Stuff I Loved in 2011
That’s the feeling I look for, right? In whatever I’m eating, be it real food, or entertainment, art, people. The major event. A safe, manageable portion of the inner land or map blown away, torn out and away, dissolved or smoked. I only know a couple people who really seek that, or when they say they want that destruction it’s a good lie, and maybe they’ve said it enough so it’s shared and indistinguishable from truth. Regardless, it’s a common myth, a familiar dragon to chase, that of the Art That Changes For Good. I rarely recognize the mountain exploding in realtime, while reading something or watching a movie, it’s felt live that way maybe four times in my adultish life. Mostly it’s just feeling the echo of the boom a time later. Still, standing mountains aren’t terrible, and are often really nice. But sometimes you get lucky (pictured, pictured). Here’s what my year looked like:
Ken Baumann—
Let’s give away NOTHING, by Blake Butler. Three copies, courtesy of me/Sator Press. Comment with your email address to enter. Winners picked soonish. If you want: talk nightmares.
109
Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 2: The Articles
Bill Stark (seated far right) documents a feature match between David Williams (seated left) and Brian Kibler (seated right).
Greetings once again from Pro Tour Philadelphia! The second day of the tournament is well underway. As you’ll recall from Part 1, I’m curious to what extent this event—and all Magic culture—is a literary phenomenon. The most obvious place to start seems to be the wealth of Magic articles produced every day by the game’s players, designers and developers, judges, and casual bystanders, some of which I think will interest the upstanding gormandizers at HTMLGIANT. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Matthew Simmons—
“Yet underneath its surface challenges, THERE IS NO YEAR turns out to be deeply honest and emotional, a family drama that by its end brings on feelings as complex and satisfying as those summoned by Faulkner’s simple sentence “They endured.”—Joseph Salvatore, New York Times Sunday Book Review
Matthew Simmons—
The inspiration for HTML Giant is discussed in this fine interview with His Most Massive, Blake Butler.
Mooney, (it dissolved into the salt), freed.
We are all of the same tribe. We all wear the same markings. The book is, in one way, a family portrait: a portrait of our tribe. There are obviously many people missing from this portrait, but that makes sense to me. Someone is always missing. -Blake B. interviews Chris Higgs at Bookslut, and says this: ‘The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney seems to me unprecedented via form, making new ways of both telling a story and relaying information, but also doing so in a way that is, as David Foster Wallace so expressly begged for: fun.’
If you’re on Goodreads, you can win Mooney with one click.
And the Marvin K. Mooney Society is redesigned and alive. Buy the book in September and you’ll get a book from Mooney’s library.
Adam Robinson—
OK, if no one else is going to say it, I will:
Blake’s book.
4/5/11. I can’t think of a way to say how much I’m looking forward to this. I sincerely hope to hear a lot about it over the coming 9 months.
Take Two: Firework
Firework by Eugene Marten has one of the most amazing endings I have ever eyed in literature. I read the ending 3 times. Just the ending. It made me feel like a dropped doll or a foghorn playing Tupac or a person who couldn’t draw freehand at all except for horses, could do excellent horses, etc. Amazing. Please buy this book. It is short fuse, independent, G-string, and prayerful–a word people keep using on Facebook. After I read Marten I prayed he will write a similar book and I’ll be alive to read the glow.
But this isn’t about Firework. Rather fireworks. Ah, Scorch Atlas, that ear trumpet. That brushed steel mobile home. A sign of a good book is you can’t kill the thing…but I am stoic and persistent and dumb to criticism, like any good American.
Enjoy:
Take One: Lucky Book
My yard needs cutting so I drank bottle-o-vodka tonight and shot at Blake’s book. There is something inevitable there. Missed twice, but bow season isn’t until October. I am happy Scorch Atlas is not a liver or a lung. A longing like 16 and first making out in a car. Failure to listen to reasoning. Etc. This was my first warm-up. I’ll be back, Butler. I’ll be back. (Arrows end at 20 seconds {my peep-sight snaps is why!}, after that just more birds and kids walking into frame {danger!} and stupid shit)
[There will be many takes coming--I will destroy this fucking book]
Also: What is the best way for me to edit iPhone videos? (on a PC) That would solve everything after 20 seconds. [Jimmy? I bet you know]
‘Late-Night Special’: A Conversation between Dennis Cooper and Blake Butler
Dennis Cooper and I met outside of PS122–the East Village-ish space for his glorious Jerk–and stood in the cold and talked for a while. Eventually, Blake Butler and Justin Taylor showed up (he’d be listening–a conversation between him and Josh Cohen is forthcoming). We were in no little rush, since Dennis had to be back at the theater in forty-five minutes. I wanted to do the interview in a Subway. No one thought that was funny. Eventually we ended up in some ill-lit restaurant chosen on a whim. Dennis ordered a quesadilla. He eventually finished it. Dennis is a vegetarian.
I listened. I recorded.
There was such bad music playing in there.
This is a pretty long conversation.
Uncategorized / 127 Comments
January 21st, 2010 / 5:22 am
January 21st, 2010 / 5:22 am
Round Up, Round Down
Things are really heating up (also freezing) here in NYC. My boss is in town–and staying at my place no less, so it looks like I’m working through the weekend. Last night Old Man Butler made me have some serious party-catch-up time with erstwhile Giantess Kendra Grant Malone, and I think the plan for the day is to hit MoMA with Shane Jones and Ken Baumann, then tonight we’re going to see Dennis Cooper’s JERK. God, when did my life become such a Dilbert cartoon? Anyway, here’s some stuff. I’m cranking it out while Old Man Butler is in the shower–before he drags me off to another @*&#(@*ing “team-building” exercise.
Over at The Rumpus, Joshua Mohr has an interesting essay about the fraught experience of reviewing one’s peers, in this case, Ron Currie Jr.
Also in Rumptown, Funny Women #12: Destroying Angels, a How-to Guide by Susan Schorn.
Something called Go360 has written a big piece on Terese Svoboda. It popped up in my Google Alert because it mentions her story, “80s Lillies,” which appeared in The Apocalypse Reader.
There’s lots of awesome going on at Chance Press, including new and forthcoming titles, and directions on how to make your own cloth-covered bookboards. Hurders! Way to go again!
Also, here’s the regular weekly NYTBR roundup: ______. No sex-charts this week, just Elizabeth Gilbert and Douglas Coupland.
Uncategorized / 10 Comments
January 9th, 2010 / 12:34 pm
January 9th, 2010 / 12:34 pm
Best Comment Exchange Ever?
Maybe the sommelier will pick this up later but: This just in: READ MORE >
In Memoriam Blake Butler (1979-2009)
on the train... receding, receding, receding.... (sniff, sniff)
Yes, sadly, Blake Butler passed away last night. The omnipresent electronic friend-of-everyone expired in an insomnia-induced rage of language and, like the Monty Python parrot in that famous sketch, is now an ex-Blake.
No more, alas, will schoolboy-grinning Blake Butler apocalypse creation in every sentence. No, strike that! In every phrase! No, strike that! In every syllable.
Make room now O Pantheon of young ones ripped from us far too early. Jesus, move over. Joan of Arc, a little to the left. Catullus, get your cock out of JFK’s ass. And give Blake some space. (and Seth, quit gawking).
And, Mr. Chicago pastry-delicacy chef get your ass in gear (so safe on earth) and start on something. Seth was a swan– what will you make of Blake? A peanut butter rabbit? A marshmallow weasel? A treacle beagle? woof-woof!
And just thinking now of Man’s Best-Friend I am bawling. Bawling, bawling, bawling.
What internet void has our great leader Blake Butler left? What cold and massive black hole of rubbish will form around his e-grave?
And, no, Blake Butler is not dead. This is a fake obit.
And I’d like to see more actually. Bring them on.
Greener (and sweeter) pastures now-- bawl, bawl, bawl,.....
Three Cheers for Blake!
Hey remember when Blake posted about how major publishing houses have basically stopped taking on challenging, innovative fiction? Well it looks like big publishing has Struck Back. From Our Man’s personal blog, posted last night-
Sign of good times, indeed. Blake joins a team that already includes Dennis Cooper, Tony O’Neill, Kevin Sampsell, uh me, The Great Short Works of Tolstoy, the Six Word Memoir series, and all those amazing philosophy re-issues originally published in the Harper Torch series. Welcome to the family, brother!
Special Butler+Harper Bonus Reminder: “The Copy Family” at Fifty-two Stories. Remember back when this happened? I think it’s when HP’s love affair with Homebutler began. Which incidentally reminds me that it’s been way too long since we touched based with Fifty-two Stories. Cal, if you’re reading this- I’m on it.
Power Quote: William Hazlitt (for Blake)
Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. The white streak in our own fortunes is brightened (or just rendered visible by making all around it as dark as possible; so the rainbow paints its form upon the cloud. Is it pride? Is it envy? Is it the force of contrast? Is it weakness or malice? But so it is, that there is a secret affinity, a hankering after, evil in the human mind, and that it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction. Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, wants variety and spirit. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.
Jimmy Chen—
Um, EVER, Scorch Atlas, Lamination Colony, No Colony (w/ Ken Baumann), HTMLGIANT (et al.) — and now Year of the Liquidator (w/ Shane Jones), please where is my elephant tranquilliser gun? I need to shoot someone.
Major Book Announcement : Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler pre-sale/firefight
Scorch Atlas (destroyed) by Blake Butler from featherproof books on Vimeo.
Master and commander/Brother Butler/Crier of The Good Lit/Partygirlin Eater of Babies/W.I.B. BLAKE BUTLER has announced that his novel in stories, Scorch Atlas, can now be pre-bought before it’s 9/9/09 release date — and for a 33%off, i.e. $10! — from the inimitable Featherproof Books. And not only can they be paid for, but you can secure a limited edition ‘destroyed’ copy, i.e. a book that’s been punished brutally by our beloved friend Blake, & his company. Or, you know, you can just get a plain old regularly clean version of the book too, if that’s what you’re into.
I have been more excited to subsume this set of words than any other set of words in ________.
Buy this book.
