Random
Lishcast Moonfish Sleepingfish Bookmas
1. Iambik offers a free audio Q/A slash talk with Gordon Lish re: creation, editing, Beckett, Ginsberg, Tao Lin (for real), and various etc., in corollary with the release of his audio books.
2. Cinematheque Press has published a limited edition run of Peter Markus’s classic The Moon is a Fish in a limited edition of 84, with all proceeds going to support the InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit.
3. If you haven’t been following Sleepingfish’s vol iX sequence, you have some reading to do, including new short pieces by Robert Lopez, Jack Boettcher, Elisa Misto, and more more.
4. I got my mom Sebald’s Rings of Saturn and Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America/The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster/In Watermelon Sugar and J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces for the Left Hand for xmas. I disagree with Adam: books are the only gift I usually actually end up doing something with beyond the day it arrives.
What books did you get people? What did/will you get?
Tags: Peter Markus, sleepingfish
no, do people need to be professors to read interesting shit?
in years past i’ve given her saramago, pynchon, markson, mccarthy, hempel, delillo, lopez, hannah, marcus, lerner, barthelme, didion; she enjoys challenges, and new things. on her own she usually reads more pop books. more people might be the same way if they were given gifts the same way.
Winter’s Bone is great. Have you seen the film? I have not but am curious.
I gave Scott Wolven’s Controlled Burn, Tokyo Zero by Marc Horne, and Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell.
is your mom a professor, or does she have a job outside academics and really loves books?
Got my wife Foer’s Eating Animals, my brother Keith Richard’s Life, my dad a subscription to Oxford American, and will probably run out and get my uncle Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply
no, do people need to be professors to read interesting shit?
in years past i’ve given her saramago, pynchon, markson, mccarthy, hempel, calvino, marquez, delillo, lopez, hannah, marcus, lerner, barthelme, didion; she enjoys challenges, and new things. on her own she usually reads more pop books. more people might try more new things if they were given gifts the same way.
the orange eats creeps for my sister, 2666 audiobook for my dad because his ears are better than his eyes, alix cleo roubaud’s journal for my bestie, and freedom for my mom.
Winter’s Bone is great. Have you seen the film? I have not but am curious.
My sister gave me a book card, which I used to buy new things by Krilanovich, Svoboda, and Dermansky, basically because there was no chance of finding them in libraries. I haven’t read the first yet but the second and third have proven great.
One year someone gave me Europe Central and I am sad to report I didn’t finish it.
Good on you for getting Brautigan for your mom. This year, I gave my mom Chelsea Martin’s Everything Was Fine Until Whatever and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.
Some of the other books I gave as presents this year: The Avian Gospels by Adam Novy, a book of lectures from Borges, The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino, The Cannibal’s Guide to Ethical Living by Mykle Hansen, The Master and Margarita, the novelization of DinoCroc, an anthology of Eastern love stories, and The Faggiest Vampire by Carlton Mellick III.
This year I was given the new issue of Caketrain, The Orange Eats Creeps, and Mushrooms Demystified.
A few weeks back, my gf and I went to this library-fundraiser thing called Biblioball, and one of the things in our thank-you bag was a coupon for $10 off a $50 purchase at WORD Books in Greenpoint. Neither of us were particularly hard up for particular books, so we decided to go in with the explicit goal of buying books we might not normally go for, until we had about $25 worth of books apiece, thereby achieving our discount threshold. Yesterday, in advance of her departure for the holidays, we executed our plan. She bought Judith Schalansky’s “Atlas of Remote Islands,” which is a gorgeously laid-out hardcover with lots of maps. I bought Karen Armstrong’s “Short History of Myth” and the recent Paul Schmidt translation of the Complete Works of Rimbaud. Haven’t cracked the Schmidt yet, but I ripped through the Armstrong last night and this morning/afternoon. Highly recommended.
Atlas is beautiful, isn’t it? Thanks for the Myth mention.
Have you read any Joseph Campbell?
gave my lil bro:
white noise by delillo
infinite jest by dfw
ghosts by ceasar aira
&&&
crying of lot 49 by thomas pynchon
Here and there, but no one book start to finish. You?
great q/a lish. thanks for this present. really enjoyed.
i gave one of my younger brothers infinite jest last xmas, and now he wants to switch majors from bioengineering to creative writing.
A nice gift alongside Schulz might be See Under: Love.
I bought The Collected Stories of Grace Paley for Drew Kalbach because he was my secret santa person. I bought two JM Coetzee books for my boyfriend, Disgrace & Elizabeth Costello. I got my mom a copy of a literary journal that I was in because that is what she asked for.
Gordon Lish also speaks about Justin Taylor in that link
yes he does, yes. he. does.
Sounds kinda dope. Naw, people don’t need to be professors to read interesting shit. But that is how this whole thing has ended up, where a lot of people don’t like to venture out to read a lot of interesting material due to weird labels put on things like you have to be A) to really dig B). Which is why I asked, because it makes it that much more interesting that she ventures out of her zone. My moms tends to stay in a pretty general lane. Strangely enough, she had Tarbaby on our shelf growing up, along with The Shining and all these complicated long books, so I don’t know whether or not it was hers or my dads or my sisters dads or whatever.
Yes, he sure does. This is going to be short, because there’s nothing to be gained by engaging with one’s slander (“do you still beat your wife?” etc.) but I want to clarify a few matters of fact. What’s missing from Lish’s account is our two years of friendship between the time he learned I was an associate of Tao Lin’s and the time he decided I was out of his club. But the lesson should be (and is) clear enough: Like Satan in Heaven, once you’re out, you’re out. Anyway, it’s at least decent company here on the bad-kids’ list: Diane Williams, Michael Kimball, Raymond Carver, Deb Olin Unferth, Ben Marcus, Walter Kirn, David Leavitt. Etc., etc.
Fun fact: the interviewer is John Oakes, my first publisher. John put out my anthology “The Apocalypse Reader” in 2007; which is how I met Lish in the first place–I gave Lish a copy and he liked it enough that he wrote me a postcard (which I still have) then had me over to his home, which is how our friendship began. (If you’re wondering, I was never his student.) The actual story of how said friendship unwound is a pretty interesting one, but it’ll have to wait for another day. Right now I am interested in salvaging what’s left of my Christmas Cheer–co-religionist of Lish’s though I am–which means getting away from the computer, for a start.
Happy holidays, y’all.
great q/a lish. thanks for this present. really enjoyed.
professors actually read LESS interesting shit.
I don’t agree with everything Lish has to say in that interview (I do agree with what he has to say about DeLillo) but wow that is an entertaining conversation.
1.
–Gordon Lish, Writing Coach
front cover of Lin’s story collection
A caveat: Mr Lish’s opinions are (erm, obviously) his own and don’t reflect the etc etc of Iambik. Thanks for linking of course. The skin infliction stuff alone is sui generistically incredible.
I bought Bruno Schultz and Bolano for my younger sister per her request. What makes this especially nice is that these were my exact requests fulfilled by her a few years ago. I used to think my yen for whiskey and men was all that’d rubbed off…
A nice gift alongside Schulz might be See Under: Love.
I bought The Collected Stories of Grace Paley for Drew Kalbach because he was my secret santa person. I bought two JM Coetzee books for my boyfriend, Disgrace & Elizabeth Costello. I got my mom a copy of a literary journal that I was in because that is what she asked for.
i am giving my brother a book “written” by snoop dogg
Just The Power of Myth start to finish, and pieces elsewhere. Highly
recommend, too.
—
http://kenbaumann.com
Got my mom the new Davis translation of Madame Bovary, my sis both Rose Metal Press guides plus Best of the Web, Stones of Aran for my bro. Best books I gave though, were for my husband: full set of Fitzgerald Penguin special limited editions with Art Deco design–available in the UK only, but my husband’s mad for Fitzgerald so the shipping was worth it for the look on his face.
My in-laws got me the best book gifts: the Avian Gospels AND the Art Spiegelman-edited Lynd Ward woodcut graphic novel set. Both book sets so lovely I can’t stop looking at them. I’m with Blake; books are the best gift. To give and get.
is it a thing for writers to send each other postcards? i feel like i’ve been hearing of this practice a lot…
like frederic tuten was saying once how he was super psyched to get a postcard from david markson
or is this just something that people (in general) do when they are friends?
mom – ‘the ask’ by sam lipsyte
dad – ‘the undisputed guide to pro basketball history’ by freedarko
sister – ‘wilson’ by daniel clowes
best friend – ‘neuromancer’ by william gibson
best friend’s mom – ‘who will run the frog hospital?’ by lorrie moore
best friend’s dad – ‘waveland’ by frederick barthelme
The film is pretty good – very faithful to the book, although somehow less foreceful. I can’t explain why this is so exactly. Definitely worth watching, though.
Oh, and I gave my 3-year old Maybelle and the Ogre. It’s out of print now and she made me check it out 3 times in a row from the library last summer. She still remembered 6 months later, which was kinda gratifying.
i’ve noticed this postcard thing too, seems classy or whatever
i once requested a blurb from stephen dixon (for someone else’s book) and he mailed it to me typewritten at an angle on a piece of scratch paper
feel there is a 99.9% chance that someday i will write a tacky blurb ‘by’ gordon lish for myself
myths to live by is way good, my high school english teacher gave me that book when i was 16 and it put a lot in perspective
Adding that to list! I like happy erudition like Campbell’s.
aren’t you a professor?
I got my 13 year old violin student Leaves of Grass because he thought the Levi’s O Pioneer adverts were written by clever advert writers. Student’s name is Whitman by the way. I didn’t receive books but got a $40 certificate to the University Bookstore (from the same student’s parents ha.)
he seemed faking in his ‘discovery’ of your and tl’s name, knew/remembered them all along.
Gordon Lish: Complete asshole.
John Oakes: As it turns out: Complete asshole.
Team Justin.
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