shane jones

The Failure Six is now available for pre-order

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Former Giant contributor and author we love Shane Jones will have his book The Failure Six published by Fugue State Press in January 2010, but those who pre-order now will receive the book and a “surprise” in October.

the surprise is similar to the surprise in those boxes of popcorn
could be a chapbook, could be edited pages not included in the book, could be signed copy
could be a picture of gene morgans mom

—Shane via a gmail chat

The Fugue State Press site also includes an excerpt from the book here.

See also:

Chris Pell’s Failure Six illustrations.

Personally, I can’t wait to read this.

Author News / 22 Comments
June 23rd, 2009 / 1:04 pm

The Rumpus on Shane Jones and Stanley Crawford

dsc00600Justin Dobbs tipped us off that The Rumpus had published last week a nice review of Shane Jones’ Light Boxes. Jovanovic writes:

Jones makes use of ambiguity and possibility in the fabulist tradition of Gabriel García Márquez, but Light Boxes should not be considered a magic-realist novel. The sidereal reality of Thaddeus and The Solution is not simply one where magical elements are introduced into ordinary settings, like the man vomiting rabbits into flowerpots in Julio Cortázar’s “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris” (though Thaddeus does vomit ice cubes)—in Jones’s novel there are few touchstones to the world as we know it. Light Boxes partakes in the traditions of folklore, archetypal myth, and oral history, a pedigree reflected in its images and descriptions. Clouds have legs and shoulders. They are shaped like a hand and can fall apart like wet paper.

Dobbs’ email reminds me that I need to read The Rumpus more, because likely I’ll find good stuff over there, such as this blog post by Deb Olin Unferth on Stanley Crawford’s The Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine.

If I had to make a small, partial statement here about book reviewing, I’d say this: I find that the most effective reviews (those that affect me most, I mean) tend to be the reviews that make me remember how much I enjoyed reading a certain book (for some reason, I rarely read reviews of books I haven’t yet read?). And I’m using ‘reviews’ here in the loosest sense. Jovanovic’s review and Unferth’s blog post both do this. I enjoy reading another’s telling of his or her experience of a book and I enjoy the connections that telling ignites in my head.

Is this a stupidly simple appreciation of book reviews? Probably.

Uncategorized / 15 Comments
May 14th, 2009 / 11:14 am

I THINK SHANE JONES IS NOT A GOOD PERSON FOR DELETING HIS BLOG BUT I KIND OF UNDERSTAND

what the fuck mang? am i typing in the wrong address? shane jones, no longer blogging? does this mean no longer writing? no longer blogging but still writing is ok. no longer blogging and no longer writing sucks the water out of shit and boils it mang. say it ain’t so shane. after reading light boxes and an excerpt from the failure six , i would be genuinely bummed if this were true. it’s like, fuck.  then again, who doesn’t think about deleting his/her blog and just running into the woods forever.

Random / 29 Comments
May 9th, 2009 / 6:00 pm

Shane Jones and Dear Leader have a conversation

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Kevin Sampsell (seen above dancing) made our friend Shane and our Dear Leader talk about small press issues and being an “internet writer.” The conversation appears on the blog of the mighty, mighty Powell’s Books.

It’s a mighty fine conversation. Here’s an abridged highlight:

Blake: People call you and me “Internet writers” in certain forums, though I don’t necessarily ride that term at all, and think mainly it comes from people not understanding the Internet as a tool. Have there been things you’ve done that you thought effective? Have there been things you would like to do but haven’t, or are not sure how?

Shane: …The “Internet writer” thing is just a label. I don’t consider myself, or you for that matter, an Internet writer.The “Internet writer” thing is just a label. I don’t consider myself, or you for that matter, an Internet writer. I think it’s because we both have blogs and publish online that some people call us this. But we also have printed stuff in journals and printed books, so I don’t really get it. I do know that starting a blog was probably one of the most important steps I made in my writing “career.” I became involved in a community of talented writers and it let me expose my own writing to a community of readers. And that’s very important…

Blake: Yeah, saying “Internet writer” is about as arbitrary and misplaced as saying “typewriter writer.” People so desperately want to name things.

Author Spotlight / 22 Comments
April 30th, 2009 / 8:55 pm

Haut or Not: “Worst of” (w/ digression)

What I could see happening has happened: satirical Haut or Not entrees — and from whom other than ‘TTB’ aka ‘Two Tears Boye,’ from Jaguar Uprising Press. (Circa 07-08 TTB and his partner Golden Bear were lamented/admired for their satirical takes on Bear Parade titles.) TTB writes this:

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.

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READ MORE >

Haut or not / 81 Comments
March 17th, 2009 / 1:56 pm

Ken Baumann on Shane Jones’s LIGHT BOXES

lbfrontsmallA review submitted by national heartthrob Ken Baumann, for Shane Jones’s just released novel LIGHT BOXES from Publishing Genius Press.

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.

READ MORE >

Uncategorized / 12 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 1:00 am

New at Publishing Genius

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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.

Presses & Web Hype / 10 Comments
January 5th, 2009 / 6:37 pm

Preorder LIGHT BOXES

from Publishing Genius:

Preorder Light Boxes and receive free BLACK KIDS IN LEMON TREES from Mud Luscious Press
YES, receive BLACK KIDS IN LEMON TREES from Mud Luscious Press free,
but only if you are within the first 25 people who preorder.
That’s 25 people.

PAY $12 for LIGHT BOXES (includes shipping) which is cheaper than if you wait till February.

So huge, so awesome, thanks for pre-ordering.

Thank you MUD LUSCIOUS PRESS for making available the previously OUT OF PRINT copies of Black Kids in Lemon Trees for people who preorder LIGHT BOXES.

This is one worth supporting. Let’s have at it.

Presses / 4 Comments
November 6th, 2008 / 8:31 pm

Black Kids in Lemon Trees

I will write something about the other two ML Press books soon. I received them yesterday—simple design, simply made, good job J.A.—and enjoyed all three.

I’ll start with Black Kids in Lemon Trees by HTMLGiant’s Shane Jones.  I’m a big fan of Shane’s writing. I am happy to cop to that. Shane is one of only two people I have let take over The Man Who Couldn’t Blog when I asked him if I could put an excerpt from his book Light Boxes on the site. So there’s that.

This almost seems unfair. It’s apparently already sold out. So you, dear reader, can’t go get a copy for yourself. But I want you to. That’s what I am here to say. It’s very, very good.

In 25 little sections, BKILT follows this wonderful thread of dream logic. Shane does surrealism about as well as one can and still make a readable story on a page. Police in the clouds, cop eyes, shooting at the sun, kids in dayglo shorts throwing lemons at the clouds—the images are so strong, so neatly and quickly rendered. And they all gather together well like cogs in a watch. Or, not a watch. Some sort of mechanism. The function of the mechanism may not make perfect sense, but the gears fit against one another, and the machine has an internal integrity.

There was a nice Believer article about how to read a Russell Edson poem. You can read it all here. That article has been very helpful for me when approaching work like Shane’s.

Nice job, Shane. Sorry, people who don’t have a copy on the way or in their hands.

Author Spotlight & Presses / 9 Comments
October 31st, 2008 / 8:43 pm

Mud Luscious

Reader, go buy.

I did. I will tell you what I think of them when they arrive. And I read them. I will read them before I tell you what I think of them.

I will probably read them before I tell you what I think of them.

There is a 64% chance I will read them, or maybe at least skim them before I tell you what I think of them.

57% maybe.

Definitely I will probably read, skim, or at least open them before I tell you what I think of them.

Also, I am sorry that this post moved Kendra’s down the page a little. I apologize to you, the reader.

And Kendra.

And to…well, you know. Them.

Presses / 4 Comments
October 24th, 2008 / 8:35 pm