NewVillager + Fantastic Information
NY by way of CA strange-pop band NewVillager, self-proclaimed into the “Chinese Pop | Dutch Pop | Spanish Pop” markets, is a music for the meat inside your hair. Consisiting of super pal Ross Simonini, plus the magic brother in Ben Bromley, these lads are making post-Peter Gabriel past-Animal Collective way-past-Beck wildness.
As a man quite tired of most new music, the sounds here are nice in that they are both new sounding in their layers and yet not so gone that they need to appear only on hipster iPods stuffed next to Sunn O)))) snore. Sounds new, and they can actually sing? Dang.
Anyway, you can do a listen to their first two tracks, ‘Rich Doors’ and ‘Genghis On’ for free on the myspace. Go peek. If you dig, tracks are available for download from iTunes, and on vinyl, both findable through the myspace profile.
Even more germane to the forum is the band’s vast repertoire of profile and press information, including band history, reviews, and other, supplied by a motley crew of sources, which I will excerpt after the break: READ MORE >
INTERVIEW WITH ANDY RIVERBED
i interviewed andy riverbed. he does translations and he wrote the book DAMAGED. he has an e-book coming out through EVERYDAY YEAH on friday. interview after break. there is mention made of mc hammer.
“Inherent Vice” by Thomas Pynchon
Is Thomas Pynchon not cool anymore? Is literary relevance chronologically sensitive — meaning, certain things lose their importance depending on when they are published? Do interesting things become boring over time, or is the reading public simply fickle? I ask these questions because nobody seems that interested in Pynchon’s forthcoming (August 2009) Inherent Vice — kinda has a loopy-hippie Vineland feel to it. I must admit I fanned through his latest novel Against the Day like a telephone book with no one to call, sighed, and put it down; and Pynchon is one of my all time favorites.
Daniel Green’s new venture
Who has globes anymore?
Dan Green runs what I consider to be one of the most thoughtful literature blogs. It’s called The Reading Experience. In 2004 he wrote about something I wrote about criticism and dissed me in a really nice way (here’s that). He knows his stuff and writes with great attention about serious, new literature. Now he is starting a journal-ish thing that HTML Giant readers should know about. READ MORE >
Dragons With Cancer
Bradley Sands and I wanted to make an electronic anthology that took Bizarro authors and Blogzarro authors and featured two stories from each, one “real” and one “unreal.” We let everything else figure itself out. And now you can read Dragons With Cancer either online or as a PDF. Read and click. Keep up on things. They’re loading all emotions into a rocket and sending it to Mars, so if you have any left you should use them soon. List of authors after the jump.
“How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” by Philip K. Dick
[With a big hearty hat tip to Ken Baumann, who fwded me a link to this essay, apropos absolutely zilch, just because he thought I might think it was interesting. He was right and a half.]
It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question “What is reality?”, to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”That’s all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven’t been able to define reality any more lucidly.
[After the jump, I write Ken a note about what I thought about the essay]
“You” by Frank Stanford
Sometimes in our sleep we touch
The body of another woman
And we wake up
And we know the first nights
With summer visitors
In the three storied house of our childhood.
Whatever we remember,
The darkest hair being brushed
In front of the darkest mirror
In the darkest room.
Let’s make a list.
Kevin commented on my Letters to Wendy’s post earlier today that he thought the book is one of the most “stunning pieces of art to appear in the last ten years.” It occurs to me that I tend to agree with that assessment. Letters to Wendy’s really did change the way I thought about poetry and fiction. It changed the focus of my reading. It changed the way I approach writing, too.
The writers and readers of this blog seem to have a taste for innovative work. If asked to name one book that permanently and significantly rewired the way you read or write, what would it be?
In a few days, I’ll update this post with a list.
UPDATE:
Actually, what the heck. Let’s open this up. A piece of music, a film, a photograph, a painting. What piece of art significantly rewired the way you think of art or create art.
My name has never sounded sexier.
Dead ringer.
I’m not sure how many people know this already, but “Justin Taylor” is–among other things–also the name of a fictional character from the now-defunct TV show Queer as Folk. What’s NOT defunct is the stream of fan-fiction concerning Justin’s relationship with Brian Kinney. There’s tons of it being produced and published, almost entirely on Livejournal. Often times they move the characters into new environments/situations/worlds, such as a sci-fi-ish future or else, as in today’s offering, a high school that’s also somehow “like Muppet Babies.” In the grand tradition of slashfiction, all of this *ahem* literature is known by the collective title of Brian/Justin fiction, or, simply–and perfectly, am I right?–BJ fic. How do I know all this? Uh, own-name Google alert–anybody? Here’s an extract from chapter two of QAF Babies (click anywhere to get swept away to QAFland):
I smile. “Justin. Justin Taylor.”
He repeats slowly, “Justin Taylor.” My name has never sounded sexier.
In response, he asks playfully, “Why shouldn’t I take home ec? Where else will I learn how to cook my man a hearty meal, balance his checkbook, care for all our adopted babies, and darn his socks?”
I stare at him blankly. After a minute or two, he chuckles. “Maybe I just want to ogle your hot ass as you bend over to put cookies in the oven…”