August 31st, 2009 / 12:57 pm
Uncategorized

Diagram Summer All-Fiction Issue

94_tocIt’s one of the things I look forward to every year: Diagram’s badass and always mindbending gathering of finalists and winner of their annual $5 innovative fiction issue. The 2009 batch has just gone live, and this year marks another slew of things to stare at open in my web browser while I write my owns, including words by many new-to-me names: August Tarrier, Erica W. Adams, Michael Argest, Kristina Born, Micah Nathan, Lito Elio Porto, Nathania Rosenfeld, Rhodes Stevens, and Jenny Zhang.

Big highlight for me is a new long-ish text from heartthrob Kristina Born (yes, Shane Jones and I are releasing her debut book later this year, take a look!). Check out this sample graph from this fine show of freak:

The Gilmore Commission

Holograms can kill a man. Unlike linear images, which are easily sidestepped, literally. A threadlike sports car races by the locked glass doors. Since early childhood, Jack Twig, it has been your job to know the difference. (You said: the difference is it’s a psychological difference.) Mother and I have been losing our sight for quite some time. Even now, Teddy proposes a game of hangman and she declines, murmuring, patting her hands on her cheeks. Look at her. She is not afraid to die but of almost every other thing. Sometimes I wonder, Who can think without horror on death and the life beyond? and I know it is only my wife and only because her eyeballs are falling out. Sometimes I wonder, When comes the mutually assured destruction promised us by our greatest nations? Jack Twig, take a look for me: I think I still have some extremely deteriorated nerve agent buried in the yard.

I XOX her to death. Read the rest of this brilliant piece: Jack Twig is the Evil Pulse of Canada.

The rest is all as grand as well and a big gleam. Diagram continues to be, to me, one of, if not THE, best web journal around.

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14 Comments

  1. davidpeak

      blake, i tried to order kristina’s book from the liquidator site and the paypal wasn’t working. can you help me on that?

  2. davidpeak

      blake, i tried to order kristina’s book from the liquidator site and the paypal wasn’t working. can you help me on that?

  3. Blake Butler

      i have heard that from a few people. weird though, because it works fine when i try it here. are you using firefox?

      anyone that is having trouble who wants to preorder can paypal $10 to me at blakebutler [at] gmail [dot] com, just include that it is for BORN

  4. Blake Butler

      i have heard that from a few people. weird though, because it works fine when i try it here. are you using firefox?

      anyone that is having trouble who wants to preorder can paypal $10 to me at blakebutler [at] gmail [dot] com, just include that it is for BORN

  5. davidpeak

      cool, thanks. i’ll paypal you tonight. thanks b

  6. davidpeak

      cool, thanks. i’ll paypal you tonight. thanks b

  7. davidpeak

      oh, and: i’m using safari. that might be the problem

  8. davidpeak

      oh, and: i’m using safari. that might be the problem

  9. Blake Butler

      ah, yeah, that must be it…. i’ll have to peak at it. thanks david.

  10. Blake Butler

      ah, yeah, that must be it…. i’ll have to peak at it. thanks david.

  11. Catherine Lacey

      I love Diagram the most.

  12. Catherine Lacey

      I love Diagram the most.

  13. Peter Markus

      The story by August Terrier is really very good. I’ve never read her before. Thanks to DIAGRAM.

  14. Peter Markus

      The story by August Terrier is really very good. I’ve never read her before. Thanks to DIAGRAM.