POP: A Polemic on a Contemporary Language-Based “Objectivity”
I do not like metaphor. My personal education pertaining to literature takes a very French bent, and it is here that Robbe-Grillet himself, king of the nouveau roman one could say, has denounced metaphor, preferring, I suppose, some sort of metonymy, but–if anything–participating in the creation of a style of fiction in which the surface is more important than a subtext.
I think that this adherence to the surface, at least in terms of language, is good, positive, because it removes an additional level of signification, which brings us, as a reader, closer to the experience the language itself is hiding, carrying, revealing. Though often, in the creation of atmosphere, metaphor can be adequately used to help evoke a mood, I feel like there are often more interesting ways to do this (and I suppose that here, by “interesting,” I mean “heterogeneous, diverse, wildly more creative”).
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i’m a bullhole cliche / assshit: An Interview with Victoria Trott
When I started reading online literature, sometime in mid-2008, I discovered a short list of bloggers/writers (Tao Lin, Ellen Kennedy, Zachary German) with similar attitudes and approaches to literature. Later, when Muumuu House was established, I found, among them, a new name: Victoria Trott. I read her poems, her blog, and it was all very strange, funny, and poignant. On Halloween 2009, I met her at a late night get together in (where else) Williamsburg. She seemed quiet, estranged, grinning aimlessly. By then she’d sort of disappeared from the online scene, leaving behind only a few publications (not to mention an unreleased forthcoming issue of German’s now-discontinued litmag), an altered moniker, and a lot of questions. In late 2009, she created a hilarious, ingenious Twitter account, and in summer 2010, a wonderful new blog. Finally there was some clarity, openness, continuity, but still, I was curious. Last fall, I compiled a list of questions I had for (and regarding) Victoria in a Gmail draft. Then I emailed her some of those questions, commencing a slow correspondence, spanning three months. Here are the results:
David Fishkind: Hi Victoria, How are you?
Victoria Trott: Hey David, someone bought me breakfast today and I took half of a Ritalin, I feel pretty good. How are you?
How did you get involved with online literature? Or maybe, what is your time line of involvement?
Here’s a timeline of my involvement with online literature, which has the stuff about blog switching, I think
2007 – high school sophomore, read Hikikomori on Bear Parade. showed Tao Lin’s blog to my friend, she said “amoeba ass?” and laughed with a puzzled face.
A List of Things (pt. 1)
1. There is a new issue of Bookslut. In it there is a a really great interview of Kendra Grant Malone by Noah Cicero. Also, some stupid idiot interviewed Michael Earl Craig (again). It’s ok though because Michael Earl Craig is good.
2. I don’t know if people know this, but the NYU creative writing program archives all of its events in podcast form. I listen to this a lot. I’ve listened to that Matthew Zapruder one probably 5 times. There also is an Agriculture Reader reading from the fall of 2009 that I’ve listened to several times.
3. My friend Harriet runs this really nice (print+online) journal called “Her Royal Majesty.” They are now accepting submissions for the next issue.
4. Mike’s (Young’s) book of short stories is now available. Short stories are usually a little bit longer than poems are.
5. I went to this Publishing Genius book tour thing two nights ago in Chicago. It was fun as hell. If you’re in Minneapolis you can go too. (Hurry.)
6. There is a MuuMuu House DVD available. It’s a DVD of a MuuMuu House reading in Ohio (and other things) — featuring Tan Lin, Susan Boyle, Michael Jordan, Marcus Cicero, and Mallory Whitten.
7. After the jump is a semi-NSFW youtube vid. It’s more weird than anything. If you can make it past the first 10 seconds it’s pretty rewarding.
The Brandon Book Crisis: A review
The Brandon Book Crisis (Muumuu House, 2009) by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Tao Lin
A paperback “thriller” about book design published May 25, 2009 in a limited edition of 150 numbered copies. 152 pages, 5.5″ x 7″, © Creative Commons, No Rights Reserved. Features 140+ pages of unedited Gmail chats, text messages, voicemails, and emails between Brandon Scott Gorrell, Tao Lin, and others.
The Brandon Book Crisis is, put simply, a book about the making of a book, which is not an entirely new postmodern conceit, if one thinks about the self-referential Pale Fire (Nabokov), Coming Soon! (John Barthes), or Lunar Park (Bret Easton Ellis), to name a few. ’Edited,’ or rather, compiled by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Tao Lin, it consists of gmail chats (already aestheticized by Muumuu House), emails, and the occasional frantic text concerning the printing of Brandon Scott Gorrell’s During my nervous breakdown I want to have a biographer present – specifically, its fonts, colors, and unworkable files.
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#6)
[NOTE: The launch party for SOMETIMES MY HEART PUSHES MY RIBS is at 7 p.m. tonight at Cafe Orwell in Brooklyn. - JT]
My Dog is a Little Obese
put the clif bar in your pocket from a florida gas station and walk away
put the entire box of clif bars from a duane reade in penn station in your bag and walk away
put two clif bars from price chopper into your pocket and walk away
this is CVS, there are no clif bars here
buy 4 clif bars from albertson’s and feel bad
there is 50mg of caffeine in your clif bar
cut the clif bar in half with scissors and eat one half and put the other half in a bowl
hide the scissors in the closet
there isn’t any caffeine in the lemon poppyseed clif bar
put organic green tea extract on your tongue and put your tongue in my mouth
there is 50mg of caffeine in my brain
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#5)
Green Toothbrush
the train leaves in 50 minutes
two people having sex to a lonely and frustrated person singing “I’ll probably never see your face again”
two people taking turns standing under the water in a shower
the hair is black and smells like lemons
two people using one green toothbrush
the train leaves in 20 minutes
one person standing, ironing a red dress
the train is leaving in 15 minutes
the slip is too long and sticking out of the red dress
the boots are loud and slow
two people on a train taking turns laying down on one person’s lap
the hair looks more brown than red when short
yelling “soccer” in secaucus station
waiting for the new york train
the new york train arrives in 3 minutes
two people buying two large organic coffees
caffeine making four eyes bigger and two brains faster
one person feeding a lemon to one pigeon
one pigeon walking away uninterested
two people sitting on a subway train with two coffees floating above
two people lying very close on a one-person mattress
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#4)
I Like Every Time We Have Sex
“I want to have sex with you.”
“Thank you. I want to have sex with you also.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“When I say I want to have sex with you I mean really.”
“So do I.”
“I mean really, I don’t just say that as a feeling. Do you understand? Did you really mean that you wanted to have sex with me when we were waiting on line at the movie theater before or did you just mean that as a feeling?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry”
AN INTERVIEW WITH AUDREY ALLENDALE FROM MUUMUU HOUSE
this person from muumuu house emailed me today and asked to be interviewed. her name is audrey allendale. here are the answers she gave to my questions:
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#3)
Orange
I wish my life consisted only of
riding my bike with you
down a giant hill that never stopped
while listening to music
with no one else around
in the middle of nothing,
except a few shiny and relaxing lights above in the sky
like stars but a little brighter
and more orange
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#2)
Brighter and Clearer
After I have an orgasm my body feels like a sombrero-shaped galaxy slowly expanding in the eyepiece of a 4th grader’s telescope
After I watch a family of lions tear apart the body of a large deer on the Discovery Channel I feel a calming sense of inferiority
After I watch a horror movie I can’t go to the bathroom without you holding my hand while I pee
After I take my vegan dietary supplement my piss is brighter and clearer
After I kiss your eyelids my lungs squeeze out through my ribs, then through my belly button and slowly fly to your face and push very lightly on your cheeks
After I forget something I said I would remember my brain becomes a roll of vegetable futomaki that an obese chinchilla is trying to eat all in one bite
After I make you cry one of my organs melts into a runny paste that trickles down the inside of my body and collects at the bottom of my feet
After I make you feel indifferent towards me my heart turns into a small desert hamster running very quickly on an exercise wheel and then tripping and then spinning around in distress until the wheel stops and the hamster can get up and try running again, but in a more conscious and concerned way
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#1)
Florida
i had a dream last night about your parents and you
in your house in florida
your parents were dancing in the garage
and your mom was singing
and then the radio stopped for no reason
and she screamed ‘no’
and then walked away
your dad was pissed
then you went into your room and your computer had this program that you could make animations with
and you made like 5 videos of your dad
changing from a happy dad
to a pissed dad
then i woke up
your parents were dancing so hard
Muumuu House ‘Care’ Package and a Contest
not ryan call
I received today in the mail a ‘care’ package from Muumuu House and in that package were several books: you are a little bit happier than i am by Tao Lin and Distortions by Ann Beattie and three copies of Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy. Thank you, Muumuu House, for the ‘care’ package.
And last night a friend and I found a bar in Houston that has ping-pong tables, and we played ping-pong for three or four hours, and I defeated him twice. He did not defeat me. The rest of the time we just hit the ball back and forth and impressed ourselves with our amazing skills. I think I am very good at ping-pong. I think it is the one thing I’m allowed to be good at, maybe. That and washing dishes. I think there is something very satisfying about hitting a ping-pong ball just so, having it do exactly what you want it to do.
To celebrate our finding this bar with ping-pong tables, I would like to offer two copies of Sometimes My Heart Pushes Against My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy, which, sadly, has no poems/stories in it about ping-pong.
Please post your poems/stories about ping-pong in the comments section to be eligible for a copy of Sometimes My Heart Pushes Against My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy. Be sure to include a real email address in the field where it asks for an email address, so I can email you if your poem/story wins. If you are shy, you may also email a poem/story about ping-pong to htmlgiant [at] gmail [dot] com, but if I select your poem/story, then I will post it for everyone to see. This contest is open until 2:00pm CST, Saturday the 7th.
Good work, Muumuu House and Ellen Kennedy, on your first book. I enjoyed reading it.
UPDATE: Winners of the two Muumuu House books are Miles and Darby Larson. Miles and Darby please email your mailing addresses to HTMLGIANT so I can send you your prize.
Thank you to everyone who emailed and posted ping-pong stories/poems.
The Internet: Serious Business
The image is facetious, but I think we – you and me and everyone we don’t know – are onto something. The internet’s constraints and agilities are being used in wonderful and inventive ways. I’ve noticed writers and editors either reappropriating online aesthetics or its practical functions. Here are three examples that kind of show a spirit to this point:
I. Mark Baumer’s everydayyeah will post a 365 word story this year, running one word at a time. He chose Jesse Ball, who just published The Way Through Doors. [Blake Butler’s review forthcoming in The Believer, April.] One simply could not ‘distribute’ or publish in this form without the easy accessibility of the internet, made more so with the advent of RSS feeds and Google reader. Baumer seems obsessed with finding beauty in the redundancies of every day. True, it will take a devoted fan to check in every day, but let’s compromise: how about every week? We might even learn something about Ball’s structure.
II. Jillian Clark’s brilliant poem (haiku?) untitled under her “so i go in alone” blog post, wherein the entire poem is comprised of wikipedia picture captions.
an okapi cleaning its muzzle with its tongue
an okapi at bristol zoo cleans itself
okapi at chester zoo
an okapi reaches for some leaves
Tao Lin’s “All Purpose Promotional Video”: Reviewing the wrong one
Tao Lin offered me $2 to review an ‘all purpose promotional’ video which would be uploaded in 1-3 days, then said ‘just kidding.’ I was moved by the initial spirit behind the request and have done so (though I am reviewing the ‘wrong’ one. I will try to review the correct one too.) Please read this before viewing the movie. It will make you more excited for the movie, I hope. [I just spent five minutes trying to embed the source-code but it didn't work, so what follows this review is a mere link.]
REVIEW: This review will not have a point, because I don’t think the ‘all purpose promotional’ video had a point, other than being an ‘all purpose promotional’ video. I will simply describe what I saw in the order of when I saw it, with light commentary. Also, I only watched the video once, taking quick notes, so I may be wrong at points. The ‘narrative’ might not make sense due to choppy avante garde editing. READ MORE >
‘How to Get Linked on HTML Giant’: A 2 Step Primer
For future reference, and because it’s recently come up, if you are wanting in the worst way to get linked on HTML Giant (man, I don’t blame you, it’s a firestorm in here), it’s really pretty simple. In fact it’s so simple, there are just two steps. Here are those two steps:
PRIMER STEP ONE: (For primer step one, I am going to defer to the guidelines for submission at Muumuu House Press, which I think are absolutely brilliant, and probably the most honest thing I’ve seen a publisher write about the way they select texts:
To submit to Muumuu House find a person who has been published by or is associated with Muumuu House and read their blog. If you like their blog make a comment in their comments section in a sincere and natural manner, expressing your feelings. Eventually someone associated with Muumuu House will probably read your comment and click your name and find your blog. If that person likes your blog, to a certain degree, then they will probably tell other people in emails or in real life and then at some point you will probably be emailed, not necessarily about Muumuu House, but maybe about Muumuu House. I think this is more natural. It supports a ‘there is no good or bad in art’ mentality, is probably faster and more efficient than emailing submissions and having people read them and respond to them, and I think it decreases loneliness, boredom, and despair more effectively than with ‘normal’ submissions, based on my experiences with the internet, I believe. Muumuu House is edited by Tao Lin.
PRIMER STEP TWO: Do something good.
That’s it. Those can occur in any order. They can occur exclusively of one another. They are also dependent on me forgetting everything else already me like the fact that I really want to go run a few miles right now at 11:25 PM, which I will do right after I finish this, forgetting that and other bullshit, and thinking about these things that happen, which can happen at any instant, and then I will click the buttons and copy and past the address and you will appear like magic in the brown letters on the foam green backdrop (I am suddenly doubting my recall of our color scheme) and people maybe will see your name there and maybe sometime click on you even though if they are here and they are looking at the ‘other places’ section will likely have already heard of you because the people who tend to read shit here tend to give a crap about books and have probably already over the course of however long they’ve intermingled that caring about books with the internet somehow stumbled on those places, rendering our links section and any links section just another thing that is a thing is probably not worth mentioning most of the time, like old baby blankets and tennis socks. You might notice I haven’t added a link to the journal I’ve been editing for more than 5 years. That’s just how much it doesn’t matter. And anyhow, more often, things that get linked here that ‘we’ give ‘a shit’ (more Muumuu House props, I guess) about are linked in the blog body because this is a blog and that’s what the blog is for and that’s what happens. I am still typing.
The main way not to get linked is to blind query the HTML Giant email inbox because (a) I don’t know that anyone checks it regularly except for Secret Santa things recently, I know I have looked twice, again it is a ‘token’ (b) I like to find things and remember things rather than being told, I have a mother already and (c) refer to PRIMER STEPS 1 and 2.
The for certain for sure super way not to get linked, if you did go ahead and send one of those ‘link me dear god link me please!’ emails, is not to get your tits in an uproar when 6 days later you haven’t gotten an answer back (current flood of other inbox Santa happies notwithstanding), and then come publicly bitching about how you’ve published several of our writers so why not why not why? I’ll admit I’ve added two links to the links as a result of the editor emailing, but only because I did like those places, and they did not call out about who/what/when/where was published, and let me pick up the email on my own and think, oh, yeah, that’s cool, I can do that, I want to do that. Done.
I like a lot of things. I also like to be a stick in the mud and look at my own ass. It gets me off.
A Further Explanation
I think changing publishers before a book comes out is kind of interesting. Well, it adds drama. For the writer, it poses an interesting dilemma. You have to kind of feel that one press is better than the other, but you already accepted with the one press so why did you send it anyway? Brandon Scott Gorrell faced a situation where he had accepted with Greying Ghost Press but when Tao Lin decided to start his own press, Brandon backed out and went with Tao. Not a surprise. I think most of us would have done the same thing, or maybe not.
I decided to ask Brandon for a bit of an explanation, or what he was thinking. The response is lengthy, but good. I think what’s interesting is the idea that Greying Ghost and MuuMuu House could have published the same book — Tao said he would publish the book even if Greying Ghost put it out and Brandon offered the editor at Greying Ghost to put the same book out as a dual-release, which Carl declined.
Here’s Brandon’s full response/explanation on the situation:
Yes, I will explain that. Tao emailed me, saying that, since he just finished his novel, he was going forward with Muumuu House. He asked if he could publish my book. He said he would publish it as a perfect-bound paperback and that I could control all aspects of the book’s design if I wanted. He said things like “I feel sure I will promote the book for the rest of my life” and other thematically similar life-affirming statements. He also said that he would still want to publish it in the case that Greying Ghost published it.I emailed Carl from Greying Ghost, telling him that Tao offered to publish my poetry book as a “real” style book (as opposed to a “chapbook” style book), and that I would like to take the opportunity. I said that I would also like Greying Ghost to publish it at the same time. I suggested a dual-release thing. Carl from Greying Ghost emailed me back and said that he would not want to publish my poetry book if Tao also published it. He also said something similar to the sentiments “I would understand if you wanted to go with Tao” and “There would be no hard feelings if you choose Muumuu.”When I had this information I quickly made the decision to withdraw my manuscript from Greying Ghost. I made this decision because I perceived Muumuu House as having a greater likelihood of providing more press, financial gain, power, success, etc; because Muumuu will publish it as a perfect-bound paperback (I prefer that to a chapbook-style book); because I trust Tao to promote my book really hard; because I know that I will be able to communicate with Tao, probably on a daily basis, about my book, if I need to; and because I have control over all aspects of the book’s design.
Muumuu House
Tao Lin had been talking about making a press for a long time, he had a post once discussing the name, what should he name it, one of the names then was Muumuu House, and now MUUMUU HOUSE has sneakily snuck a website onto the web.
The site, sneakily snuck onto the web, is pretty chock full of stuff already, featuring new fiction, poetry, and Tao’s favorite-artform Gchats, featuring many of the likely suspects from a Tao-run press.
Most awesomely, the press has also announced their first two titles to be published in perfect bound print next year, Ellen Kennedy’s SOMETIMES MY HEART PUSHES MY RIBS in March 09 and Brandon Scott Gorrell’s DURING MY NERVOUS BREAKDOWN I WANT TO HAVE A BIOGRAPHER PRESENT in June 09.
This was all discovered in a post on Brandon’s blog, in which Brandon announced his retraction of the book from its previous acceptance at Greying Ghost press, which may or may not result in a promotional snafu for the book, if people decide to fuss about the switch or not.
Here is the very Tao-like ‘submission policy’:
To submit to Muumuu House find a person who has been published by or is associated with Muumuu House and read their blog. If you like their blog make a comment in their comments section in a sincere and natural manner, expressing your feelings. Eventually someone associated with Muumuu House will probably read your comment and click your name and find your blog. If that person likes your blog, to a certain degree, then they will probably tell other people in emails or in real life and then at some point you will probably be emailed, not necessarily about Muumuu House, but maybe about Muumuu House. I think this is more natural. It supports a ‘there is no good or bad in art’ mentality, is probably much faster and more efficient than emailing submissions and having people read them and respond to them, and I think it decreases loneliness, boredom, and despair more effectively than with ‘normal’ submissions, based on my experiences with the internet, I believe.
The MUUMUU HOUSE site is nice and calming to look at, the blue/black/white no photos feel is pleasant, it seems a very good thing.
