“Las Casas” by Patrick Somerville
Two men sit in a booth at a bar.
They’re talking.
One’s a little older than the other.
The older one says: “Have you ever heard of a man named Bartolomé de Las Casas?”
The other says: “I don’t think so.”
“Dominican monk named Bartolomé de Las Casas, writing in the sixteenth century, Bartolomé de Las Casas. Okay. No. He was Spanish. He came over to see the New World. And he was totally and immediately fucking horrified by what he saw the soldiers and the conquistadors doing and so he just went right to the notebook and tried to record as many of the atrocities as he could? Just knee-jerk This is what I can do. Someone needs to remember this. Someone needs to see it and remember it and bear witness. READ MORE >
33 pinches where the fat do grow
1. The IRS is accusing NANO fiction of being pornography (sort of a new take on the term flash).
5. This is the best fish/beer/existential ramblings blog I believe you will find. You’re welcome.
I’m probably going to people the world with robot birds.
4. Patrick Somerville & Lindsay Hunter converse with one another over at Hobart.
First thing: I am suspicious of all writers and human beings who are not sick of themselves.
33. Roy Kesey interview at Bookslut.
It would be great if having climbed a given mountain meant that climbing some other similar-shaped mountain would be easier, but I don’t think that’s quite the way it works — at least not for me.
4. Everyone needs discussions/lessons on plot. Here are some, couched in a review of Tana French at The Millions.
Lesson: What Gary Lutzcalls “page-hugging” prose isn’t necessarily anathema to plot.
yo, veridical dat.
Wind Call Swill Stein 2xQs Again
French rap is weird
1. Super thrilled to hear via twitter that Coffee House Press will be putting out a new collection by Brian Evenson, Windeye. Hopefully by 2011? No date word yet, but Evenson is the kind that I go stand in line for. If you haven’t read the titular story yet, it is gorgeous, and available via PEN America.
2. At Electric Literature, Melissa Broder interviews Ryan Call about, what else, litblogging.
3. James Yeh has a new chapbook out, 9/16/10, from a rad small press making beautiful objects, Swill Children.
4. The Complete Recordings of Gertrude Stein Reading Her Own Works @ PennSound
5. Interview with Dorothea Lasky by Nafiza Islam at Thoughts Interjected & interview with Patrick Somerville by Tobias Carroll at Vol 1. Brooklyn.
6. At Ubu, Doug Nufer’s Never Again, a 163 pg. novel with no word appearing more than once, which I discovered after an awesome conversation wondering if such a thing existed with Heather Christle and Christopher DeWeese, both of whom have books coming from Octopus in 2011 that I am also mega excited for.
Two New Covers
Two excellent new covers for two books I am really looking forward to this year:
Patrick Somerville’s The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, from Featherproof Books Fall 2010, design by Zach Dodson
(which was just announced as a Featherproof title I think yesterday, on the heels of his smash The Cradle, and while you’re at it, take a look at the covers for Christian Tebordo’s The Awful Possibilities and Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s, (Daddy’s? wow), which are both also damn beautiful and exiting)
Tao Lin’s Richard Yates, from Melville House 9/7/10, photography by Michael Northrup