4 things that sorta suck
11. Being a big fish in a small pond. It’s not the same anymore. Because you are going to meet the internets. And the internets is an ocean. So now you’re not a big fish.
2. Black Swan. Because you didn’t learn anything about the ballet world you didn’t know. Every non-ballet world reader here, if asked to write the screenplay, would have thought: Well…bulimia, fucked up toes and shoes, domineering director dude with European flair, bitchy colleagues, when you’re age thirty you’re done, skinny. Well, no shit. Oh, and I wish the director had never seen Sixth Sense. Oh, and ha-ha, the director laughs, the unreliable narrator is really mentally ill and I don’t really have a focus here and we need to prove Natalie really isn’t Queen Amidala so could you arch your back higher in those panties, etc.? I’m just happy he didn’t end it with “And then she awakes” which you know he did and loved in some outtake we’ll see later on DVD. Oh, and Winona Ryder is grossly miscast or possibly just medicated for Kleptomania/busy picking such a meaty, meaty role out of her eyeteeth. Oh and…and oh, fuck it.
1. That Sebald WG died at age 57. But these guys retraced his funk-gloom walk of The Rings of Saturn. This doesn’t suck, as you will see, but it sucks for me that we are doing retrospective ideas on a writer recently loved (by me, fer sure) alive and writing new words.
4. Wendy’s new fries. I’m getting a New Coke feel. It’s a conspiracy of suck to make us like their old fries. The new fries hold the brown of bundled mortgages and taste like a committee or cat litter or a committee of cat litters. Something to make you doubt your ways.
On over-writing, distance, fiction, theater, and film: A series of disorganized thoughts
Last night, I saw Black Swan.
Last night, I read Linda Lê’s The Three Fates.
Last night, I didn’t fall asleep until after 4am.
The first two things contributed to the last thing. I’m usually a very good sleeper. It’s one of the few ways I cope with anxiety: sleep. It is something I’ve trained myself to do since I was a kid. That sounds stupid, but I’m sure a lot of people here have problems sleeping. We’re an anxious lot, what else can I say?
Last night, while I was trying to get to sleep, I kept thinking about Linda Lê’s book. The Three Fates is a book about a two sisters and a cousin (the three fates) who want to bring their old father (called King Lear) from Vietnam to France to show off their successes. The three fates were whisked away from Vietnam before the fall of Saigon. Their father remained. The book is written in this hyper-stylized way, seemingly over-written, over-the-top, a fairy tale with characters unabashedly stolen from other literary works (notably: plays). What sticks to me with this book though is how over-written it is. Every sentence is excessive. If this were a fiction workshop, I’d write next to every single line: “Over-written.”
Facelist Altar Bureau Blood Mercury Swan
I have no idea what's up here but I like it
1. Facebook extends my Xmas list each time I look at it, today: Skull with skull case [via Lincoln M.] & the Nieves catalog [via Molly B.].
2. The 8th issue of Harp & Altar is out.
3. Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch + Grace Krilanovich reading in LA at The Poetic Research Bureau this Saturday, December 11 @ 951 Chung King Rd in Chinatown!
4. 1993 Paris Review Interview w/ Fran Lebowitz: “I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.”
5. Exciting news from Fence:
Fence Books is now a record label. We’re at work on audio-releases from Douglas Kearney, reading thrillingly from his book The Black Automaton, and Ariana Reines, with a guest-starring Lili Taylor performing Reines’ poem “Save the World,” plus a mysterious B-side, in anticipation of the 2011 publication of her book Mercury. Look for these in early 2011. And if you’re in NYC, don’t miss Ariana’s upcoming appearances.
6. Anyone see Black Swan? OK?