Mud Luscious Acquires Blue Square Press
This week, J. A. Tyler’s Mud Luscious Press announced that they were taking over/buying out/merging with Blue Square Press, run by David Peak and Ben Spivey, as an addition to their imprint series. As Tyler says in the brief interview below, the deal gets BSP in on MLP’s distro (and more), while MLP gets to participate in the publication of more great books.
To celebrate the union, they are offering Jack Boettcher’s Theatre State and Ben Spivey’s own Flowing in the Gossamer Fold at a reduced price, here.
I asked the parties involved some questions, starting with J. A. Tyler:
When did you first start paying attention to Blue Square Press? READ MORE >
I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur (2)
I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur
by Mathias Svalina
Mud Luscious Press, 2011
67 pages / $12.00 Buy from Mud Luscious Press
Rating: 8.0
Mathias Svalina’s I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur has a very simple conceit: in a series of vignettes, an entrepreneur describes the outlandish businesses he’s started, and, occasionally, their reasons for not working. Thus, we learn of enterprises to turn everything into gold, to put blond hairs on the pillows of single men, to allow children to remain children forever, to retrofit memories with pilot lights and to slip old notes inside of used books by invisible employees.
1 Comment
August 23rd, 2011 / 12:17 pm
August 23rd, 2011 / 12:17 pm
I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur
I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur
by Mathias Svalina
Mud Luscious Press, 2011
67 pages / $12.00 Buy from Mud Luscious Press
Rating: 8.7
When I received Mathias Svalina’s novella, I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur in the mail, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I tore open the padded manila envelope and found myself staring at a green and orange cover with the words “a novel(la)” printed on it. Ok. Then I did a preliminary flip through of the book and didn’t see a novella at all. The book seemed to be filled with short poems, prose poems and pieces of what some would call flash fiction. Ok. I was hoping the book wasn’t going to be some failed attempt at “experimental fiction.” But, coming from Mud Luscious Press, I wasn’t exactly surprised that this book was, at first impression, well, weird. J.A. Tyler and his Mud Luscious Press have been putting lovely oddities into the world for a few years now, and I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur stayed the Mud Luscious Press course, and did not disappoint.
11 Comments
August 18th, 2011 / 12:44 pm
August 18th, 2011 / 12:44 pm
13 ways of looking at Michael Stewart: An Interview
Back in 2001, I took my very first fiction workshop. It was with Catherine Kasper. I’d never written a short story before. I was a junior. My first story submission was terrible, truly terrible.
Despite my really shitty story, Michael Stewart was nice to me.
I thought he was the best writer in class. (And he was.) And there were some spectacular writers in class.
Over the past decade, Michael and I have consumed a lot of coffee and breakfast tacos together. We have played many chess games and go games. We have seen each other’s heartbreaks and victories.
Michael Stewart is a charming man and a charming writer. His first book, The Hieroglpyhics, is out now (and can be purchased here) with Mud Luscious Press.
14 holding backs of diatribes on the 2011 radio
3. Mud Luscious Press goes all web update, all Heidi Blair Montag with a touch of Birdman. It detaches the retina in a kind way. Go look.
3. A get-off-my-plot-of-lawn-quote:
55. Harmony Neal uses repetition at January 2011 Hobart. You know, repetition, like this, via BHR:
3. The Girard Perregaux 925 Silver / Celluloid “Tourbillon” Fountain Pen goes for $1785.
14. Off The Internets for 8 days and what does that do? Doesn’t make you write, I say. I didn’t, sans two checks and an entry in a running journal. But it do refill the synaptic bathtub, me thinks, possibly with bubbles. Things brighten, shard, slow. I would like to write today, I’m saying. So. I ponder what happens when you leave The Internets?
Mud Luscious Press Goings On
MLP has officially acquired the Pindeldyboz print archives – all remaining copies of pboz print can now be purchased from mlp.
They have also officially struck a deal with Blake Butler to release a two-volume set of the Lamination Colony Archives – including both a wealth of the online issues and the ebooks.
They have contracted for a re-release of Ken Sparling’s DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL slated (tentatively) for 2012.
They have contracted for a re-release of Norman Lock’s GRIM TALES in a new stand-alone version slated (tentatively) for 2011.
They have re-started our previous stamp stories project and now, with associate editor Andrew Borgstrom at the helm of that beast, we are planning to reach 100 authors / 100 stamp stories and then, down the line,
release those 100 pieces in a new mlp anthology titled { C. }
Visit the MLP site for more details.
Pimpin’
I stumbled upon the St. John’s College Reading List and I find it fascinating. Readings cover the Greeks, the Bible, and much much more. A few universities do this sort of thing–a comprehensive reading program to serve as the foundation of a student’s education. I think it’s a wonderful approach but I agonize over how you decide which books to include. What would be on your reading list?
Mud Luscious Press is having a bookmark contest. Details here.
Another year, another Orange Prize fracas.
Frequent, lively commenter Amber Sparks has assumed the position of Fiction Editor for Emprise Review. Send her some great writing, won’t you?
Come April, Letter Machine Editions is reading manuscripts.
Offered without commentary: Robert Swartwood vs. Narrative, Part II.
I read a couple of great books this weekend and you may want to check them out—Congratulations! There’s No Last Place If Everyone is Dead by Matthew DeBenedictis (sold out, sadly) and Non/Fiction by Dan Gutstein. The former came with an odd packet of instant coffee and Yo! MTV Raps trading cards. I now know that there are trading cards for everything.
Submishmash is a great alternative to the CLMP submission manager (which is a fine product albeit a bit pricey) and its run by fine people who are very responsive to their customers. If you’re looking for a submission management option, you should check them out.
5 Glots of Snoo
1.) We would rather watch art made than the art itself.
Doesn’t work for books.
“Hey, wanna come over and watch me write?”
“I would rather shoe a snail.”
2.) mud luscious press has a nifty submissions process and a sale. Why not use both?
3.) Aimee Bender interview.
4.) There is a better word than the one you have down. That’s a problem but a koan type of problem. Eventually, you will stop and settle on one word (not the best word). Why? Why then? Is it maddening or gladdening to go through this process? Define the term strike. I thank you.
5.) Just got Ander Monson’s Vanishing Point in the mail! Holy shit. This book bleeds over into the web and then the web bleeds back. More on this later. Monson’s not only ahead of the curve, he’s troweling the curve for us, cut, tamp, curl.
Three Mini-Chapbooks from Mud Luscious Press Arrive Today
Three mini-chapbooks from Mud Luscious Press arrived today (link here to JA Tyler’s ml press), consisting of “Isn’t This What You Were Looking For?” by Ken Sparling, “Molting” by Aaron Burch and “Those Bones” by David Ohle. Excerpts after the jump:
MLP: 3 Reviews
I got the second batch of Mud Luscious Press chapbooks today, and read them excitedly. J.A. Tyler (editor) chose bright neon colors which, for me, reflected a certain kind of synthetic violence I found to be a unifying factor.
Rat Beast by Nick Antosca
[Spoil alert] This piece starts off fairly ‘normal,’ a first person narrative about a dour kid turned teenager having trouble at school. A Huxleyian counselor enters with treatment alternatives, the final of which takes a rather grotesque Kafkian turn (two name-drops, sorry), towards the eponymous animal. The ending is even more evocative due to the well-handled restraint in the writing.
Patience by Brandi Wells
A man carves the female reproductive system in the rind of an orange, creating a fetus in place of the fruit. At one point he “carves a fist beside the labia,” an allusion (in my sick mind at least) to fisting, or at least the manual ways women’s bodies are altered by patriarchal ideals (I’m so gay). Wells describes fallopian tubes wrapping around blades of glass and ants eating them; a kind of abortion detritus. J.A. Tyler plays well with the physical page break, embracing the most precious (bad word!) moment of the story.
In the Rape Year of the Ghetto Toddler the Houses Will Awaken by Blake Butler
To try to understand the title is to try to understand Butler’s writing, and I mean that in a good way. Butler is concerned with ideas, themes, and language–and how those three things cook down into meaning. He doesn’t explain it; but describes it, and he trusts the reader and himself enough to know that, through the thick confusion and minor nausea, his writing will be intuitively understood, and more importantly, viscerally manifested. Herein, rabbits live in bacon-greased arm sockets, wallpaper patterns dent cheeks, and a man is on vacation his whole life. Unabashed controlled chaos. Through the surrealism, I always get the feeling that Butler is talking about something less metaphysical, and more actual: an America today that might cause one to dry heave.
On a formal note, J.A. Tyler is marking MLP chapbooks with a signature ampersand in place of all ‘and.’
& it rocks.
