David Gates on Lolita as a Banned Book
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
October 12th, 2008 / 11:44 am
October 12th, 2008 / 11:44 am
Peter Markus is a monk I think
Brother Markus’s interview on Detroit radio WDET is now posted in its entirely with a backup photo montage have now been posted on Youtube for our enjoyment.
Peter talks a lot about writing his new novel BOB, OR MAN ON BOAT from Dzanc Books, including inspiration, rejection, and an excerpt read in Peter’s highly incantatory speech.
“Nothing’s conscious for me, Greg.”
I really enjoy listening to Peter talk, on paper on from the mouth, I think he would be capable of hypnotizing babies in a way that made them smarter, if I ever have a baby I will ask Peter to come down and make the child’s head fattened in the good way.
Chapbook Publishers E-Panel at EWN
Dan Wickett is getting it done over at the Emerging Writers Network.
He’s just posted a great Chapbook E-Panel, participants in which include Kevin Sampsell of Future Tense Press, Ander Monson of New Michigan Press, C.M. Mayo of Tameme, Kristy Bowen of Dancing Girl Press, Carl Annarummo of Greying Ghost Press, and Justin Marks of Kitchen Press.
It’s a lengthy post, but worth the read. Dan asks the particpants questions about the history of each small press, production details (business and design), submissions policies, the chapbook as a form, etc.
New Poetry Journal – Rooms Outlast Us
Rooms Outlast Us is a new poetry journal run by a couple of people I worked with back when I edited fiction at Phoebe. Earlier today, I emailed/gchatted with one of the editors, Danika Stegeman, about it, and she said the journal is modeled after some of the smaller poetry zines that were out in the 50s, 60s, 70s, like the Evergreen Review, which was originally published by Grove Press (before the journal moved online in the 90s, I guess).
Here’s what she said officially:
Rooms Outlast Us will be a small print journal, approximately 40 pages per issue, and will include poetry and poetic criticism. Our emphasis is on showcasing writing from more established poets alongside emerging poets. We are hoping to accommodate writers working on longer works and sequences as well (so the journal will generally favor fewer poets with more pages per poet, rather than many poets with fewer pages). The first issue will be coming out in early January and the journal will be published bi-annually after that.
Rumor has it that they’ve got Matthew Savoca and Laura Sims to contribute to the first issue.
Submissions should be sent to roomsoutlastus[at]gmail.com.
Editors: Danika Stegeman, Ethan Edwards, and Justin Kielsgard.
I got tits too motherfuckers
Sorry, just gearin’ up for Mean Week
Boobs Friday for Internet Literature
Friday. I think Friday is okay? Friday actually kind of sucks for internet land because it’s the beginning of the weekend and during the weekend people aren’t at work all day jacking off on the internet not doing their real job and they are actually out like talking to people and being with real life friends. Fuck all that. The weekend is like my reverse weekend. I have a weekend through the week and the weekend feels like the week.
Internet literature definitely suffers on the weekends, there are less emails, less updates, stop being real people, mmk?
To combat the weekend slump of weekend, HTML Giant is pleased to present some tits.
As a gift to internet literature from our very own Kendra Grant Malone, here are Kendra Grant Malone’s boobs.
This hopefully will be the beginning of what I’d like to think of as Boobs Friday for Internet Literature.
Submit your boobs for future Fridays, get an acceptance to like elimae or Wigleaf via karmic booyah.
Next week is MEAN WEEK
In the face of all our current praising and cataloging of the good, HTML GIANT is proud to announce now that next week in our hands will be known as Mean Week. I mean, yeah, it’s fun to praise a lot of things, but sometimes you should be mean.
So all next week, we’re being mean. We might be mean even if we like you. We might be mean in a rotting hatred of your mother. We might expect you to be mean back.
It can’t be all lambs and roses. Mean Week is real.
Ryan Call, you’re going to have to find a way to be mean.
Sam Pink, let’s fight.
Kissed By…
I road the bus to work this morning, and 1) listened to Disintegration Loops by William Basinski and 2) read a random story from Kissed By by Alexandra Chasin.
The story was called “They Come From Mars” and in one of those all-too-common moments of synchronicity, that story is essentially a disintegrating language loop. It contains only—until its surprise ending—four letter words. (No, not profanity.) There are twelve words a line. The font is Courier, I think, which is a monospaced (fixed width) font, so all the words are the same size.
What begins as an incantatory: They come from Mars they come from Mars…gives way to a discussion of the arrival of visitors from Mars. Chasin abbreviates. “There” and “their” become “ther.” When we speak, we abbreviate without realizing it, and she uses that to her advantage. “Suspect” becomes “spec.” (Unless she means “expect,” but, she uses that ambiguity to her advantage as well.)
The long columns of twelve word, monospaced lines, the paranoia in the prose (they come from Mars, for Heaven’s sake!), the flatering, disintegrating prose loops—it reminds me of Howard Finster a little, outsider art. The text on the bottles of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap.
And, as I said, it dovetailed nicely with the Basinski, a recording of a long, old tape loop repeating and repeating and repeating and slowly falling apart moment by moment in such minimal steps, you miss it.
Blake sent me this book. Thanks, Blake.
Today is J.G. Ballard Day
over at Dennis Cooper’s blog, The Weaklings.
For folks who don’t know, Cooper runs one of the greatest blogs on the net. He organizes his posts into massive, theme-driven “Days” and posts a new one daily, Mon-Sat. Topics range from literature to cinema to art to professional wrestling to gay porn to music to whatever else you can think of. He’s also a big advocate of collaboration and participation, and is always eager to have members of his blog community to guest-curate a Day of their own devising.
A semi-random sampling from the blog archives:
October 8th was David Ohle Day, guest-curated by Jeff
October 2nd was John Ashbery Day
On September 22nd we checked out some male escorts
On September 19th I curated a day of pictures of my friend Maggie
On June 7th we reviewed some of the history of Queer Punk
On May 6th we looked at 10 squats
March 13, 2007: A Basic Layout of David Lynch’s ‘The Air is on Fire’
Peter Markus
Always looking forward to what Peter Markus is doing with his words, I decided to ask the man himself what we can expect from him in the future. A few great things to get everyone pumped:
-A new book of brother stories to be published by Dzanc in 2011.
-A limited edition book from Cinematheque Press called “The Moon is a Fish” that he describes as “a sort of novelty project that will have illustrations, maybe even maps, other odds and ends and assortments—fish bones, fish teeth, fish scales, a broken off piece of the moon, etc” to be published sometime next year, but not definite yet.
-A manuscript of three long stories where “every word is monosyllabic.” One of these will appear in the next issue of Unsaid.
And if all that is too much of a wait, Peter will be on Detroit radio this morning at WDET 101.9FM on the show Detroit Today at 11:00.