Literary (and Ancient History) Lessons from Metal Magazines: Absu
- This is the band Absu.
As I was sitting around watching an 8 hour tape of tennis happening in Madrid, I also perused the English Metal Magazine Terrorizer and, as always, learned some new words and in this case, also increased my knoweldge of ancient cultures. READ MORE >
Can somebody please either write or name their book “Teal this book” so that the cover could be this?
If I went to a bookstore and saw this book, I would buy it without even reading the blurbs. Seriously, this is an open call for any writers to do this. If your manuscript gets accepted, you may use the book cover idea — I don’t even need credits or royalties, I just want this book to exist. Thanks for your attention.
Context, if you’re confused.
Used Bookstore Finds: ‘Camels in my mouth and the cast of STOMP in my head’
A few years ago, I worked at a used bookstore in Fairfax, Virginia. I found a lot of interesting stuff tucked into various books or written on their pages as I sorted through the incoming boxes, but my favorite discovery fell out of a copy of Robert Olen Butler’s A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain: the following handwritten letter, dated 2/22/99, which I’ve done my best to type out below the picture.
Peter,
You deserve so much more than this loose leaf notebook paper but if I don’t say what I want to now I’m afraid the time will pass. As I laid next to you with a herd of camels in my mouth and the cast of STOMP in my head and a 20yr. marriage falling apart – I felt soft and safe and wanted. There was no way I was going to let any more abandonment and indiscretion into my friendship with you. I love your spirit, your genius, your unlimited style, your Whiting-Davis, your energy – just you Peter, The Person – and I am forever in your debt for how you watched over me.
Sincerely,
Your Queen Priscus,
Wini
I cannot bring myself to get rid of this letter. I’m fascinated by it. I hope these past ten years have been kind to Wini and Peter’s friendship.
If you have interesting used bookstore finds, feel free to email us.
New Websites
Sorry I’m posting twice in a row, but I feel that I must post this probably old news: you should know that Dave Madden and Rebecca Livingston admit to having new websites.
You ought to visit them!
Dave Madden has moved from here to here.
Rebecca Livingston, on whom I crush hard, has moved from here to here.
Update your links.
Hooray!
Reading Russia: One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I went through high school without having read One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. I read other common high school books, such as A Separate Piece, Catcher In The Rye, A Tale of Two Cities, and a few ones that strike me as odd for high school (Ridley Walker?), but never this one.
I finally read it in January, and I’ve just now got a chance to type some thoughts, which will be very brief, because I did not take notes as I read this one.
Like Night by Elie Wiesel and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, One Day In The Life tells in rather plain, unadorned language (as far as I can tell through the translation) of how a human copes under massive, institutional cruelty, though in this case Denisovich is ‘fictional.’ I’m assuming most of you are very familiar with this book, so I’m not going to really summarize it or anything: there’s the usual intense description of prison camp procedure, the remarking of odd traditions, the listing of ways one might die, etc. The main character must constantly position himself to survive the day. And what I found fascinating in these books is how the daily routine, the little microcosms of the camps, sometimes gave the prisoners respite. I’m thinking here of how Primo Levi’s background as a chemist helped him receive a work detail as an assistant in a laboratory, thus protecting him from the harsh winter.
Uncategorized / 4 Comments
May 12th, 2009 / 1:54 am
May 12th, 2009 / 1:54 am
Plug
Follow this link to see that poster, but big and readable.
I’d say it was shameless, but I do in fact feel some shame. Frankly, it feels pretty good.
Laura Ellen Scott
Laura Ellen Scott was cute as shit, (stolen from the Plots With Guns site.)
Laura Ellen Scott is funny. She is not only funny, but her humor is laced with a wickedness that warrants highlighting. Scott employs an outrageousness in her fiction that makes me make strange faces at the page, or screen, when reading her work and often think “what the fuck?” in the best possible way. She is never predictable. READ MORE >
Word Spaces (10): James Scott
I met James Scott at Sewanee last summer. He was my suitemate. He is from Boston, but I don’t hold that against him; one of the first things he told me was a story about how he had gotten into a bar fight a few weeks earlier. This frightened me. Our rooms shared a bathroom, so I was careful to lock my door that night.
James Scott is a former fiction editor of Redivider, leads workshops at Grub Street, and has stories published in American Short Fiction, One Story, Saint Ann’s Review, online at Lost Magazine, Flatmancrooked, and other places too.
The following is his Word Space with text and photos.
How design concept alone can sell a book
New on many levels: Opium 8 (not to mention that the line up inside promises to be just as good as the body).
Uncategorized / 24 Comments
May 11th, 2009 / 12:22 pm
May 11th, 2009 / 12:22 pm
Paragraphs I Admire So Much I Can’t Believe I Get To Type Them Out (4): Lynne Tillman
Some of the acts I’ve committed have been illegal. When I was five, I stole candy inadvertently from the candy store several blocks from my house, on a main road, in the suburb where I grew up, because its sign said, Take One, and later I stole lipstick from the town five and dime, and then shoplifted clothes from department stores, packing a skirt into the voluminous shoulder of a ratty fur coat, and purchased small amounts of cocaine, all relatively mild infractions of the law. Other people, who have scant education, less economic or skin privilege, might have been arrested, convicted, and sent upstate for the same relatively harmless but illegal acts, and other people have records against them that are public, so that anyone can find out what these people have done wrong, and while I have no record of crimes against property or person, nothing that would show up on police blotters or computers, nothing that I am aware of, or that might hurt me, though I am not aware of everything that might hurt me, I have committed illegal acts that have gone undetected, but I know what I have done, and I know what was wrong and illegal. Legally, I am sane.
* from American Genius, pg. 42
** (I could pick literally almost any graph from this book and feel just as happy sharing it. In my top 20 books of all time, I think. Just too fucking good.)