Interlude
Let’s take a moment away from literature for this sentence from The Guardian:
Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it tastes vaguely of raspberries.
And without even trying, the universe has defeated almost all poetry.
(Turned on to this link by Charles Mudede at The Stranger.)
EXCERPT: from Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (#5)
Green Toothbrush
the train leaves in 50 minutes
two people having sex to a lonely and frustrated person singing “I’ll probably never see your face again”
two people taking turns standing under the water in a shower
the hair is black and smells like lemons
two people using one green toothbrush
the train leaves in 20 minutes
one person standing, ironing a red dress
the train is leaving in 15 minutes
the slip is too long and sticking out of the red dress
the boots are loud and slow
two people on a train taking turns laying down on one person’s lap
the hair looks more brown than red when short
yelling “soccer” in secaucus station
waiting for the new york train
the new york train arrives in 3 minutes
two people buying two large organic coffees
caffeine making four eyes bigger and two brains faster
one person feeding a lemon to one pigeon
one pigeon walking away uninterested
two people sitting on a subway train with two coffees floating above
two people lying very close on a one-person mattress
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
INTERVIEW WITH JANEY SMITH
Cover to Cover: Murdaland
This is the cover of their very first issue. The new one's cover is even cooler.
I took the most recent- and only the second ever- issue of Murdaland Magazine with me on my vacation a month or so ago (it seems like a lifetime ago) and read most it with great pleasure. I just finished reading the rest of it today. The cover here on the left is of the first issue. The magazine is based in Pittsburgh, which makes me love them. This is noir, crime, fucked up stuff, with a little Jayne Anne Phillips thrown in (Mary Gaitskill was in their first issue) and a very interesting non-fiction thing from a soldier in the Middle East. The new issue’s cover is even more badass than this one here, but I couldn’t figure a way to put it in the post. After the jump, I’ll briefly summarize the stories:
Uncategorized / 3 Comments
April 23rd, 2009 / 8:31 pm
April 23rd, 2009 / 8:31 pm
Stupid as gherkins?
As I waited to be found unfit for jury duty today, down at the Brooklyn Supreme Court, I came across a line in Sentimental Education that made me chuckle. It helped get me through a miserably boring morning, and I’d like to share it with you.
‘All this lacks form and colour,’ Frédérick’s neighbour continued. ‘I do trow, honoured sir, that we have degenerated. In the good old days of Loys the Eleventh, nay even of Benjamin Constant, there was more of a rebellious spirit among the scholars of the town. I deem them as meek as sheep, as stupid as gherkins, and by my troth, well fitted to be grocers.’
Now that I think about it, maybe the reason I was not selected was that I quoted this (without attribution) to Judge Chun when he asked if there were any possible impediments to my being an impartial juror.
Anyone looking to get out of duty, feel free to use the quote, but don’t come whining to me if the judge isn’t a fan of literature and throws you in the brig.
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.
SWARM MENTALITY
i’m not sure i have a post for this. but i just thought to myself that “the internet and people writing on the internet seem like gangs and no one has the courage to like or dislike something anymore based on personal opinion without resorting to petty insults or the reverse, petty compliments.” i feel angry.
Influences 4: Shya Scanlon
Here is the fourth response to my influences post. The respondent is my friend Shya Scanlon. Read “The Fish” on Spork.
Prompts:
1) Pick one of the pieces you chose and describe the thing about it that seems particularly innovative about it.
2) Tell me what changed about your writing because of that innovation.
Answers after the jump: READ MORE >
re: skill ping pong master – a response to Mark Baumer
The other day, Mark Baumer wrote me an email, the subject line of which is the title of this post. He wrote:
My friends fred and fred have been playing ping pong against each other. They are not very good. Do you have any tips or suggestions or tutoring videos I could pass on to them? They keep calling me coach, but I don’t really know too much. Any tips would be appreciated.
Here is my response:
Hi Mark Baumer,
I appreciate your writing to ask me questions about ping pong. I want to help you out as best I can. I watched all five video recordings of Fred playing Fred over at Everyday Yeah.
(For those who don’t know, Everyday Yeah is a wonderful site. You should go look at it now).
Four table tennis tips after the break.
Reminder: Chapbook Fair Starts Today
If you’re not a New Yorker this post doesn’t have a lot for you–sorry–but if you’re in the city and have some free time today or tomorrow, think about coming by the CUNY Celebration of the Chapbook. There’ll be panels, and a bookfair, and whatall. Some of the presses who will be there- Belladonna, BookThug, Dancing Girl, Diagram, Sarabande, Pilot, Octopus, Small Fires, X-ing Books (I’ll be working their table, so please drop by) and many more.
The bookfair will take place from 10 am – 6 pm on Thu, April 23 and from 10 am – 4 pm on Fri, April 24. Please arrive to the Elebash Recital Hall lobby, where the bookfair is taking place on Thu, at 9:30 AM to set up. The CUNY Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue and 34th St, diagonally from the Empire State Building, and you’ll see the Elebash Recital Hall on the left side of the Grad Center lobby when you walk in – can’t miss it.