online magazine issues:


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Web Hype / 16 Comments
March 16th, 2009 / 5:45 pm

Haut or Not: A Couplet

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I can’t argue with this guy — these books are just too haut. Good to see ‘writer’s writers’ like Diane Williams and Steven Millhauser, powerful ‘famous’ ladies like Moore, Gaitskill (I wish her last name was Hall) and Oates; and of course, our friends Tao Lin, Blake Butler, and Kim Chinquee. (Incidentally, Rachel B. Glaser’s ‘fiction’ piece about Christ, and Christ-like pop figures, in the pictured American Short Fiction is fucking great.) Impressed to see Vol. II (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower) of Proust’s epic — as most people only read Swann’s Way and consider it done (like me). I will get slammed for this I’m sure, but I never really understood the cult behind Jesus’ Son. I have this theory that, like cats, we are either indoor or outdoor readers. Jane Austen would be the epitome of writer of indoor books, and maybe Graham Green or Conrad as writer of outdoor books. I’m an indoor kinda guy, and Denis Johnson feels outdoorsy. And just for the records, my ‘best american fantasy 2’ doesn’t involve the genre, but a shortage at the sperm bank during a sorority convention. I should grow up soon.

Rating: Haut

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Haut or not / 117 Comments
March 16th, 2009 / 1:48 pm

My therapist says I should meet new people: Short Letter, Long Farewell

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I sat down on the edge of the bathtub, disconcerted because I had started talking to myself for the first time since I was a child. By talking rather loudly to himself, the child had provided himself with a companion. But here, where I had decided for once to observe rather than participate, I was at a loss to see why I was doing it. I began to giggle and finally, in a fit of exuberance, punched myself in the head so hard that I almost toppled into the bathtub.

Excerpts / 8 Comments
March 16th, 2009 / 8:12 am