Requited Journal #6
"Call and Response" by Adam Grossi
As the nonfiction & reviews editor of the online journal Requited, it’s my pleasure to announce that Issue 6 just went live. In the Essays section you’ll now find:
- an autobiographical comic by Keiler Roberts (Powdered Milk Volume 5);
- a video essay by Julianne Hill (“So, Mary?”);
- and interviews with Robert Ashley, Vanessa Place, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Curtis White regarding the materials and habits of their respective writing practices (see the introductory note here).
There’s also a new review: Jeff Bursey‘s take on J. Robert Lennon’s story collection Pieces for the Left Hand.
And much more!
On The Guilt Project: Rape Morality and Law & Tragodía 1: Statement of Facts by Vanessa Place
The Guilt Project
by Vanessa Place
Other Press, 2010
336 pages / $25 Buy from Amazon
&
Tragodía 1: Statement of Facts
by Vanessa Place
Blanc Press, 2010
430 pages / $45 (HB), $25 (PB) Buy from Blanc Press
Among the individuals in Los Angeles who are responding to heavyweight issues exists an uncanny force: Vanessa Place. A criminal defense attorney, she defends what some categorize as the lost, the wretched: indigent criminals, repeat sex offenders and violent predators. Some criminals learn valuable lessons while incarcerated; others leave prison refueled, angry and ready to re-enter what’s left of the world as a less worthy version of themselves, less interested in following pre-ordained rules. This is where Place steps in: the blurry space between offense and re-offense, perpetrator and victim, right and wrong, ethics and morality. Place explains, “I work as a combination street sweeper and factory worker. I follow what’s gone before, mopping up after the bloody mess, squaring the legal corners, assembling the lives disassembled by tragedy, and reducing reams of paper to bite-sized pellets.”(p.2)
8 Comments
August 8th, 2011 / 12:00 pm
August 8th, 2011 / 12:00 pm
Blake Butler—
I love this manifestation mode developing, objects offered to be: Statement of Facts by Vanessa Place.
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Blake Butler—
1. At Examiner, an interview with Vanessa Place on L.A., Stein, La Medusa, etc.
2. At Flatmancrooked, an interview with Brian Evenson on nihilism, Kafka, film, etc.
Blake Butler—
Vanessa Place has appropriated the Warhol Factory model, available thus far as 3 text objects: Factory Work : Hellocasts by Charles Reznikoff by Divya Victor by : Poems for OodPress
Massive People (10): Vanessa Place
At the end of last year, I read Vanessa Place’s mammoth novel of forms recently out from FC2, LA MEDUSA (linking Amazon because FC2 site is down, but buy from the press).
Though it is a monster of a book, in size in mind, I found I could not stop reading it once I started, blasting through all 616 pages in 4-5 days of continuous reading. Among its many forms and voices, it contains one of the most vivid scenes I think I’ve ever read: simply consisting of one of the main characters eating at a Mexican restaurant by himself, getting more and more drunk, and eating among a kind of mental fury, almost as if over the other pages of the book encasing him. It is truly a definition of how words can capture moments in a way no other art form is equipped for.
LA MEDUSA, I think, is a book of appetites, and cataloguing. There is something post-Beat in it in that way: lists (a list of strange barbies, a list of synonyms for vagina, though worked into the narrative thread somehow, a kind of shapeshifting that continually occurs in midst of the reading without managing to interrupt), and hyper consciousnesses, and combining the high with the low in these really rhythmic and syllabic and smart sentences. LA MEDUSA reminds me a lot of Lynne Tillman’s AMERICAN GENIUS, which is another of my all time recent favorites.
Anyhow, in the wake of my admiration, I spoke to Vanessa some about the ideas in the book, and her creative process, including ekphrasis, managing many voices, and craft.
Vanessa is also the author of DIES: A Sentence, which is literally a 50k+ word sentence, out from Les Figues Press (and is also a massive presence for innovative lit), which she co-directs. Her nonfiction book about sex-offenders and the morality of guilt will be published in 2008 by Other Press.
Do yourself a favor and check out her work: it is incomparable.
Interview after the jump.
