Influences 2: Gabriel Blackwell
This is the second follow up to my “Let’s make a list,” art influences post. I asked Gabriel Blackwell to respond to these two 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.
Here are his answers:
1) Roy Lichtenstein’s appropriation of Jack Kirby and Kirby-esque comic panels very nearly manages to carry us into the hip-hop age single-handedly. Yes, there are of course Duchamp, Warhol, and Lichtenstein’s other Pop Art contemporaries, but, for me at least, no one is quite so honest and unapologetic about the act of choice being the most important (so important that it can stand on its own) technique in the creation of art—and the subsequent ethic of recycling—as is Lichtenstein.
2) My mother and one of my older brothers are visual artists, and I was dragged—literally, by the arm—into a lot of museums and galleries as a kid. I probably hadn’t started writing yet, so I don’t think it would be fair to say that anything “changed” as a result. But I think that seeing Lichtenstein, in that context and at that age, permanently affected the way that I think of art—all art, including writing. The first story I can remember writing, when I was in 4th grade (so around the same time that my family and I went to MoMA and I first saw Lichtenstein’s appropriations), won first prize in my elementary school’s writing contest. A week later, the prize was stripped from me when it was discovered that I had lifted part of the premise of my story from Daniel Manus Pinkwater’s “Fat Men From Space.” I didn’t see anything wrong with it then, and I still don’t now.
ALSO:
Follow this link to Gabe’s blog and you’ll find a bit from a Paris Review interview with William Burroughs on cut-ups.
Paragraphs I’d Chew My Way Through a Mold Barn To Have Written (2): Matthew Derby
Super Flat Times, pg. 156, from ‘Instructions’
Before I lost my wife I had only ever hit one other person, and that was in junior high. His face is like a cotton swab in my memory now–he floats there in slow motion, holding a black book bag over his groin outside the locker room. It’s the Sesquicentennial and we’re getting out early to see the tall robots. I remember the scent of a person, the way it changes the air in a room. Louis Burney smelled like hair and lighter fluid–he came from the developments, where kids pissed out their territory and traveled in herds. I hit him in the gut–the reason isn’t so important anymore. The sound, though, is the thing. Like two sounds at once–and one of them is like the whole world just lifting up and folding over.
Today’s Hipsters, Tomorrow’s Asshats
Is Adbusters the single most obnoxious magazine on the face of the earth? If their articles matched their headlines, and their execution matched their ethics, they’d be a valuable cultural resource, as well as a kickass read. I would be willing to bet that on a checklist of political positions and beliefs, Adbusters and I would agree about 98% of the time. It’s not their politics I object to. It’s their holier-than-everything-all-the-time posturing, combined with the fact that their articles read like the diary entries of intelligent but under-achieving 8th graders. Also, their high-gloss “I went to design school but I’m still punkasfuck aren’t I please tell me I am oh tell me please” aesthetics. It’s Disneypunk, and I just can’t figure out how the people who produce it live with themselves, or why they don’t use all their energy to do something useful for the causes they champion, instead of striving to be the vapid polyanna incitement-jockeys of the blinders-on knees-jerking nobody-likes-you-and-there’s-a-good-reason-for-that Left.
When Tao lived here he had a free subscription, I think because he was in it once, and the issues still show up. I usually just let them pass me by, but I flipped through the most recent one because there was a cover story about the ubiquity of what we’ll call porno-culture, and I thought that might be worth reading (it’s also online). Boy was I ever wrong. See if you can get through the whole thing. I’ll wait here…
Reading Russia: Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground
As you may already know, this summer I’ll be traveling to Russia for a week. Because of that trip, I decided to read as much Russian literature as I could. I even blogged about my plans over at Conversational Reading. But so far, I haven’t read much; it’s taken me longer than I expected just to get through Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov. What follows are some brief thoughts (perhaps too personal?) about Notes; look out for more posts on the next few books. Read on if you’re interested.
Uncategorized / 22 Comments
April 17th, 2009 / 1:40 am
April 17th, 2009 / 1:40 am
FRIGG n’ Microfiction
Frigg Magazine’s All Microfiction Issue is out, featuring Kim Chinquee, Lydia Copeland, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Barry Graham, Tiff Holland, Mary Miller, Kim Parko, Jennifer Pieroni, Meg Pokrass, Joseph Young, and Randall Brown — the latter two whom debate on “What is microfiction?” (Why argue? The purple-quilled ladies of Fiction Factor provide the answer here.)
I always like how each writer is given their own front page e-bookish thing. My only commentary is I don’t like the parenthetical word counts which precede each piece, kinda distracting. I also don’t like it when editors ask for word counts. It’s like — look. Just look at the story. Is it long or short? Do your eyes feel okay? What did you have for breakfast? Can you not do us the favor of doing a ‘word count’ in ‘tools’ in your ‘word document’ since you have ‘fingers’ and ‘volition’ and since you’re such a curious person.
Sorry about that. Here’s my point: read the new issue of Frigg, and good job everyone.
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
April 16th, 2009 / 7:40 pm
April 16th, 2009 / 7:40 pm
Wow: The Espresso Book Machine
Literature Terminator.
From the press release:
Blackwell, the UK’s leading academic bookseller, has unveiled the launch of the 2.0 Espresso Book Machine (EBM) at its flagship store, 100 Charing Cross London. It is the first bookshop installation of its kind within the UK, allowing any book to be selected from an inexhaustible network of titles and prints on demand in just 3 minutes from a digital file onsite, online at www.blackwell.co.uk, or uploaded in person from CDs or flash drives.
This bad boy whips up a book in three minutes. Go on to read more about the implications of such a device.
My take: This is definitely a much more ecologically sustainable process than the standard model of book production, which is exciting. It also completely removes the barrier of entry to producing a book, which, I’d argue, is a very ‘good’ thing; the more art the better. It’s happening all around us; the availability of cheap means of production means that anyone with a computer and a camera can make a movie, anyone with a computer near this behemoth or Lulu.com can make a book, anyone with a computer and Garageband/Audible can make music, etc. Distribution will be the sticking point in media for awhile, and it’s going to get messy. I look forward to help making the mess.
What do you think?
EDIT: Also, a thin treatise on paperback vs. hardback after the jump…
Similes, Metaphor, a Pushcart Prize Winning Poem and Mary Gaitskill
And she's hot!
It’s raining in Monte Carlo and so my plans to watch taped tennis all afternoon are shattered, shattered like the broken heart I have today to begin with. (It will be mended as soon as my husband comes home this evening and says, “everthing will be fine”.) The discussion on how many adverbs or similes or anything a writer should use made me think of this poem. Now, I do understand that fiction is not poetry (sorry Blake, that’s my opinion) and I understand that the agent who was sharing these rules did so out of a sort of kindness toward writers. That said, I love similes- even awkward ones, maybe especially awkward ones, like in the poem “Love In The Orangery” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (who you can find out more about linked here). I also love the miracles that happen in The End of the Affair and cancer stories. READ MORE >
Youtube teaches me something about America
I came to this video in the related videos YouTube attached to the one in Matthew’s post yesterday on tone and Diff’rent Strokes, and originally was interested in watching it mainly for the choice rap performance from Gary Coleman and his self-proclaimed “very different from Michael Jackson” buddy laying a hip-hop smackdown on the Will Shriner show. Dang.
It was in the interview after the performance, though, that the thing that really stood out about the video for me hit. Scroll to 5:08, right near the end, and observe the crowd and host’s reaction when the child star expresses his interest in becoming a short story writer.
He wants to write stories??? How funny! How absurd!
Will’s cheese-eating giggle quip, “Now Gary, all you gotta do is write a story…,” shaking his little hand like he’s got a pen.
Good job, America. Instead he turned into a crackhead or something, right?
Really, though, I can understand the punchline. Fucking writers. I’d laugh at a child too.
Gary, if you’re out there man, our submissions are closed right now, but you can consider yourself ‘solicited’ any day of any week.
Of Etymology
*UPDATE* 1) I’m a moron, it already happened, and 2) [courtesy of Mark Baumer] “Going nuts” for Tea Bagging and “Teabag mouthpieces” on Fox News — with either a straight face or pun-laced implicit irony (I really can’t tell), both of which would be brilliant.
McSweeney’s (or is it McSweeney’s’s?) The Future Dictionary of America (2004) did it’s own wonderful thing, but what I really want to see is someone publish the ENTIRE Urban Dictionary, which is less self-conscious as being a cultural artifact and probably has more ‘street cred,’ because contributors are, um, completely teen ghetto. I’m always delighted, and in awe, of the creativity and organic etymology of the words. It’s a great resource for people concerned with ‘contemporary culture.’ Some examples after the break.
Influences: Ken Baumann
Here’s the way we will be following up on my earlier “Name a piece of art that changed the way you thought about art” post here. If you responded, I will try to contact you about you choices with a mini interview.
First up, our friend and colleague Ken Baumann.
Here are the questions:
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.
Here are Ken’s answers. Ken chose to talk about both his selections.
What seems innovative about 2001? Incredible technical achievement aside, 2001: A Space Odyssey is, to me, the perfect example of the power of cinema, especially that of primarily non-verbal storytelling. I’d say my experience with that movie fundamentally changed the way I viewed storytelling, and has informed my taste and practice in all realms of art.
What seems innovative about Cat’s Cradle? That was the first book I read that affected and strongly shaped my belief system. I hope the book is eternally regarded as innovative, in that it, to me, captured perfectly the sorrow and longing and absurdity and fractured nature of human experience.