archie ammons is a dead guy who used to write poems. he doesn’t write poems anymore because he can’t move his limbs and i think he probably doesn’t have a mind anymore either. but when he was alive and still writing poems, he wrote book length poems, usually with each sentence separated by a colon. of his books, i have read, ‘Glare,’ ‘Tape for the Turn of the Year,’ ‘Garbage,’ ‘Bosh and Flapdoodle,’ ‘Sphere,’ ‘Ommateaum with Doxology’ and i think one other called something like ‘the northcarolina poems.’ he wrote on receipt paper scrolls using a typewriter. he did that because he wanted the experience of writing to seem unimportant. i remember reading something about how when he went on a drive to another state, he unrolled the receipt scroll for his current project and took it with him because he was afraid his house would burn down while he was gone. i understand being that paranoid but it’s usually over something like, a drawing of a horse on fire eating bacon or something unimportant.
Ounce of Pound: Special Sunday Edition
Do you in any way distinguish between writers whom you ‘like’ and those whom you ‘respect’?
Why, and how?
– ABC of Reading, p. 81
PRESS RELEASE: “—– — —-” by Soffi Stiassni
Our own Soffi Stiassni will be rewriting Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee using Georges Perec’s sans ‘e’ method derived in A Void.
If you think Perec’s attempt impossible (as I did), here’s an excerpt:
Noon rings out. A wasp, making an ominous sound, a sound akin to a klaxon or a tocsin, flits about. Augustus, who has had a bad night, sits up blinking and purblind. Oh what was that word (is his thought) that ran through my brain all night, that idiotic word that, hard as I’d try to pun it down, was always just an inch or two out of my grasp – fowl or foul or Vow or Voyal? – a word which, by association, brought into play an incongruous mass and magma of nouns, idioms, slogans and sayings, a confusing, amorphous outpouring which I sought in vain to control or turn off but which wound around my mind a whirlwind of a cord […]
What is perhaps more remarkable is Gibert Adair’s English translation, just excepted, of Perec’s French La Disparition. I simply don’t know how Adair was able to translate that.
I look forward to Stoffi’s rewrite of —– — —-. I can see it already:
Andrw drivs back to Domino’s.
“Matt,” h says. “Thr’s a dolphin in the backsat. Can I go hom?”
“Lt m put ths pppronis on,” Matt says. “Thn I’ll cash you out.”
Aftr bing paid sixty-cnts gas mony for ach dlivry Andrw has fourtn dollars.
“Give half to th dolphin,” Matt says.
Which reminds me of artist Brendan Lott’s sans ‘a’ The Scrlet Letter. I think I’m gonna rewrite Stephen Dixon’s I. without the ‘i.’ I challenge someone to do The Castle without the ‘K.’
This is either high-brow Wheel of Fortune, or lowbrow Jeopardy! I can’t figure it out.
I like Stanley Elkin’s ‘The Magic Kingdom’ a lot
Originally this was going to be a post about my admiration for Stanley Elkin. But seeing in that I’ve read only 2 out of his 10 novels and 1 of his several collections, many of which had been rather heard to come by until thankfully Dalkey Archive made them available en masse. Many of the books are massive in their gait (small font, long graphs, big page counts) and therefore something that I will maybe move to one at a time over the years, unless I get really wrapped up in him again at some point and launch on.
Anyhow, the book of Elkin’s that has slayed me and stayed with me since then is ‘The Magic Kingdom.’
The premise of this book alone I think is enough to get most people interested, as it truly is one of the more wild and meaty premises I think I’ve ever heard: basically, ‘The Magic Kingdom’ is the story of a man whose son becomes terminally ill. In his reeling, he decides to petition the Queen of England to pay for him to take a large group of terminally ill children to Disney World as a sort of ‘last romp.’ The book, then, follows him and what becomes a rather colorful and bonkers set of sick kids in their ‘field trip’ as it were to the land of Mickey.
More after the break:::
I Like Gogol A Lot
Here are some thoughts I typed out about Gogol and did not edit or revise.
Before I get into the stories, I have to admit that I haven’t read Dead Souls. I like to write short stories, so it goes that I also like to read short stories. This doesn’t mean that I don’t read novels, honest (Beckett’s Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable are novels I often pick up to read random passages whenever I have a brain problem); instead, I mean that I’m constantly attracted to short stories, collections, and complete works over novels because it’s just what I’ve done so far. I could write more on this, I guess, but that’s not what this post is about.
Gogol’s collected tales, published as a Vintage Classic and translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, is a wonderful book. I’ve been reading it slowly, very slowly, over one year. I just finished it this past month. Well, I can’t really explain why it took me so long to read. I could try, I guess, and say that one story of his was enough for several months. I could also say that I am lazy, and that life happened, and that other things happened. Whatever. It is a book I wish that I had read all at once, but also I have enjoyed suddenly remembering it and putting off everything else to pick it up again. Does this make sense? I don’t know.
I usually have trouble talking about the language and sentences in translated works. I don’t know translation well enough to understand what goes on between the original and translated version to critique it, nor is my Russian up to quality (read: no Russian whatsoever). So, I’ll move away from that and leave it to the experts, as much as I would like to focus on his sentences.
So, what do I like a lot about Gogol? What is the point of this post? I like that he can make me feel terror. Put aside his great sense of humor, his imaginative ways, his self-aware narrative style, and let us focus on his ability to terrify me. I have talked with several people about this already, but I’d like to share it here. In what little contemporary fiction I’ve read, I struggle to think of work that really terrified me, that made me get up from my chair and turn on the lights late at night all throughout the apartment, that made me feel frightened, not in a realistic way, but in a supernatural way. Does this make sense? I think that some of Evenson’s work does it and I think that “The Pederson Kid” by William Gass did it. Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas did it.
Krammer Abrahams might be serious
If he is, it’s a great day for everyone with eyelids and bees.
I like Krammer Abrahams. If he had written two 500+ page bricks, I would write a long post explaining why I like him. Instead, I’ll just say: he is making the new weird.
Here are some stories you can read by him online:
They Fucked Behind the Blue Curtain @ RobotMelon: This story has a character named ‘Boots Walking in America,’ and is presented with the above picture wherein the author wrote the title of his story on his chest.
Something About a Present Day Jesus @ Lamination Colony: (This story came with a title-chest photo also, though it aroused too much livelihood in me to post it in my post-coital leisure.)
Out of Africa @ Titular: it’s a story about Africa and prostitutes (kind of) and herpes, what else do you want?
And now, here is a press release from this man about a new journal with a new name:
is now accepting submissions. Stories will be published on a yearly basis. I am not sure when that year will start. Submissions should either be 16 words long or over 30,000 words.
Actually, I am not being serious about the ‘publishing on a yearly basis’.
I am serious about submissions being 16 words or 30,000 words long.
If you submit a work 30,000 words long I will probably read it and choose my favorite 16 words. If it is really good I will publish the whole thing on sticky notes. I do not know how I will do this. It might be impossible, but if the work is good enough I will find a way. I will be Gilbert Arenas and become a hibachi and say, “Nothing is impossible” and jump out of the upper deck and your work will be published on sticky notes.
It will be very limited. Only one or two copies will be made. More will be made for $.
I think that is all. Publishing schedule coming soon.
THANK YOU,
Eat these words and vomit them on other people who don’t want to listen but then have to think about the words you threw up on their shirts.
A.S. King
A.S. King is a woman (see picture), but I didn’t know that when I first read her work and she has the wonderful ability to really write in a genderless style. I read one story of hers on Word Riot and was blown away by her humor, her darkness and her ability to basically use magic realism in a way that I found refreshing and purposeful. I immediately read everything else she had online and that was a really great day. Sigh. I then contacted her via her website and told her that I was her newest, rabid fan. Then I worried that she thought I was a stalker. But she insured me that if I were a stalker, she would like that. I find such a maturity of subject matter and playfulness to her stories and an ability to even broach politics –read this messed up, great one on Eclectica– without being preachy or didactic or anything but fascinating and truly thoughtful. She falls into the category of writer-whose-work-is -very-different-than-mine who I so appreciate for opening me up to different ways of writing.
Pre-order her forthcoming book, The Dust of 100 Dogs, here, even though it’s a “young adult” book because how rad is a book about a girl pirate reincarnated as a dog 100 times who then comes back as a modern teenager? I’m reading it, ya or no ya.
Secret Santa – Time to Buy Stuff
So we’ll stop taking new Santas now. 129 of you signed up, which broke my last goal of 125.
Good work.
Look out in your email and on this site for more stuff. I’ll have the random assignments out soon. My plan is to do that by this Monday. That way everyone will have plenty of time to purchase and send things.
For now, relax, go play.
I’ll take care of everything.
Dzanc Half-off Holiday Sale
From Dzanc:
In the Devil’s Territory
Kyle Minor
Based on a True Story
Hesh Kestin
Best of the Web 2008
Steve Almond
Nathan Leslie
BOOK BUNDLES
Bob, or Man on Boat
Peter Markus
In a Bear’s Eye
Yannick Murphy
All Over
Roy Kesey
GIFTS and CLOTHING
Nothing in the World
Roy Kesey
Unending Rooms
Daniel Chacón
Black Lawrence Press
While in Darkness There is Light
Louella Bryant
Black Lawrence Press
The Last Game We Played
Jo Neace Krause
Black Lawrence Press
Signs of Life
Norman Waksler
Black Lawrence Press
Monkeybicycle
Issue six
Monkeybicycle
Issue Five
Monkeybicycle
Issue Four
DATELINE, NYC: Diane Williams to offer private fiction workshop through Mercantile Library Center for Fiction
awesome awesome awesome sexy awesome
Some freelancer for Time Out New York thought Diane’s last book was awesome sexy awesome.