Keeping up with 52 Stories
Why is this the 4th most popular Google image result for "fifty-two weeks?" Your guess is as good as mine.
Hey remember when Blake Butler was on Cal Morgan’s Fifty-Two Stories and we all got excited? Yeah, me too. Well that was a few weeks ago, so I thought tonight I’d pop back over to see what’s been going on since.
As you’ll recall, Blake’s “The Copy Family” was #11.
The copy family would not speak when spoken in to—though they had heartbeat, they were breathing. Their copy eyes were wet and stretched with strain.
That was followed by a classic, Stephen Crane’s “The Pace of Youth” at #12.
The summer sunlight sprinkled its gold upon the garnet canopies carried by the tireless racers and upon all the devices of decoration that made Stimson’s machine magnificent and famous.
Then things got even, um, classicer, with Dostoyevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” at #13.
I suddenly felt that it made no difference to me whether the world existed or whether nothing existed anywhere at all. I began to be acutely conscious that nothing existed in my own lifetime.
And now, the current story, in at #14, the second-ever story (after Blake’s) to emerge from the 52 slushbox, Casey Kait’s “Year of the Dog.”
At first, I saw her only at school events—the annual party or the one day each summer the class drove to the beach. But over time she’d stop by when I got home from school with containers of noodles or dumplings that she had made. “So Mommy doesn’t have to cook tonight, okay?” We started to love her. All of us.
I’m especially excited because, as it happens, I actually know Casey Kait a little bit as well. We were MFAs at New School at the same time, and if memory serves, we took Dale Peck’s literature seminar together. Congrats, Casey!
And cheers to 52 Stories– keep it coming!
Uncategorized / 6 Comments
April 6th, 2009 / 11:19 am
April 6th, 2009 / 11:19 am
Tattoo Madness (a guest missive from the Tyrant)
A report on the way in from way out from Master Giancarlo DiTrapano:
Ah ha ha ha ha. You have GOT to be kidding me. After smoking a joint with my coffee this morning, I began to cruise around Facebook (I feel like less of a loser when I Facebook stoned). That’s when I came across this absolute JEWEL of a tattoo. Just look at it. Behold it….
First, I thought it was a joke. Not only is it the title (altered slightly) of a David Eggers book, but it is the title of his absolute worst one. Now, Eggers has written a cool thing or two, I will admit. And he helps all the kids learn to write with irony and stuff at those 666 places. I even once read a nice paragraph that Eggers wrote. The thing is, just never two in a row. I think that’s his style though. Modulation sells. Wait, back to the tattoo: Is this tattoo supposed to be funny? I’m going to go out on a limb here and recommend that we all think to ourselves that it is. For if the reality is that it is not supposed to be funny, then the sad marring of this heavenly sculpted back is certain to overtake me on this first real beautiful day of spring in New York City.
To be fair, here are my tattoos. Laugh away.
So who else has the lit tattoo or whatnot? Let’s have a hear at it?
Anyone who happens to be a part of Shelley Jackson’s SKIN who emails me gets both issues of No Colony free.
THE BRANDI WELLS REVIEW
the BRANDI WELLS REVIEW now exists. i think they accept anything. the good thing about accepting anything is that anything has a chance to please other people. there is no bad thing about accepting anything because you don’t have to read the bad things. the shit still sucks shit and the good still flushes shit. also, i really like brandi wells. read anything of hers you can. bye.
Uncategorized / 14 Comments
April 5th, 2009 / 5:06 pm
April 5th, 2009 / 5:06 pm
Find the Story: A Contest
I am cleaning my office. This sucks. Right now, I am taking a break. Yet, I do find all sorts of fun stuff when I “organize” my life. I found this torn out page from a New Yorker. The date is December 25, 2006-January 1, 2007. Otherwise, all I have is the last page of a story that clearly moved me, in particular the ending (good job, mystery author) and I remember these lines filled a carved spot inside me at the time:
Existence in the here and now only made me realize how much attraction the past exerts.
Tattoo Lit?
The print form is dying. Online publishing is diluting good literature.
What’s next?
Maybe we could learn something from this Swedish tattoo magazine, Tare Lugnt, which ‘published’ its latest issue on some guy’s leg.
I give you Tare Lugnt Nummer Tre.
See the rest of it here.
(via Chunnel.tv)
Paragraphs I Would Probably Stab My Dick To Have Written (1): Barry Hannah
Geronimo Rex, pg. 142, first full graph:
Other nights Fleece explained to me how he had declared himself–he was going to be a doctor and study how “one suffers in the meat.” “I was always a meatball,” he said. “I’m going to be the best doctor Mississippi ever produced. They’ll bring in some whore whose boyfriend has shot her in the cunt pointblank with a shotgun and alongside her her boyfriend also, who thought he commited suicide putting the last shot into his navel, and I’ll put on my mask, wave my hands with some instruments, and bring them back Romeo and Juliet.”
Elizabeth Ellen Rules
I’ve written about her before, but frankly, I could write about her every week. Check out her website for all thing Elizabeth Ellen, including contributions to A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness (Rose Metal Press and a forthcoming chapbook with Paper Hero Press. Here are some power quotes from the woman who was largely responsible for my change in opinion of “online writing”:
From an interview in 3am magazine (linked here):
As for getting noticed…I don’t know. You can always try to be controversial, I guess. That’s certainly one way of getting noticed. Initiate a public feud. Be a dick. Write about it on your blog. That sort of thing. Other than that, I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing. This is going to sound like total, lameass bullshit, but I swear it’s true: I enjoy writing. I love it. I get off on it. I don’t do it to be in a particular magazine or to get a particular publisher’s notice. Not that I wouldn’t be stoked to be in The Paris Review or Tin House or with a major publisher. Of course I would. That’d be awesome. It’s just not something I think about on a daily or weekly basis.
Baltimore Scene Report
Shana Moulton
The Transmodern Festival is in its sixth year, and has become one of the best arts festivals in the country. Even the Washington Post says so. The four day event focuses on experimental/radical/challenging performance, so even after attending for the last four years (and curating last year), the things that happen are still surprising. READ MORE >
Vicarious MFA: Family Time!
Books read since last post: Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje and Life on the Outside by Jennifer Gonnerman.
Michael Ondaatje
In Non/Fiction we discussed Running in the Family, a beautiful memoir of Michael Ondaatje’s unbelievably lush, gin-swilling family who lived on Ceylon, an island off the coast of India. Some people in class were disappointed/confused that Ondaatje didn’t really approach the whole colonialism aspect of a British family living in India and having servants. Most people didn’t care that much because they were distracted by the beauty of the book. Each chapter reads like a prose poem and there’s no overt narrative arc. It’s more like a book of poetry masquerading as a memoir.
For The First Book seminar we read Jennifer Gonnerman’s Life on the Outside, a ridiculously impressive book about Elaine Bartlett, a woman
Elaine Bartlett (Photo by Heather Conley)
who was sentenced to 25 years of jail time under the Rockefeller Drug Laws after being set up by a drug dealer working for the cops. The book focuses on the Bartlett family’s struggle to make ends meet before, during and after Elaine’s prison time. She served 16 years before being granted clemency in 2000. I can’t even begin to explain how well this book was written. The amount of information Gonnerman gets the reader to understand and remember about Elaine’s set up, her huge family, the Rockefeller drug laws, and the myriad complications before and after the jail sentence is nothing short of phenomenal. The Rockefeller drug laws were repealed by Gov. David Patterson last week and Elaine Bartlett’s story had an impact in that decision.
Read for Next Week:
Non/Fiction: Oh, wait, I forgot. Will update this later today.
The First Book: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides
And of course, workshop submissions.
Please God, Let This Be Real.
Hello. By now you should understand my schtick here on HTMLGIANT (and abroad!) but there is no hyperbole necessary to display to you the awesomeness that is THIS.
It is my job to come up with a SNARKY COMMENT, but…I…can’t.
Okay…just one. I fear posting about this because when I see HTML coding like that, it makes me think of the Heaven’s Gate website (they were webdesigners, you know…I’m being totally serious…THANKS FOR RUINING THE NIKE CORTEZ FOR US APPLEWHITE!) and I’m scared that they’re going to find me and carve a poorly assembled chapbook with no central theme with the exception of ‘SPACE!’ into my chest and how am I going to explain that the next time I am with a woman?
In other words, bodybackground=”#FEFDD6″ FONT-FAMILY: MSCOMICSANS scares the shit out of me.
So enjoy(?)