Hoax Followup, in Brief
Now that April Fool’s Day is past, I just want to take a minute and thank Cave Canem, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tao Lin for all being such good sports about my “Tao Lin Wins Cave Canem First Book Prize” post from yesterday. It was, of course, complete nonsense. As Cave Canem’s executive director, Alison Meyers, rightly pointed out in our comments section: the deadline for the Cave Canem Prize isn’t even until April 30th, so there was really no way this could possibly be true (I mean on top of all the other reasons it couldn’t be and also isn’t true).
John K, on his blog J’s Theater, thought the post was generally clever, which I appreciate, but he also felt that “the fake quotes attributed to Komunyakaa are indefensable…” He’s probably right about that, so I’ve gone ahead and added an “UPDATE: APRIL FOOLS'” to the top of the post, just so future Google-searchers don’t get the wrong idea. John K also felt that I took “a backhanded swipe at last year’s CC First Book Prize submittees and black poets in general…” Let me state for the record that no swipes were intended, backhanded or otherwise, I just read on the Cave Canem site that no prize was awarded in 2008, and improvised from there.
In an age of instant verification, a little extra creativity (and deceit) is called for, hence the superficially “logical” but basically insane quotes from Komunyakaa, who himself was only chosen for “quotation” because he happens to be judging the prize this year. (Hardcore Tao Lin fans may have noted that the purported title of his book, “Organic Cold-pressed Virgin Coconut Oil,” was a longer poem he was working on a few years ago. Parts of it were published in Agriculture Reader #2. He later abandoned the project.)
As for why I chose Cave Canem, it’s because they’re an eminently respectable publication and organization whose results for this year’s prize haven’t yet been announced. Plus their website had enough information on it for me to construct a semi-credible story in the time-frame I had (the one actually true part of the post, is that I slung it together in the half hour before I had to go teach my two sections of 101). Anyway, once more, with feeling: many thanks to all involved, especially the unwitting. Maybe next year we’ll announce that Nathaniel Mackey has won the FENCE Alberta Prize. Until then, cheers!
eShame Contest Winners
When did we stop caring?
There’s this great scene in Basquiat in which Basquiat (portrayed with real beauty by Jeffrey Wright) and Andy Warhol (who is best portrayed by David Bowie) are painting some corporate logos on a studio wall. Warhol finishes a blue, winged horse. Then, inexplicably, Basquiat takes a paint roller and runs a swatch of white through the middle of the painting. They stand together and look. Perplexed, Warhol says, “I don’t even know what’s good anymore.”
The scene portrays real friendship.
Here are the results of the eShame game: READ MORE >
What they said about what we said
In the fall last year, a +3000 page pdf titled “Issue 1” was published featuring +3000 writers/poets by For Godot, a glorified blog. There was a catch: 1) the poems were never submitted/solicited, 2) the poems were not authored by the cited writer (instead generated by an online algorithm) and 3) no editorial correspondence preceded the publication. In short, this was more about the conceptual, probably satirical, musings of the ‘editors,’ and less about the content of the publication. I smell commentary.
pax americana #10
Do people know about this journal? pax americana, edited by Ben Mirov, publishes one print issue and 4-6 web issues per year. The newest online edition is up now, #10. I like the way it looks- smart, and sort of simple. Clickable pictures of the authors lead you to their work. A very clean layout. I haven’t read the whole thing, but here are some highlights from my thus far-
Uncategorized / 6 Comments
April 2nd, 2009 / 1:55 pm
April 2nd, 2009 / 1:55 pm
Chris Higgs’s COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY
New from Publishing Genius’s ‘This PDF Chapbook‘ series, what is now probably my favorite of all of the releases thus far, a new one from the megabrained Chris Higgs:
Mary Gaitskill on Slate’s Open Book
The amazing Mary Gaitskill has a new book out. I like all of Gaitskill’s work, but her stories especially, and so I’m very excited about this new book, which I don’t own yet, but hope to very soon. Slate reviewed the book the other day, and they liked it. Gaitskill also appeared on Slate’s Open Book series, which they produce in collaboration with the NYU creative program program. Gaitskill sits down with Meghan O’Rourke and Deborah Landau, to talk about her new book and read from it. One of my favorite things about Open Book is that they post two versions of each interview: the ~10 minute version that gets spotlighted on Slate, but also the extended (ie complete) version of the conversation, which can last upwards of a half hour.
Gaitskill Open Book, abridged version. For harcore fans: uncut version here.
Previous episodes of Open Book have included conversations with John Ashbery (abridged here; uncut here) and Junot Diaz (for some reason I can only find the short version of that one).
Welcome Back
Please welcome back from the dead, dispatch litareview.
Mike Young’s story ‘Ball of Dooshie Levitation’ makes up the first dispatch.
Remember magic tricks? Those are fun.
You can read the story here.
Payment is $10 per piece. Submission guidelines pasted below:
-checklist
- Fiction or meritorious non-fiction between 1,200 and 3,000 words
(multiple yet cohesive flash/micro fictions are fine)- Cover letter with author photo and biography of less than 75 words
- Simultaneous submissions allowed, multiple submissions not
- Submissions go to moonpunter+dispatch@gmail.com as attachments in RTF, ODT, or DOC format.
Enjoy!
Uncategorized / 18 Comments
April 1st, 2009 / 9:44 pm
April 1st, 2009 / 9:44 pm
Haut or Not: Giancarlo Ditrapano
Finally — a rejection letter to (instead of from) the editor of New York Tyrant.
Dear New York Tyrant,
Thank you for submitting your book shelf to Haut or Not. Unfortunately, it’s not what we are looking for right now. We’re tying to go in a ‘maybe life doesn’t completely suck’ direction, and all your books have a ‘life completely sucks’ feel to it. Sartre was nauseous; Faulkner’s mother was a fish; Kafka’s Czech was never in the mail; never let naked boys hang out on an island; never let an alcoholic hang out under a volcano — yada yada we get the point. Cheever and Saunders offer jestful energy and enthusiasm, but then you go fuck it up with freaking Johnny Got His Gun — what every Metallica fan just had to read, huh? Grim-face Nietzsche is a redundancy, and what’s up with the Banville – O’Hara – Bowles ‘middle-aged man discontent’ trio? You too can stick your face at some foreign wind, but it’s not gonna help your hair situation. It would’ve been funny to see Isaac Babel next to Racial Hygiene, but you had to restrain yourself didn’t you? Also, you didn’t double-space your books, include a self-addressed stamped crate, or give us your BEST THREE BOOKS. Simultaneous submissions are not allowed, and you’re simultaneously being a prick and a pansy. Feel free to submit again, after you get some hope for the human race (which includes the Jews you Nazi).
Rating: Not
Tao Lin wins Cave Canem First Book Prize & I talk to Prize Judge Yusef Komunyakaa
********UPDATE: APRIL FOOLS’********
The announcement isn’t up on their site yet, but after I heard from the source himself, I called Yusef Komunyakaa–who is judging the contest this year–and asked for clarification. “I wish you wouldn’t post about this conversation,” Komunyakaa said, “but I’m not telling you that you can’t. Anyway, if you don’t break the story, one of our interns–or Tao’s–is probably going to.”
Here’s a bit of info about the Cave Canem prize:
Established in 1999, this first book award is dedicated to the discovery of exceptional manuscripts by African American poets. The participation of distinguished judges and prominent literary presses has made this prize highly competitive.
As you can see, this is an incredibly audacious choice for Komunyakaa and Cave Canem to have made, since Tao Lin is neither a first-book author or an African American. “We thought about that,” Komunyakaa told me, “but after last year, when the judge declined to even award the prize, I thought it was time to shake things up. If Tao Lin had the courage to unironically enter a contest for which he was entirely unqualified at every conceivable level, then maybe we should try and reward that courage, as a message to other young African American writers out there.”
I asked Komunyakka if it had occurred to him that perhaps Lin’s entry was not, in fact, unironic at all. “Yes, that did occur to me,” he said. “Some people on the Graywolf board were especially concerned about this, but I finally just said, ‘Listen, what does it matter? A good book is a good book, and this kid’s stuff actually sells.’ It’s the name of our prize–and your press–that will be on the cover of his book, which we expect he will promote with the same machine-like relentlessness that is his trademark–which of course is how he ended up entering our contest in the first place. I said to them, ‘you want to see Cold-Pressed Organic Virgin Coconut Oil come out with that little Melville House logo on the spine instead of your wolves, be my guest. But this is the book I’m writing an introduction for.’
I’m a little baffled by all this, but I have to go start preparing for teaching this afternoon, so I can’t really give this thing the attention it deserves, but anyway, congrats, I guess.
Previous winners of the Cave Canem Prize include Major Jackson, Natasha Tretheway, and Tracy K. Smith. Tao Lin finds himself, as usual, in good company.