Reviews

Cover to Cover: NOON, Part 3

(Previous entries in this series: Part 2, Part 1.)

It’s been a long couple of weeks for me, slogging toward the end of my teaching semester. I’m coming to you live right now from the basement of Murray Hall, New Brunswick NJ, for probably the last time until September. It’s a nice little office, as windowless cold rooms go, but I can’t say I’ll be sorry to be apart from it all summer. Anyway. Yesterday I finished grading my students’ last homework papers, and in a half hour I give them their final, which I spend all of tonight and tomorrow grading, so I can be done by Wednesday. What does all this mean? It means that I had a bit of time this morning to actually read something that wasn’t student work. So I whipped out my copy of NOON, uncapped my Krispy Kreme coffee, settled into my window seat, and picked up where I left off.

Christine Schutt’s “Hair of the Dog” is a dark wonder. I’m a huge fan of Christine’s work in general, and reviewed her last novel, All Souls for FLAUNT a while back.  Her writing is incredible, somehow stripped bare and bejeweled at once. She is a master of intimacy and absence. “Hair of the Dog” is about a young married couple traveling through England and, later, Italy, having some sexual problems–she won’t, or is it can’t?, find pleasure in the act, and he won’t (or, again, is it can’t?) accept her proposition that the best thing for him to do is stop trying. If I’m not mistaken, “Hair of the Dog” is an excerpt from something larger that Schutt is working on. Fingers crossed.

“Awful Spark” by Rob Walsh is a recursive little short-short narrated by a “we” that seems to have no reason for not being an “I,” other than that it’s I guess a little creepier/weirder that way. Or something. The story begins “It was Kim! Kim was surprised to see us, and we were surprised to see Kim.” It’s not really, in my estimation, a story at all so much as a kind of sound poem. The words “Kim” and “we” are rung over and over, like bells, and the music is not unlovely.

“Kattan, Kotton, Kattan, Kotton” by Miya Yamamoto is named for the sound a train makes gliding over track. It’s about two childhood friends reunited under less than ideal circumstances (a family illness has forced the narrator and her husband to return to Japan from Los Angeles, for an indefinite stay) but the story itself just describes a pleasant afternoon in a seaside town. I keep wanting to call it “slight,” but that isn’t correct. Deft isn’t exactly right either, though it’s much closer, and maybe is right after all. I’ll say this: I read it pretty early this morning, and didn’t think a whole lot of it one way or the other at the time, but it’s stuck with me all day and now on into the night (despite what the top of this post says about the office, it’s nearly twelve hours later and I’m now at home). I think of all the pieces I read today (not counting Christine’s, which I’d heard her read before), this one didn’t make the strongest impression, but it may well have made the most lasting one. 

Strongest impression might go to “On Rape” by Rebecca Curtis. This one’s bound to divide opinions. It begins: “This morning I would like to contemplate rape, a highly underestimated phenomenon in our society. I say ‘underestimated’ not only because it happens all the time to women everywhere, sometimes to the same woman twice at once, but also because its positive effects are undervalued.” It goes from there. I missed the NOON launch party, but I heard that Curtis read her piece there and that the audience reaction was… mixed. That’s a shame, I think, though not exactly a surprise. It’s a vicious piece, and in the places where it succeeds it cuts to the bone. The problem is that with a subject this charged, the stakes are so high that even the smallest missteps glare. This isn’t a balance beam, it’s a high wire. The footnotes, for example, were a mistake. They work against the central conceit of the piece, which for me has to be a person speaking (I imagine the speaker addressing a room, possibly giving a lecture). Also, the first two aren’t very funny, and the second two could have easily been worked into the body text. I think this piece could have used another round of edits (there are a few dud lines, and in a piece like this every punch-line needs to go off like a shot in the jaw) but it is nonetheless a powerful and powerfully (rightly) offputting piece of writing. If your first reaction is a negative one, that may well be part of the point. Read it again. 

“The Descent of Value” by Greg Mulcahy and “Don’t Hit Your Head” by Tao Lin, seem somewhat of a piece to me, and both in their own way fairly similar to “Awful Spark” and the Chinquee short-shorts from earlier in the issue. It’s that same rigorous minimalism, verging on flatness, and what distinguishes the writers from one another, mainly, seems to be the use to which they put the technique. Mulcahy’s an ace at fine Lish-y sentences and sequences: “First the experts. Now The Descent of Value. The expert talked about what could and could not occur in a context. That was what the expert was an expert on.” Etc. I’m not sure this story puts the method to an particularly novel use, but it’s entirely successful at being what it is.

I think this touches on something fairly important to understand about NOON, which is that even though it is a champion of some of the best and most challenging prose writing being produced today, this is not the same as saying that it is necessarily leading the charge forward for avant-garde fiction as such. Indeed, if I had to try and identify NOON’s project, I might argue that it has endeavored to create a sort of Safe Space–a nature preserve, perhaps; think of all those naturalist animals which have graced their covers, up to and including this year’s reindeer–for writers whose work does not fit comfortably elsewhere. I think this is nowhere more clear than in NOON’s abiding affection for Tao Lin’s work. Tao is of course a writer both much more traditional and much more radical than he’s given credit for, because discussions of his work are largely dominated by a vocal minority of “internet writers” who want desperately to claim him as one of their own–either as the Crown Prince of their little fiefdom or else as the Arch-Villain responsible for everything wrong with same. Reading his work in NOON–for what? the second year, or is it third year now?–offers a remarkable and refreshing context for considering him. To encounter him here–in the company of all these other writers who share his interests in purposefully muted prose and the aesthetic possibilities of flatness, but whose talents are equal to and/or surpassing his own–is to understand him as he ought to be understood: not as the Crown Prince or Arch-Villain of anything; only as a talented and interesting young writer on the cusp of entering the major leagues. 

Next time on Cover to Cover, I’ll be looking at Kathryn Scanlan, Lydia Davis’s translations from the German of Peter Altenberg, and whatever else I find as I turn page after page of NOON #9. Also, fyi, the Bill Hayward Q&A is going to happen, but it’s going to be appearing on Dennis Cooper’s The Weaklings blog, as the first-ever COOP/GIANT crossover adventure, of which we are hopeful there will be many more. Look for it at some point in the not-too-distant future, and/or just wait for me to announce it here. I’ll leave you now with my favorite snatch of dialogue from “Don’t Hit Your Head.”

They stopped walking. “Don’t laugh at me,” she said.

“This is funny,” he said, grinning. “Why don’t you have a sense of humor right now?”

“It won’t be funny when you’re afraid to sleep tonight,” she said.

“I probably won’t sleep tonight,” he said.

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48 Comments

  1. pr

      I love this series. I like the brief discussion of each piece.

      I’m very intrigued by Rebecca Curtis. I couldn’t find Noon at my bookstore – wierdly- maybe I’ll just order it online.

  2. Blake Butler

      i don’t think i buy the safe haven theory, as most of the NOON authors are all over the place publishing-wise. but there is definitely something specific to be said about the regiment of noon. i just can’t quite.

      good post. i agree on the tao statements i think. if most of people i know who discredit tao based on his online persona read the noon stories i think they would be more convinced. ‘or something’

  3. Blake Butler

      i don’t think i buy the safe haven theory, as most of the NOON authors are all over the place publishing-wise. but there is definitely something specific to be said about the regiment of noon. i just can’t quite.

      good post. i agree on the tao statements i think. if most of people i know who discredit tao based on his online persona read the noon stories i think they would be more convinced. ‘or something’

  4. Lincoln

      Dig this series. Yes, I think Schutt’s piece is an early part of her novel she is working on.

  5. Lincoln

      Dig this series. Yes, I think Schutt’s piece is an early part of her novel she is working on.

  6. Lincoln

      I think you could modify the safe haven theory a bit. You are very correct that while some NOON authors might have a hard time getting in more mainstream places (Gary Lutz for example), a lot of NOON people are all over the place (Rebecca Curtis has been every including the New Yorker for example.)

      OTOH, while Rebecca might be able to publish all over, could she publish this piece all over? NOON is more than this, but I do think it is something of a safe space for a certain type of “unsafe” writing. A funny satire on rape is not going to be welcome most places, and is good that a place like NOON exists to allow such writing to be read.

      (full disclosure: I do some work for NOON)

  7. Lincoln

      I think you could modify the safe haven theory a bit. You are very correct that while some NOON authors might have a hard time getting in more mainstream places (Gary Lutz for example), a lot of NOON people are all over the place (Rebecca Curtis has been every including the New Yorker for example.)

      OTOH, while Rebecca might be able to publish all over, could she publish this piece all over? NOON is more than this, but I do think it is something of a safe space for a certain type of “unsafe” writing. A funny satire on rape is not going to be welcome most places, and is good that a place like NOON exists to allow such writing to be read.

      (full disclosure: I do some work for NOON)

  8. John Madera

      Hey Justin,

      Great continuation on your review of the journal.

      As you know, I made it to the Noon anniversary party. As it’s kind of the standard-bearer of the so-called “acoustic properties” of the sentence I was very surprised by their choice of Clancy Martin and Rebecca Curtis as the first two readers before Schutt. Martin’s prose was pretty perfunctory. And that’s okay, I guess, but the stories themselves didn’t seem to offer much. Especially that overlong second one. I thought it started well, then it kind of went predictably where it went. As for Curtis, at first I thought it was her delivery (she was visibly nervous and, maybe because of that, embarassingly self-deprecatory) that made her reading weak and wondered if having an actor read it would have made it come to life. But then I thought that a good actor can make contractual legalese sound like Wallace Stevens. Delivery doesn’t ensure quality, but at least it would have been entertaining.

      You know, I really feel like there isn’t a subject out there that shouldn’t be treated in any way, which is a rather clunky way of saying that I’m all ears for hearing and all eyes for seeing a taboo subject like rape treated satirically and irreverently. Curtis’ piece failed to deliver on its promise. It lacked the sensitive insensity, understanding misunderstanding, or in short, the language necessary to truly disturb. I wondered what Bill Hicks would have done with this incredibly volatile subject, or Barthelme, or Diane Williams, or Vonnegut, Kubrick, Twain, Saunders, and on and on. Curtis took a clinical approach that I could see working, but it ultimately fell flat. I kept wishing it would end. A friend mentioned to me that “the rape thing just didn’t work; I felt it fail within two lines and cringed the rest of the way through what was NOT funny, and NOT verbally clever and precise enough to contextualize the calculated assault of the subject matter. I was offended on several levels (and by the reader’s serial mispronunciation of ‘women’-as if the piece itself didn’t sufficiently insult that category).” With all of its failures, and their are many, as you’ve noted, I don’t see why it deserves a second read. With so much great writing to catch up on, who’s got time to read middling ones?

      I’d like to hear from everyone here what they consider to be great satirical works. I’m sure Curtis’s piece won’t measure up.

      Schutt’s piece however was truly a different story all together (it was the preface to a forthcoming novel; the current story in Noon is a chapter in same). I
      think I’ll always remember that woman’s “exorbitant” crying in Schutt’s piece. And it wasn’t just Schutt’s unusual use of adjectives, that got to me, but, as usual, her beautifully textured prose, her elegantly composed sentences, her insight, and her fearless and soulful excavation of a person’s consciousness.

      Once again, thanks for such a close-reading of the journal.

  9. John Madera

      Hey Justin,

      Great continuation on your review of the journal.

      As you know, I made it to the Noon anniversary party. As it’s kind of the standard-bearer of the so-called “acoustic properties” of the sentence I was very surprised by their choice of Clancy Martin and Rebecca Curtis as the first two readers before Schutt. Martin’s prose was pretty perfunctory. And that’s okay, I guess, but the stories themselves didn’t seem to offer much. Especially that overlong second one. I thought it started well, then it kind of went predictably where it went. As for Curtis, at first I thought it was her delivery (she was visibly nervous and, maybe because of that, embarassingly self-deprecatory) that made her reading weak and wondered if having an actor read it would have made it come to life. But then I thought that a good actor can make contractual legalese sound like Wallace Stevens. Delivery doesn’t ensure quality, but at least it would have been entertaining.

      You know, I really feel like there isn’t a subject out there that shouldn’t be treated in any way, which is a rather clunky way of saying that I’m all ears for hearing and all eyes for seeing a taboo subject like rape treated satirically and irreverently. Curtis’ piece failed to deliver on its promise. It lacked the sensitive insensity, understanding misunderstanding, or in short, the language necessary to truly disturb. I wondered what Bill Hicks would have done with this incredibly volatile subject, or Barthelme, or Diane Williams, or Vonnegut, Kubrick, Twain, Saunders, and on and on. Curtis took a clinical approach that I could see working, but it ultimately fell flat. I kept wishing it would end. A friend mentioned to me that “the rape thing just didn’t work; I felt it fail within two lines and cringed the rest of the way through what was NOT funny, and NOT verbally clever and precise enough to contextualize the calculated assault of the subject matter. I was offended on several levels (and by the reader’s serial mispronunciation of ‘women’-as if the piece itself didn’t sufficiently insult that category).” With all of its failures, and their are many, as you’ve noted, I don’t see why it deserves a second read. With so much great writing to catch up on, who’s got time to read middling ones?

      I’d like to hear from everyone here what they consider to be great satirical works. I’m sure Curtis’s piece won’t measure up.

      Schutt’s piece however was truly a different story all together (it was the preface to a forthcoming novel; the current story in Noon is a chapter in same). I
      think I’ll always remember that woman’s “exorbitant” crying in Schutt’s piece. And it wasn’t just Schutt’s unusual use of adjectives, that got to me, but, as usual, her beautifully textured prose, her elegantly composed sentences, her insight, and her fearless and soulful excavation of a person’s consciousness.

      Once again, thanks for such a close-reading of the journal.

  10. pr

      What do you think of Sarah Silverman’s rape jokes, if you’ve heard them? I can’t really offer an opinion. She confuses me.

  11. Justin Taylor

      John, you need to read the piece again. The conceit is that “calm, clinical” idea, but it’s set up only to be betrayed over and over again–most regularly and powerfully by the subject-matter itself, but also by the speaker’s inability at key moments to maintain perfect composure. Look for the late meditation on purity, for an example of what I’m talking about.

      Also, the fourth footnote, about a man’s possible reactions to a woman’s confession of rape: “Funny, my last girlfriend was raped. Actually, my girlfriend before that was raped, too. Come to think of it, all my girlfriends have been raped. What is wrong with me that I always date girls who have been raped? Am I a loser?”

      My criticism of the use of the footnote notwithstanding, this material is in many ways the heart of the piece (another reason why I argue for its integration into the body text). The man, on hearing of his girlfriend’s having been raped, sees the event only in terms of his own relation to it, which can only ever be a delusional one, since no relationship can exist or does exist between him and the instance of a past act of sexual violence committed when he was not present. That’s the first layer. The second layer comes with his near-miss revelation–“come to think of it, all my girlfriends have been raped”–which should but doesn’t lead him to the conclusion that rape is something that can happen to anyone, and in fact the sweeping majority of women have experienced or will experience some form of sexual violence or abuse in their lives. That’s what he’s supposed to get, but he doesn’t. Instead of learning something about the kind of harm this culture keeps half its population regularly exposed to, he turns the focus back on himself, and tries to sees the rape of each individual woman he has known as a series of exceptions, and that he must therefore be the discerning lens–whatever it is about each woman that drew him to her must be something they all have in common, perhaps related to whatever it was that caused them to draw the attentions of a rapist. That is to say, he essentially colludes with all rapists everywhere, by perpetuating the pernicious lie that these women were in some way “asking for it.”

      It doesn’t surprise me that all of that wasn’t communicated in a single live reading, especially if the performer was really nervous and ill-at-ease. But it IS in there. It’s a very, very smart piece, and a lot of what it has to say may be things you don’t especially want to hear. All the more reason to listen up.

  12. Justin Taylor

      John, you need to read the piece again. The conceit is that “calm, clinical” idea, but it’s set up only to be betrayed over and over again–most regularly and powerfully by the subject-matter itself, but also by the speaker’s inability at key moments to maintain perfect composure. Look for the late meditation on purity, for an example of what I’m talking about.

      Also, the fourth footnote, about a man’s possible reactions to a woman’s confession of rape: “Funny, my last girlfriend was raped. Actually, my girlfriend before that was raped, too. Come to think of it, all my girlfriends have been raped. What is wrong with me that I always date girls who have been raped? Am I a loser?”

      My criticism of the use of the footnote notwithstanding, this material is in many ways the heart of the piece (another reason why I argue for its integration into the body text). The man, on hearing of his girlfriend’s having been raped, sees the event only in terms of his own relation to it, which can only ever be a delusional one, since no relationship can exist or does exist between him and the instance of a past act of sexual violence committed when he was not present. That’s the first layer. The second layer comes with his near-miss revelation–“come to think of it, all my girlfriends have been raped”–which should but doesn’t lead him to the conclusion that rape is something that can happen to anyone, and in fact the sweeping majority of women have experienced or will experience some form of sexual violence or abuse in their lives. That’s what he’s supposed to get, but he doesn’t. Instead of learning something about the kind of harm this culture keeps half its population regularly exposed to, he turns the focus back on himself, and tries to sees the rape of each individual woman he has known as a series of exceptions, and that he must therefore be the discerning lens–whatever it is about each woman that drew him to her must be something they all have in common, perhaps related to whatever it was that caused them to draw the attentions of a rapist. That is to say, he essentially colludes with all rapists everywhere, by perpetuating the pernicious lie that these women were in some way “asking for it.”

      It doesn’t surprise me that all of that wasn’t communicated in a single live reading, especially if the performer was really nervous and ill-at-ease. But it IS in there. It’s a very, very smart piece, and a lot of what it has to say may be things you don’t especially want to hear. All the more reason to listen up.

  13. Justin Taylor

      Lincoln- I like the idea of the Nature Preserve better than the safe haven. And I don’t want to get into a thing about who has published where. It’s not really what I’m talking about. Animal populations fluctuate all the time in the wild– they get poached, blighted, or even have a good run. The thing about a nature preserve is that it has been set aside. It’s a designated place. What lives there, will live there, and be protected, and so thrive—whatever other good or ill fortune might wreak across the world at large.

  14. Justin Taylor

      Lincoln- I like the idea of the Nature Preserve better than the safe haven. And I don’t want to get into a thing about who has published where. It’s not really what I’m talking about. Animal populations fluctuate all the time in the wild– they get poached, blighted, or even have a good run. The thing about a nature preserve is that it has been set aside. It’s a designated place. What lives there, will live there, and be protected, and so thrive—whatever other good or ill fortune might wreak across the world at large.

  15. Lincoln

      Yes, I think that all makes sense. A place for these kind of things no matter how they are thriving or dying in the outside world.

  16. Lincoln

      Yes, I think that all makes sense. A place for these kind of things no matter how they are thriving or dying in the outside world.

  17. pr

      now i really can’t wait to read it.

  18. Brandon Hobson

      John,
      I wish I could’ve been at the launch party. How was it? This is a great post, Justin.

  19. Brandon Hobson

      John,
      I wish I could’ve been at the launch party. How was it? This is a great post, Justin.

  20. Blake Butler

      both terms are slightly nauseating in their application.

      i dont know.

  21. Blake Butler

      both terms are slightly nauseating in their application.

      i dont know.

  22. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I agree with this, about its layered critique of complicity and what feminists would call the “rape culture.”

      I read it only a couple days after I read the Isadora Bey story that opens No Colony 2 and started to wonder whether rape satire was a growing trend.

  23. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I agree with this, about its layered critique of complicity and what feminists would call the “rape culture.”

      I read it only a couple days after I read the Isadora Bey story that opens No Colony 2 and started to wonder whether rape satire was a growing trend.

  24. John Madera

      Hey Justin,

      I’m really enjoying how you’re reading Curtis’s piece, that is, with the eye of an editor measuring its merits against weaknesses. And I can certainly roll with that. But when weighing her piece against the short list of satirical writers, filmmakers, comedians (all of whom have masterfully dealt with taboo subjects), I mentioned above, it just doesn’t come close. I hear you about the piece’s successes. But its failures are so egregious that it doesn’t merit more than a footnote of its own in Curtis’s, one would hope, evolving career. Time will tell.

      As I said before, it’s not the subject matter, the decision to treat it irreverently, ironically, etc., that is disturbing, but it’s very real failure to strike a convincing ironical distance, its shaky control of the taboo material, its slippery command of the different registers.

      As for your admonition that ” a lot of what it has to say may be things you don’t especially want to hear. All the more reason to listen up,” strikes me as nonsensical. The logic here is that if something makes you feel uncomfortable, then you should engage it more closely. Sounds counter-intuitive to me. Once again, it’s not the piece’s subject matter I found disturbing, but its very real failure to be what it wants to be. As you’ve demonstrated, it needs to be edited, and I would add mercilessly.

      When there’s so many things to read, let alone reread, rereading b-material just doesn’t make any sense to me.

  25. John Madera

      Hey Justin,

      I’m really enjoying how you’re reading Curtis’s piece, that is, with the eye of an editor measuring its merits against weaknesses. And I can certainly roll with that. But when weighing her piece against the short list of satirical writers, filmmakers, comedians (all of whom have masterfully dealt with taboo subjects), I mentioned above, it just doesn’t come close. I hear you about the piece’s successes. But its failures are so egregious that it doesn’t merit more than a footnote of its own in Curtis’s, one would hope, evolving career. Time will tell.

      As I said before, it’s not the subject matter, the decision to treat it irreverently, ironically, etc., that is disturbing, but it’s very real failure to strike a convincing ironical distance, its shaky control of the taboo material, its slippery command of the different registers.

      As for your admonition that ” a lot of what it has to say may be things you don’t especially want to hear. All the more reason to listen up,” strikes me as nonsensical. The logic here is that if something makes you feel uncomfortable, then you should engage it more closely. Sounds counter-intuitive to me. Once again, it’s not the piece’s subject matter I found disturbing, but its very real failure to be what it wants to be. As you’ve demonstrated, it needs to be edited, and I would add mercilessly.

      When there’s so many things to read, let alone reread, rereading b-material just doesn’t make any sense to me.

  26. John Madera

      Hey Brandon,

      I enjoyed it, Clancy and Curtis notwithstanding. Schutt is on a completely different level though and demonstrated in her opening paragraph why we’re all sitting in her shadow.

      And I had a chance to meet the very friendly Rozalia Jovanovic and perused a hot-off-the-presses copy of Gigantic.

      John

  27. John Madera

      Hey Brandon,

      I enjoyed it, Clancy and Curtis notwithstanding. Schutt is on a completely different level though and demonstrated in her opening paragraph why we’re all sitting in her shadow.

      And I had a chance to meet the very friendly Rozalia Jovanovic and perused a hot-off-the-presses copy of Gigantic.

      John

  28. Justin Taylor

      John, I think the way you rephrased what I said is accurate: >>The logic here is that if something makes you feel uncomfortable, then you should engage it more closely.<<

      Yes, that’s exactly right. Discomfort is a powerful emotion, which tends to be experienced in an uncomplicated and overwhelming way, but its roots are complex and run deep. I think the sources of one’s own discomforts are well-worth exploring. You may disagree.

      I also want to be really clear that while I don’t regard the piece as entirely successful, I don’t regard it as a total failure, and I in no way regard it as b-material. Since we’re talking about rape anyway, why not fall back on a sports analogy? A football team that loses the super bowl is not the same loser as a team that only made it into the playoffs on the wild card and then get knocked out in the first round.

      Also–and this is the last thing I’m going to say about this–I can’t help but notice that every person in your list of people you wish had written this piece instead of Rebecca Curtis are, with one exception, men. Also, more than half of them are dead. It’s a dead white dudes club, and we are two live white dudes arguing about it–it of course being an act of violence that either one of us–statistically speaking–is far more likely to perpetrate than ever be made victim of. This seems to be perhaps the best argument in favor of both of our quieting down.

  29. Justin Taylor

      John, I think the way you rephrased what I said is accurate: >>The logic here is that if something makes you feel uncomfortable, then you should engage it more closely.<<

      Yes, that’s exactly right. Discomfort is a powerful emotion, which tends to be experienced in an uncomplicated and overwhelming way, but its roots are complex and run deep. I think the sources of one’s own discomforts are well-worth exploring. You may disagree.

      I also want to be really clear that while I don’t regard the piece as entirely successful, I don’t regard it as a total failure, and I in no way regard it as b-material. Since we’re talking about rape anyway, why not fall back on a sports analogy? A football team that loses the super bowl is not the same loser as a team that only made it into the playoffs on the wild card and then get knocked out in the first round.

      Also–and this is the last thing I’m going to say about this–I can’t help but notice that every person in your list of people you wish had written this piece instead of Rebecca Curtis are, with one exception, men. Also, more than half of them are dead. It’s a dead white dudes club, and we are two live white dudes arguing about it–it of course being an act of violence that either one of us–statistically speaking–is far more likely to perpetrate than ever be made victim of. This seems to be perhaps the best argument in favor of both of our quieting down.

  30. christian

      I should probably just stay out of this one seeing as how I haven’t read the particular Rebecca Curtis story you’re all discussing, but what you’re saying makes it sound of a piece with a lot of her stuff.

      Just want to ask, are you sure “satire” is the right word? What I love about her stories (beyond the voices, which are distinct, but usually subtle) is how fearlessly she inhabits those voices. What creeps me out (in a good way) is that she never really winks at the reader.

  31. christian

      I should probably just stay out of this one seeing as how I haven’t read the particular Rebecca Curtis story you’re all discussing, but what you’re saying makes it sound of a piece with a lot of her stuff.

      Just want to ask, are you sure “satire” is the right word? What I love about her stories (beyond the voices, which are distinct, but usually subtle) is how fearlessly she inhabits those voices. What creeps me out (in a good way) is that she never really winks at the reader.

  32. John Madera

      Hey Justin,

      I don’t think any gender should have a monopoly on any subject matter. I think anybody can write about anything. I also don’t think you have to be a member of a gender, race, or whatever kind of orientation to critique it.

      And once again, it’s not the subject matter I’m addressing, but in how it was handled.

      The writers I mentioned are the epitome of satirical writers. It definitely should include Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis. And, for their detached and ironical genius, Amy Hempel and Mary Gaitskill. It wouldn’t hurt to take for Curtis, and the rest of us for that matter, to take some lessons from Christine Schutt’s insight and compassion, not to mention Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.

      And I don’t mind referencing dead people. They’re alive for me.

  33. John Madera

      Hey Justin,

      I don’t think any gender should have a monopoly on any subject matter. I think anybody can write about anything. I also don’t think you have to be a member of a gender, race, or whatever kind of orientation to critique it.

      And once again, it’s not the subject matter I’m addressing, but in how it was handled.

      The writers I mentioned are the epitome of satirical writers. It definitely should include Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis. And, for their detached and ironical genius, Amy Hempel and Mary Gaitskill. It wouldn’t hurt to take for Curtis, and the rest of us for that matter, to take some lessons from Christine Schutt’s insight and compassion, not to mention Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.

      And I don’t mind referencing dead people. They’re alive for me.

  34. John Madera

      That third paragraph should read:
      “The writers I mentioned are the epitome of satirical writers. It definitely should include Lorrie Moore and Lydia Davis, and, for their detached and ironical genius, Amy Hempel and Mary Gaitskill. It wouldn’t hurt for Curtis, and the rest of us for that matter, to take some lessons from Christine Schutt’s insight and compassion, not to mention Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.”

  35. John Madera

      That third paragraph should read:
      “The writers I mentioned are the epitome of satirical writers. It definitely should include Lorrie Moore and Lydia Davis, and, for their detached and ironical genius, Amy Hempel and Mary Gaitskill. It wouldn’t hurt for Curtis, and the rest of us for that matter, to take some lessons from Christine Schutt’s insight and compassion, not to mention Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.”

  36. shane jones

      We’re all going to die one day.

  37. shane jones

      We’re all going to die one day.

  38. shane jones

      Is christine schutt some kind of super writer.

  39. shane jones

      Is christine schutt some kind of super writer.

  40. shane jones

      I’ve never heard of her. Is she published on thieves jargon?

  41. shane jones

      I’ve never heard of her. Is she published on thieves jargon?

  42. Janey Smith

      Actually, writers in the 90s ‘made fun’ of rape in ways radically more ‘wild’ than Curtis’ text. Answer Me #4 The Rape Issue was banned in the UK. And it is very hard to get in the USA. Writers like Peter Sotos, Boyd Rice, Jim Goad (VICE) and Debbie Goad wrote some hilarious stuff in it about rape.

      Anyways, just thought you should know.

  43. Janey Smith

      Actually, writers in the 90s ‘made fun’ of rape in ways radically more ‘wild’ than Curtis’ text. Answer Me #4 The Rape Issue was banned in the UK. And it is very hard to get in the USA. Writers like Peter Sotos, Boyd Rice, Jim Goad (VICE) and Debbie Goad wrote some hilarious stuff in it about rape.

      Anyways, just thought you should know.

  44. Janey Smith

      It’s okay. You won’t be forgotten.

  45. Janey Smith

      It’s okay. You won’t be forgotten.

  46. shane jones

      I can’t find her on pindeldyboz

  47. shane jones

      I can’t find her on pindeldyboz

  48. <HTMLGIANT> > Blog Archive » Cover to Cover: NOON, Part 4 - Bill Hayward Day

      […] of you who have been following “Cover to Cover” probably remember that I ended Part 3 with the announcement that Part 4, about Bill Hayward and his Collaborative Self-Portraits project, […]