Joshua Cohen

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StairwayToHeaven-D-4d

Inspired by 300+ comments thread on Blake Butler’s now-infamous “James Joyce Does Not Exist” post, Kyle Minor and I had a critical conversation about Joshua Cohen’s A Heaven of Others. It’s up at the Rumpus as of this morning.

Minor: Reading A Heaven of Others, I felt [...] there was that same kind of shock one gets when entering into certain works of Faulkner or Woolf or Joyce, where you simultaneously are thrilled and a little intimidated by the surface, but it doesn’t take long to just fall into it, since the text is teaching you how to read the text. It’s been so long since I’ve discovered a book like that, it feels new, but then one realizes that it’s also old-fashioned, and mourns that it’s old-fashioned.

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You know how I’m always going on about Joshua Cohen’s genius? Sure you do. “Oh he wrote something about Jews again,” “oh his books are awesome,” “oh he cooks the best Thai fish balls”–blah blah blah. Well here’s the proof everlasting, kids, as if you needed it. This is what it looks like when JC forwards you a Youtube video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

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bright fish hitch coop and then some: a roundup

roundup2

Susie & Aretha Bright answer more sex questions at Jezebel, including “I’m a girl who comes too fast.”

Stanley Fish on reforms to college composition courses. And then, a little later, a follow-up column on the reactionary, ill-informed comments directed at him for writing the first column.

Up from Our Own Comments Threads- Ed Champion’s Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project now includes the letter Kyle Minor posted yesterday in the comments on Catherine Lacey’s post about said project.

Over at Coop’s place, there’s a Spotlight on Danielle Collobert’s “Notebooks.” >> he just left — when he leaves I never know when I’ll see him again — always chance encounters — or nearly — today I asked myself what little errors we’ve let come between us — I don’t know yet — I can barely guess — <<

And Christopher Hitchens remembers Ted Kennedy, as only William Logan can. I know this one sounds like the boring one, but it’s actually the most interesting of what I’ve posted here (except maybe the girl who comes too fast) and it’s utterly unlike any of the other six hundred Kennedy memorials you read or else avoided reading last week.

Actually, Hitch is probably only as interesting as the Benjamin De Casseres piece by Joshua Cohen in Tablet, which I blogged about here the other day (“Hope is the promise of a crucifixion”), but for some reason get the feeling nobody saw. So here it is again.

Random / 7 Comments
September 3rd, 2009 / 10:41 am

“Hope is the promise of a crucifixion.”

Fantasia1

So wrote Benjamin De Casseres–a lost legend of the early/mid-20th–a man about whom I knew nothing until today, when I read the latest Tabletmag.com piece by the great Joshua Cohen (whose “Bridge & Tunnel (& Tunnel & Bridge)” will be out from The Cupboard Pamphlet later this year). Here’s a little taste of the article. Click-thru anywhere below for smorgasbord.

It is regrettable that for a man who wrote so much, so little is known, and so little is the desire to know. There is hardly any scholarship about De Casseres (he’s mentioned in a handful of doctoral dissertations regarding interwar New York literary society); none of his books are in print; and the manuscript of his thousand-page diary, Fantasia Impromptu, reposes in the basement of the New York Public Library, where I might have been the first person to read through its pages since they were interred there by De Casseres’ widow, Adele “Bio” Terrill, following her husband’s death in 1945.

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But De Casseres’ posterity mainly rests on a single poem, Moth-Terror, first collected in the Second Book of Modern Verse in 1919, edited by journalist colleague and correspondent Jessie Rittenhouse. The poem was subsequently recycled into numerous reprints and subanthologies that proliferated in schools, colleges, and book clubs even after World War II (which should tell our writers of today that if they intend their work to live for tomorrow, they should make friends with anthologists)

Author Spotlight / 1 Comment
August 31st, 2009 / 3:59 pm

What’s better than a book-themed cafe? An island.

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So the plan for today was to take the 1pm ferry from Central HK to Lamma Island, so I could check out the Bookworm Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant and supposed literary haunt. I planned to spend most of the afternoon there, and so went out loaded for bear- Joshua Cohen’s A Heaven of Others, the Selected Poems of George Oppen, Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, and some of my own stuff to maybe work on. So I actually manage to finish Cohen’s book–which I’ve been rocking through and loving for the past week–on the ferry ride over, then I get to the pier at Yung Shue Wan, and lo and behold, the bookstore is closed. No explanation why. Some woman says it’ll be open tomorrow–for all the good that does me, assuming it’s even true. Now what? Well, it turns out that this island I’m on is, like, an island, with all the things you’d expect to find on an island, such as beaches, woods, mountains, ancient burial sites, and a seaside trail that leads you through all of it. So me, Josh, George, and Bruno hiked from Yung Shue Wan to the other main village, Sok Kwu Wan. It was listed as a 90-minute hike, but I got up to some quality dithering, so it took me longer. Then at SKW I took repast of iced milk tea+coffee followed by a bowl of shrimp dumplings in soup, all in time to catch the 4:05 ferry back to Central. All in all, a stellar day, though it wasn’t exactly a victory for books. Maybe this is something books should think about next time before they fuck with me. To see about two dozen more pictures of my day-trip, with nary a book in sight, click the sentence above or else right here.

Uncategorized / 10 Comments
July 30th, 2009 / 9:26 am

Quick roundup & then I’m outta here

By this time tomorrow I’ll be at JFK airport, probably getting grilled about my associations by humorless Shin Bet agents. That’s right, kids, they’re sending me to Israel, so this is your last mess of links to my regular obsessions until at least the 15th. Keep my side of the bed warm, wouldja?

MOBYLIVES announces new occasional feature on “unusual book events given by something other than the usual suspects” to be written by MHP-author Zachary German. I’m not sure what any of that means, exactly, but Zachary’s first post is about Dennis Cooper’s conversation with Tony O’neill, which took place at the Bryant Park Reading Room the week of BEA. Also, Time Out New York digs Ugly Man. Also^2, Dennis posted some really good vintage gay porn on his blog yesterday.

Pieces from Mathias Svalina’s “Play” are now available at This Recording. Other pieces from “Play” are available in the current issue of The Cupboard Pamphlet. A future issue of TCP, btw, will feature Joshua Cohen, who has an essay in the current issue of New Haven Review (heads up it’s a PDF): Hung Like an Obelisk, Hard as an Olympian: An alphabet of English-language literature in Paris.

A few weeks ago Dave Eggers gave a talk in NYC wherein he promised to personally email a reassurance that print isn’t dead to anyone who wanted one. He didn’t count on that promise getting leaked to the web, and then being flooded with emails. So personally sort of fell out of the question, but he did send a pretty amazing mass email out, about the future of indie publishing and newspapers. Someone else on this site should/will spend some more time parsing what he said, but in the meantime, Gawker has the full text of his letter.

Finally, the NYT asks “Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft?” There are two possible answers: First, obviously, is “who cares?” The more nuanced approach, however, would be to say, “well, if the Times is covering it now, then the answer must be ‘yes–two and a half years ago.’” Either way, there’s really no good reason to click that link.

Later, kids.

Web Hype / 12 Comments
June 3rd, 2009 / 11:11 am

How “Publishing” Works: Special Michael J. Duckett Puts You Over a Barrell Edition

Joshua Cohen, a frequent target of this blog’s admiration, sent me an email after my last Michael J. Duckett post. It seems that Joshua bothered himself to browse over to the website of Duckett’s predatory scam publishing operation, Hyper Publishing. Here’s what he found in the submission guidelines:

>>But Justin you’re missing the best part of this Duckett:

His “publishing house’s” Submissions “policy” states, essentially, that anything you send his way might (and probably will) be plagiarized. Viz (the bolding is mine):

*Your Submission does not guarantee acceptance into Hyper Publishing Company or any of its divisions (“Hyper Publishing”). In the event that you do submit any remarks, suggestions, ideas, graphics, data, names, text, addresses, phone information or other information or materials (collectively, “Submission Materials”), you agree that all Submitted Materials shall become the sole property of Hyper Publishing and will not be returned. Submitted Materials will be used for review purposes only to determine whether your book will be accepted by Hyper Publishing. After Hyper Publishing performs its review of the Submitted Materials, the Submitted Materials may be destroyed or otherwise disposed of at Hyper Publishing’s sole discretion. Hyper Publishing will not treat any Submitted Materials as confidential or proprietary and will not incur any liability as a result of any similarities that may appear in other books published by Hyper Publishing.

Man, it must feel good to be a gangster.

Mean & Web Hype / 10 Comments
March 30th, 2009 / 11:12 am

Giant Talks: Joshua Cohen interviewed by Lily Hoang

joshuacohen011808I first came across Joshua Cohen’s work a couple years ago at AWP. I walked by the Starcherone Books table and asked editor Ted Pelton which book he would recommend. He handed me a bunch, and luckily, among those was Cohen’s A Heaven of Others. What struck me then (and continues to strike me every time I read his work) is what an incredible badass he is. For one, he’s an amazing writer. His words are quite literally delicious. But beyond that, he’s the most prolific writer I know (and I know some crazy prolific writers!). Still shy of thirty, he’s got four books in print, one on the way from Dalkey Archive, and tons more sitting either on a physical or virtual shelf. Cohen is a powerhouse, but don’t take my word for it. Go buy one of his books. You won’t regret it.

– Lily Hoang

LH: Something that really strikes in about your writing is the very distinctive voice your characters have. In A Heaven of Others (from here on out known as Heaven), the narrator has an extremely urgent voice, one that compelled me to read faster & faster, until I was practically skimming. (Then of course, I had go back and read the whole thing over again to really savor the language!) Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto (known as Cadenza), however, has a much more patient narrative voice. Can you tell me more about the development of these narrators in particular? Please feel free to talk about your other works as well.

JC: The voices of both my novels are fictions within fictions, and, as that, they’re opposites: The voice of A Heaven of Others is that of 10-year-old Jonathan Schwarzstein of Tchernichovsky Street, Jerusalem. The voice of Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto is that of Laster, an octogenarian, perhaps nonagenarian, concert violinist from eastern Austro-Hungary. Again, both are fictions, meaning both are ultimately Me. I think what I’ve done in all my books so far comes, primarily, from speech rhythm. The rhythm of how I want to speak. How I speak to myself. As for echoes, A Heaven of Others derives from poetry, especially 20th century Hebrew poetry (Dan Pagis), and German-Jewish poetry (Paul Celan), while Cadenza comes from comedy, and despite its typographical trickery owes more to the history of the novel, and much, specifically, to Saul Bellow.

READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 6 Comments
January 16th, 2009 / 1:37 pm

“Slush” by Joshua Cohen

Not sure if anybody’s noticed, but I’m a bit of a creature of habit. I like getting turned onto new stuff, sure, but once I’ve found something I like I tend to stick by it like a truly neurotic compulsive or perhaps like a faithful hound. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was very happy to learn that Joshua Cohen, whose multi-part Nextbook essay about Kafka’s office writing I covered here, has a new piece of short fiction up at The Fanzine, which is a very cool site and probably not as widely known as it ought to be. So do yourself two favors: first, check out Cohen’s story, “Slush,” and second, start checking on Fanzine more often than you’ve been.  (if you want to do yourself a third favor, pink up a copy of The Weaklings, Dennis Cooper’s most recent collection of poems, which Fanzine published in a special illustrated limited edition of unlimited awesomeness.) Here’s the beginning of “Slush.”

 

Dear Aaron Priestly,

Thank you for letting us take a read on your manuscript. STORY OF MY LIFE was bold, and compelling, but ultimately I was not convinced that I was the right person to represent it. I just did not find this a must read. It did not click, I regret to inform. Nor did it hold ME. I find your premise lacking, quite. Good luck elsewhere (*I can no longer accept queries from writers who have not been previously published or who have not been referred to me by a colleague*). 
    Please accept my very best wishes for the success of STORY OF YOUR LIFE. Though I did not fall in love with your story enough to continue reading it, I pass. We must pass. Obviously not for me, obviously. He, she, it, passes.

Author Spotlight & Excerpts / 1 Comment
January 12th, 2009 / 5:12 pm

checking back in with Joshua Cohen and Kafka’s Office Writings

I’m sure you’ve all been keeping up this week with Nextbook.org’s five part series on Kafka’s Office Writings, which I first blogged about on Monday. But in case you haven’t, this is a good time to look over what you’ve missed so you can be all caught up for the big (?) finale tomorrow. The series, as I’ve mentioned now several times, is authored by Joshua Cohen, quite possibly the youngest working critic to be described non-ironically as “venerable,” assuming he has ever actually been called that before, which, if he hasn’t–well he has now.

(clicking anywhere on the text of a given day takes you to that day on Nextbook)

Today (day 4) we’re learning about Kafka and Nazis:        >>It has become a commonplace to say that Kafka’s work prefigured, in image, or predicted, in word, the horrors of Nazism. That argument is most often advanced by a litany of external congruencies between Kafka’s fictional world and the Third Reich: bureaucracy (though the Nazis were always more efficient than the authorial imagination), the infringement of technology on daily life, random violence, unappealable official destinies, fates based on birth, etc. Kafka’s intuition of Nazism was far more personal, however, far more inwardly directed. It can be found in his characters’ desires to join something, to become part of something, whether a style or form of being, or even a Volk (which, in Kafka’s case, would have, perversely, been Judaism).<<

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Yesterday, we learned about how Kafka’s work directly inspired his art:          >>While no intro1duction of “cylindrical shafts” could overturn such a metaphysical damnation, there is no doubt that the image of a body inscribed by technology springs from Kafka’s arbitrating experience with traumatized workers.<<

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On day 2, we learned about the history of office life in Europe:           >>[Kafka's] origins lie before industry certainly, before widespread centralization. He began, in fact, when people stopped working for themselves and started working for others; when individual or familial subsistence gave way to earning a living. Work, in the 19th century, became largely an indoor activity, making daily labor—not in the fields and farmlands, but behind four walls in a plant—seem contained, a place where behavior could be scrutinized, and surveilled.<<

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And back on day 1 we got an overview of Kafka, and of what the rest of the week was going to be like:     >>Franz Kafka wrote as insurance against suffering the fates of his characters. It was as if every hour he spent writing, by candlelight and, later, by electric light, was an installment paid against darkness. He knew that with a stroke of the pen he could conceivably, at any time, have restored to Joseph K. his easy life before The Trial, and obtained for land surveyor K. a better position with a gentler Castle. But this is what makes Kafka the great writer of what has been called Modernity: That he stayed true to his fictions, and retained their tragedy.<<

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After you’ve had your fill of nonfiction, consider perhaps some of his other literature. Cohen is the author of five fine books out from presses that Giant readers and contributors alike have deep affection for: A Heaven of Others (Starcherone, 2008), Two Tribal Stories (Small Anchor, 2007), Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed (Six Gallery, 2007), Cadenza for the Schneiderman Violin Concerto (Fugue State, 2007), The Quorum (Twisted Spoon, 2005).  A new novel, Graven Imaginings, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive.  Better get on over to his website and see what the score is.

Author Spotlight / 8 Comments
December 4th, 2008 / 1:51 pm

ALL THIS WEEK: Sympathy for the Cubicle Rat at Nextbook.org, starring Franz Kafka and Joshua Cohen

not Joshua Cohen. Or Kafka.

 >>This event—finally, the translation and publication of the last known scrap of Kafka’s work left untranslated, and unpublished—brings us to the subject of this series: how Kafka’s office writings influenced his fiction, and what that influence means. Kafka’s office writings, as presented here, cannot be read on their own (they are incomprehensibly boring) but, instead, must be read as companions, to demystify the three novels and stories (which are anything but boring). Taken together, though, both workaday fact and masterwork fiction create a network of connections that exposes not just the concerns of a single writer, but also that of a singular culture — the culture of the Office, which has imposed itself on what used to be our lives. <<

Check back at Nextbook.org every day this week for a new installment of Joshua Cohen’s writing about Kafka’s Office Writings. Also, there may be periodic updates here, highlighting our favorite pieces from the series and/or reminding you to go read it. 

Who could say no to this mug?

 

Or this bug?

Or this bug?

Author Spotlight / 4 Comments
December 1st, 2008 / 5:09 pm