I was one of those creepy dropouts who moves into his girlfriend’s dorm room. She stole meals from the dining hall in a Tupperware container hidden in a hollowed-out textbook, and I sat in her room and wrote an unpublishably bad first novel.

14. Angelina Jolie’s favorite book is Vlad the Impaler: In Search of the Real Dracula. If you were wondering.

77.

2. The Australian on Light Boxes by Shane Jones.

]]> http://htmlgiant.com/author-spotlight/4-all-night-chemists/feed/ 8 http://htmlgiant.com/snippet/37785/ http://htmlgiant.com/snippet/37785/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:03:00 +0000 Adam Robinson http://htmlgiant.com/?p=37785 At BOMBLOG, a conversation between Shane Jones and me, with an intro by Tom Roberge, Penguin’s editor for Light Boxes.

I feel it’s hard today to find a work of art that is earnest, that is compassionate. (Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody comes to mind). I was startled by Shane Jones’s novel because it is so painfully both; it bleeds itself, and bleeds for others.

Light Boxes is a story about a community, about a man’s quest to rid his community of February, a bitter and long spell of cold that haunts the the town and its people. I don’t want to speak explicitly of the ‘narrative’ here, only because I think there is magic in discovery; it’s a sensual work. Many of the images affected me viscerally, and will stay with me for a long time. Dead bees pour from the sky, a broken father sits in the middle of a snow-covered street, a body surfaces in a river covered in text… I could list all the beautiful and often tragic images contained within for awhile.

To go deeper: The people in Light Boxes breathe true. I felt them living and felt them dying. They seem warm, hot & cold all at once, much like the seasons that surround them. The story also functions on a level outside its own prison, outside the printed page, but, again: I’d like to keep quiet. I’d like you to discover the layers and try to keep warm yourself.

Shane has crafted a fine myth, one I hope lasts for a very long time.

Buy and read Light Boxes.

To enter to win the original PG version of Light Boxes, together with the new Penguin version, buy a book from an independent press and forward the receipt to lightboxescontest at gmail dot com. If you buy a book from an indie press at a brick and mortar store, scan the receipt or take a good photo of it and email that. Your name will be entered once for every book you buy. Then I will conduct a fair drawing. ENTRIES ARE DUE BY MIDNIGHT MAY 24th. Penguin will officially release their version on May 25, and I’ll do the drawing then.

Shane is doing a contest on his blog with a giveaway for the book.

In The Failure Six, a group of messengers, who work for a vast bureaucracy, all struggle with the same task – to retell the life story of a woman named Foe who seems to have lost her memory. The irrepressible emotions of the messengers – and Foe’s clear need to be left alone in her amnesia – make for a strange, unaccountable, untellable story.

In this town, speech is accomplished through stacks of paper so tall they touch the sky…the floors of a teahouse are built in seconds…and a mysterious character named DH threatens the town with bombs and his “Deliverer” who wields the world’s most expensive revolvers. The Failure Six is a mystery grounded in Kafka, Gogol, and human dreams.

I read this book in draft and am excited to read it in full and final form. Shane’s got the magic.

See also the recently unveiled cover art for the Penguin version of Light Boxes, dropping in the middle of next year:

Hi, My name is jimmy chen. I wuz wundering if u could review my current reads bookcase on yur super duper website thingy! THANKS A BUNDLE!! hehe lol.

Empathetic satire or pure derision? I’ll opt for the former. TTB’s jest was followed by no doubt a found picture of some girl’s stack o’ chick books. TTB’s derivative impulses are arguably haut, but this stack of books may be the worst stack of books I’ve ever seen in my life.

—

Speaking of derision, while surfing Shane Jones’ blog, I came across a comment by a Brent Bogardus whose passive-aggressive comment “Yes, you are so amazing. Congrats on that” compelled me (yes, I have too  much time) to check out his blog, which (at the time when it was still non invite-only) contained a very angry post about hating Shane Jones, and — non-sarcastically — how Shane was gay. Brent went on to say that Jones’ publisher Adam Robinson was also gay. His invite-only blog is now ‘shanejonessucks.blogspot.com’, a URL commitment which is officially scary.

You can always measure one’s success by how much people resent, or even ‘hate’ that person. It’s simple: dissent has no meaning when aimed at ‘meaningless’ people — its ‘ethical currency’ is only established when aimed at abstractions of success. It comes from being petty and small — too lazy to work towards a success one secretly resents, under the ostensible guise of some ‘moral commentary.’ If Shane Jones did not receive praise for Light Boxes, the act of hating him would have no meaning. I’ve noticed similar negative feelings towards Blake Butler, and consistently with Tao Lin. These three gentlemen should be proud that they are resented.

Brent Bogardus has no reason to hate me, though if I published a book from Vintage, a caravan of bloggers would join in saying I had no talent. The irony is that these self-appointed judges of ‘inherent character’ are actually driven by extrinsic factors such as publishing/career success. The work is scrutinized less than the success. The literary world is, simply, exactly like the world in general: hard work plus diplomacy equals success. To argue about ‘talent’ is a cheap way out; it’s like calling someone’s face ugly. In a world of nose jobs, there is still no such thing as a talent job. It’s not what god gave us, but what we do with it.

For the records, I haven’t gone out of my way to put Brent on the spot. He submitted a pic for Haut or not, and it was impossible for me to be reticent about the aforementioned. Anyways, here’s Brent’s lame-ass books. No offense to the esteemed authors, the collection is just so uninspired and boring, like Brent’s hate.

I feel it’s hard today to find a work of art that is earnest, that is compassionate. (Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody comes to mind). I was startled by Shane Jones’s novel because it is so painfully both; it bleeds itself, and bleeds for others.

Light Boxes is a story about a community, about a man’s quest to rid his community of February, a bitter and long spell of cold that haunts the the town and its people. I don’t want to speak explicitly of the ‘narrative’ here, only because I think there is magic in discovery; it’s a sensual work. Many of the images affected me viscerally, and will stay with me for a long time. Dead bees pour from the sky, a broken father sits in the middle of a snow-covered street, a body surfaces in a river covered in text… I could list all the beautiful, and often tragic, images contained within for awhile.

To go deeper: The characters, the people, in Light Boxes breathe true. I really felt them living, and felt them dying. They seem warm, hot & cold all at once, much like the seasons that surround them. The story also functions on a level outside its own prison, outside the printed page, but, again: I’d like to keep quiet. I’d like you to discover the layers yourself.

Shane has crafted a fine myth, one I hope lasts for a very long time.

Buy and read Light Boxes.

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The wonderful cover of Shane Jones’ novel Light Boxes is now posted over at Publishing Genius. Also, Adam Robinson has redesigned the site and it looks very nice. Scoot on over to have a look. Or go to the blog to see what Adam has to say about the cover. Pre-ordering information here.

Shane Jones blogged more about the book here. Most importantly, he blogged that the book has been sent off to the printer.

Shane Jones looks like a nice man.