Play eShame and Win or Lose *UPDATED* **UPDATED**
I will probably laugh at you.
Do you know that game called “Shame,” in which participants name a book they haven’t read and if everybody else has read it the unreader gets a point? And whoever gets the most points is the winner but in real life the loser? How’s that go again? It’s really fun to play, right? Like, on car rides? READ MORE >
AN INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN CLEMENTS FROM “FIREWHEEL EDITIONS”
brian clements from firewheel editions was nice and did an interview with me. feast yo eyes nah children.
(interview after break yo)
Tyrant 6: !!!
Um, what the hell: the line up for the new issue of New York Tyrant has just been released, and, well, if you still have eyes, you might get ready to lose them:
300 pages of the best one yet.
A whole new batch of art from Mr. Atticus Lish!
Kevin Sampsell interviews Diane Williams
fiction from:
Thomas Bernhard
Rachel Sherman
Justin Taylor
Christine Schutt
Cooper Renner
Daryl Scroggins
Scott Garson
Anthony Luebbert
Christopher Kennedy
Jesse Ball
Daniel Grandbois
Michael Hemmingson
Darby Larson
Karl Taro Greenfeld
Ken Sparling
Robert Lopez
S.G. Miller
Kim Chinquee
Jason Snyder
Jessica Blau
Michael Leone
I think I would listen to the Thong Song for a week straight if I had to to get a hunk of this. I don’t know what made me just think of the Thong Song.
You can preorder the issue now on the Tyrant website, which is also currently running the Sampsell/Williams interview in full for your enjoyment.
Every new issue of the Tyrant is a spectacle of power and light. If not yer eyes, this one might take yer lungs out. Or your ovaries. Or you might get ovary-implanted. Either way, go get, before it sells out, as they always do.
Uncategorized / 59 Comments
March 24th, 2009 / 6:34 pm
March 24th, 2009 / 6:34 pm
Today at Coop’s Place: Modern & Contemporary English Language Fiction Judgment Day
Here’s something everyone here should be able to get down with fighting about. Today at The Weaklings, Dennis put up a long list of writers and invites you to name each of their best and worst work. You can add your lists to his comments section if you want his response, or to ours if you want ours–or both, I guess. He’s smarter and better-read than all of us put together (that’s a guess) but there’s more of us and we have cat-like reflexes (those are science facts). Anyway, here’s his list:
Burroughs: B, The Wild Boys. W, The Western Lands
Faulkner: B, The Sound and the Fury. W, The Town
D. Williams: The Stupefaction. W, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
Vidal: B, Myra Breckinridge. W, Hollywood
De Lillo: B, The Names. W, Cosmopolis
Woolf: B, Mrs. Dalloway. W, The Waves
Foster Wallace: B, Infinite Jest. W, Oblivion
Ellis: B, Lunar Park. W, Rules of Attraction
Amis: B, Money. W, Yellow Dogs
Wharton: B, The House of Mirth. W, The Glimpses of the Moon
Joyce: B, Ulysses. W, Dubliners
White: B, Nocturnes for the King of Naples. W, The Farewell Symphony
Morrison: B, Beloved. W, Love
Sotos: B, Selfish, Little. W, Special
Roth: B, Portnoy’s Complaint. W, Everyman
Gaddis: B, JR. W, Agape Agape
Brautigan: B, Revenge of the Lawn. W, An Unfortunate Woman
Updike: B, Couples. W, Gertrude and Claudius
Rechy: B, City of Night. W, Marilyn’s Daughter
Beckett: B, Watt. W, Ill Seen Ill Said
McCarthy: B, Blood Merdian. W, Suttree
Moody: B, Purple America. W, Garden State
Nabokov: B, Lolita. W, Ada or Ardor
Tillman: B, American Genius: A Comedy. W, Cast In Doubt.
Dick: B, Ubik. W, The World Jones Made
Palahniuk: B, Fight Club. W, Lullabye
Hemingway: B, The Sun Also Rises. W, The Garden of Eden
Acker: B, Great Expectations. W, Kathy Goes to Haiti
King: B, Pet Sematary. W, Hearts in Atlantis
Vonnegut: B, Slapstick. W, Hocus Pocus
Capote: B, The Grass Harp. W, Summer Crossing
Didion: B, Play It as It Lays. W, Run, River
Pynchon: B, Against the Day. W, Vineland
Barth: B, The Sot Weed Factor. W, Sabbatical: A Romance
Mailer: B, The Naked and The Dead. W, Ancient Evenings
Welsh: B, The Acid House. W, Porno
Gibson: B, Neuromancer. W, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Delaney: B, Hogg. W, Madmen
Ballard: B, The Atrocity Exhibition. W, The Kindness of Women
Faulkner: B, The Sound and the Fury. W, The Town
D. Williams: The Stupefaction. W, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
Vidal: B, Myra Breckinridge. W, Hollywood
De Lillo: B, The Names. W, Cosmopolis
Woolf: B, Mrs. Dalloway. W, The Waves
Foster Wallace: B, Infinite Jest. W, Oblivion
Ellis: B, Lunar Park. W, Rules of Attraction
Amis: B, Money. W, Yellow Dogs
Wharton: B, The House of Mirth. W, The Glimpses of the Moon
Joyce: B, Ulysses. W, Dubliners
White: B, Nocturnes for the King of Naples. W, The Farewell Symphony
Morrison: B, Beloved. W, Love
Sotos: B, Selfish, Little. W, Special
Roth: B, Portnoy’s Complaint. W, Everyman
Gaddis: B, JR. W, Agape Agape
Brautigan: B, Revenge of the Lawn. W, An Unfortunate Woman
Updike: B, Couples. W, Gertrude and Claudius
Rechy: B, City of Night. W, Marilyn’s Daughter
Beckett: B, Watt. W, Ill Seen Ill Said
McCarthy: B, Blood Merdian. W, Suttree
Moody: B, Purple America. W, Garden State
Nabokov: B, Lolita. W, Ada or Ardor
Tillman: B, American Genius: A Comedy. W, Cast In Doubt.
Dick: B, Ubik. W, The World Jones Made
Palahniuk: B, Fight Club. W, Lullabye
Hemingway: B, The Sun Also Rises. W, The Garden of Eden
Acker: B, Great Expectations. W, Kathy Goes to Haiti
King: B, Pet Sematary. W, Hearts in Atlantis
Vonnegut: B, Slapstick. W, Hocus Pocus
Capote: B, The Grass Harp. W, Summer Crossing
Didion: B, Play It as It Lays. W, Run, River
Pynchon: B, Against the Day. W, Vineland
Barth: B, The Sot Weed Factor. W, Sabbatical: A Romance
Mailer: B, The Naked and The Dead. W, Ancient Evenings
Welsh: B, The Acid House. W, Porno
Gibson: B, Neuromancer. W, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Delaney: B, Hogg. W, Madmen
Ballard: B, The Atrocity Exhibition. W, The Kindness of Women
Selby Jr.: B, Requiem for a Dream. W, The Willow Tree
Barker: B, The Books of Blood. W, Coldheart Canyon
Brite: B, Exquisite Corpse. W, Plastic Jesus
Oates: B, them. W, Bellefleur
Today in Big Publishing’s Dying Shudder
Oh, hey! Another editor has managed to convince his bosses that his internet addiction is not a huge drain on company time and bandwidth by getting a freely accessed photo blog turned into a book!
Harper Big Wig into phone: Nelson? Get into my office. Now.
Nelson, entering: Yes boss?
HBW: Nelson, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but all the office computers now have spyware on them. According to our records, you spent all of last week surfing the internet.
N: Uh. Well, sure. I was…doing…research?
HBW: Research? Why weren’t you reading the slush pile? Did you find anything?
N: [Pause.]
HBW: Well?
N: A blog with pictures of fried foods?
HBW: Nelson, you’ve done it again! Let’s get a contract drawn up.
And scene.
Keep throwing shit against the wall, fellas. Something is bound to stick.
Primordial Theory Question
1. While any subject can be interesting to any bozo at any given time, history indicates that there are a limited number of topics that are always immediately and profoundly engaging to everyone, all the time.
2. These issues are what is referenced by the term “the human condition.”
3. They are: death, love, and the idea that I am alive and did not ask to be.
4. Death meaning, I am going to die and I don’t know when or how to behave in the face of that.
5. Love meaning, for instance, I am lonely and drawn to other humans, and yet I am human and drawn to inflicting pain.
6. I am alive and did not ask to be meaning I don’t know if you are, too, or if I made you up.
7. So my question is, what is all this other crap that people are writing?
8. In other words, how far from these issues can I take a story and still have a story that anyone will care about?
I defer to your expertise.
I like Donald Rumsfeld a lot
In 2003 (sorry I’m late) Hart Seely, a reporter and occasional humorist, arranged Donald Rumsfeld’s evasive paradox-ridden Pentagon briefings and media interviews into poems, collected in Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld. Political satire is not new territory, but this is just awesome. Here is an example:
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.Department of Defense news briefing
Feb. 12, 2002
Power Quote: Harold Bloom
I myself, as a student of gnosis, whether poetic or religious, judge the poem to be neither truth nor fiction but rather Dante’s knowing, which he chose to name Beatrice. When you know most intensely, you do not necessarily decide whether it is truth or fiction; what you know primarily is that the knowing is truly your own.
– The Western Canon, “The Strangeness of Dante: Ulysses and Beatrice”
K. Silem Mohammed is At Least Trying
“I’m trying really hard. But soy milk in coffee (and I’ve tried rice milk too) is one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted. Urgh yuck shudder. I run a news group on conjoined twins and I’m trying really really hard not to.”
-K. Silem Mohammed, from a poem on Squirrels in My Attic
Good. I like it.
Horse Party image from Whispered Apologies
Everyone is having fun.
Haut or Not: Zachary German
Tao Lin emailed us a sideways pic of Zachary German’s bookcase. I decided there was no point in straightening out the pic since German wasn’t straight (that’s arguably not a gay joke). Also, one can better see the spines this way. I cropped the entry into three separate pics (conveniently separated by shelves). There’s no way to do this except after the break — trust me.