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
2
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.
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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.
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January 9th, 2010 / 12:34 pm
January 9th, 2010 / 12:34 pm