The short story is my favorite form. I am feeling very blocked on this other stuff I’ve been working on (which means, anxious and not up to the task I set out for myself) so instead, I am going to write this sort of lame ass post. I was perusing my bookshelves (which made me break out in a rash, I am allergic to dust) to make a nice goody bag for Larry–who won the “which 80s punk bands album titles” contest in the Ever review by my man– and I found this collection of stories and felt all warm inside. (It’s super, SUPER beat-up, Larry, that is why I did not send it to you.) Man, what a great collection. All sorts of stuff. Raymond Carver edited it with Tom Jenks (of Narrative Magazine, which we all know is not a favorite around here, but believe me, this collection rocks). Here are some (just some) of the authors and stories: READ MORE >
My Favorite MishMash of Stories
February 10th, 2009 / 8:00 pm
SCUMBAG HYPOCRITE ALERT: Maureen Mullarkey loves painting the Gay Pride Parade, but she hates everything it stands for, and all the people in it–and probably you as well
Maureen Mullarkey, the art critic and artist well-known to the gay community for her iconic portraits of drag queens and gay pride parades, was yesterday revealed by the NY Daily News to have contributed $1000 to Proposition 8. […] When asked how she could have donated money to fight gay marriage after making money from her depictions of gays, she just said, “So? If you write that story, I’ll sue you.”
(h/t to Joe.My.God)
A quick trip over to Campaignmoney.com reveals that the person in questions–Mrs. Maureen Mullarkey of Chappaqua, NY–ALSO gave nearly $1000 to different arms of McCain/Palin ’08.
Ever Contemplated by PR’s husband
UPDATE! CONTEST! Find the three 80s indie/punk band album titles in his piece (one title contains the adjective rather than the noun in the two word title) and I will send you a bunch of books. I will be seriously impressed, too.
We all have a better half. My better half is actually a human being. He wrote his thoughts about Ever by Blake Butler. Here they are:
n+1 presents One More Time: The Britney Symposium
I’m not sure if anyone’s irony-sensors have triggered alarm bells already, but if they are, you should manually disable the system and give this thing a fair shot. (Also, when you have a minute, do yourself a favor and look up the definition of the word irony.) Like everything n+1 produces, the Britney Symposium is erudite, funny, and concerned–for better or worse–with an absolutely earnest engagement with the world.
February 8th, 2009 / 8:55 pm
El Lit: An HTMLGIANT AWP Reading
There will be plenty to eat, tear, and ram at AWP. But will there be a train to ride on which you can listen to people read/shout things, a train you can ride in a state of listening all the way to a reading at the Book Cellar?
Yes. Yes there will be.
Here’s how it works:
(1) On Friday, Feb 13, we meet at the Library Brown El Line Station (1 W Van Buren St), Northbound to Kimball Platform @ 8:45 pm. Look for the SIGN and the CROWD.
(2) We ride and read and ride to the Book Cellar (4736-38 North Lincoln Avenue), arriving around 9:30 PM, where we read and laugh and see and read and see and yes.
Come! Yes! Come! Spread the Word!
Featuring:
Craig Griffin, Mary Miller, Heather Christle, Blake Butler, Mike Young, Shane Jones, Sam Pink, Joseph Young, Elizabeth Ellen, Leigh Stein, Ryan Call, Daniel Bailey
Power Quote from Lisa Yuskavage
I don’ t think there is an uninteresting person alive. It’s just that not everyone has access to themselves, to the full range of thier emotional life. This is why my work often embarrasses me and why I need it to embarrass me. Being embarrassed allows me to access more surprising pictorial solutions. I don’t know precisely how, but it seems to function as a clarifying agent.
Blogger of the Weekend Award
Leigh Stein posted some hysterically great stuff this weekend, and so I am giving her the “First Semi-Annual HTMLgiant Blogger of the Weekend Award.”
Check out this video of a sock puppet reciting a poem of hers, and also this excerpt from a Will Eno play. Additionally, all the posts she puts up about the kids in her musical theater class are awesome, so put her on your Google Reader. Enjoy.
$5 For You!
So, I’ve got here in my wallet a gift card to Powell’s Books, a gift card that I did not realize I had. It has $5 dollars on it. I would like to mail it to someone as a giveaway, but that someone has to earn it. Basically, what I’m interested in hearing is a story about someone’s experience at a bookstore, any bookstore, good or bad experience, and so on. I will judge what story I like the best and then get that person’s mailing address somehow. I will announce whose story I liked on Wednesday morning, and then whoever told that story will be the winner, if that makes sense.
Okay, my lame story is this: I first went to Powell’s a few years ago while I was at the Tin House conference. A bunch of us took the bus into town, missed our stop, and then had to walk a lot of blocks back over some bridge to the store. In Powell’s, I felt overwhelmed. The shelves were very very tall. I could not reach certain shelves. I walked back and forth through the shelves and gawked at the amount of books that were on the shelves. I am someone who is only familiar with Barnes & Nobles, so yeah. Then, maybe about ten minutes before we were to leave, I found the ‘independent’ shelves. These shelves were on a back wall and next to them I found the ‘literary journals.’ On the literary journal shelves I found the 2005 and 2006 issues of NOON and Pindeldyboz #3. I bought the two issues of NOON but left the Pboz. I regret that decision. I think about it all the time. I regret it. I should have bought all three. Somewhere out there is a Pboz #3 that I did not purchase. I suppose I could go to the website and order one of the five issues that are left, but I sometimes think I’d rather just whine about the whole thing instead.
Anyhow, post your bookstore stories in the comments section, if you’d like. Or, if you want, you may email them to our HTMLGIANT email address.
EVER: A Review
The narrative constraints of Ever – presumably a woman inside a room; that’s it – is a precarious way to write a novella. Without characters, plot arcs, locations, etc., language itself is summoned as a surrogate protagonist. The writer – thus reader – are both stripped of the typical arsenal of fiction; what is left is simply language’s ability to summon or evoke the most intrinsic visceral ‘truths’ of being alive, a collection of nerves funneled into a consciousness.
And that is, at heart, what Blake Butler’s Ever is about, a kind of timeless consciousness that is, remarkably and/or ironically, very relevant to a particular time: now – dispersed with cryptic evocations of some post-apocalyptic world, as in “[…] not that we knew the moon here anymore […]” Notice that Butler chooses the word ‘knew’ instead of the more likely ‘saw’ or ‘had.’ This suggests either a cognizant or intuitive decision to focus more on perception than facts.