Cover to Cover: NOON, Part 3
(Previous entries in this series: Part 2, Part 1.)
It’s been a long couple of weeks for me, slogging toward the end of my teaching semester. I’m coming to you live right now from the basement of Murray Hall, New Brunswick NJ, for probably the last time until September. It’s a nice little office, as windowless cold rooms go, but I can’t say I’ll be sorry to be apart from it all summer. Anyway. Yesterday I finished grading my students’ last homework papers, and in a half hour I give them their final, which I spend all of tonight and tomorrow grading, so I can be done by Wednesday. What does all this mean? It means that I had a bit of time this morning to actually read something that wasn’t student work. So I whipped out my copy of NOON, uncapped my Krispy Kreme coffee, settled into my window seat, and picked up where I left off.
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May 5th, 2009 / 1:44 pm
May 5th, 2009 / 1:44 pm
Books I was assigned during my MFA that I actually still like: Donald Antrim
At Bennington, one of the many excellent books that Amy Hempel put on my list for which I am now thankful was Donald Antrim’s ‘Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World.’ At the time, I’d already read Antrim’s two other novels, the amazing ‘The Hundred Brothers’ (literally about one hundred brothers at a reunion) and ‘The Verificationist’ (an amazing piece of work, all of which is narrated by a man having an out of body experience at a pancake restaurant), but for some reason I’d skipped the first one. Amy made me go back and read it: it was still her favorite.
Among other things, Antrim’s first novel is a bit more raw around the edges, more wild and fucked and no-world made than the other two (which are both also pretty fucked). For all that there is to admire about the novel, the two things that still stand out most in my mind are among two of the most unusually narratively rendered scenes in contemporary fiction of the past 10 or so years. Antrim has a pretty amazing ability to tell stories that others would write off as ‘bonkers,’ and make them seem not only plausible, but plausible in a way that makes people who hate entirely plausible stories still down and like ‘I’m in.’
More after the jump.
Robert Walser offers an alternate reason for the decline and fall of fine booksellers everywhere
You have disappointed me. Don’t look so astonished, there’s nothing to be done about it, I shall quit your place of business this very day and ask you to pay me my wages. Please, let me finish. I know perfectly well what I want. During the past week I’ve come to realize that the entire book trade is nothing less than ghastly if it must entail standing at one’s desk from early morning till late at night while out of doors the gentlest winter sun is gleaming, and forces one to scrunch one’s back, since the desk is far too small given my stature, writing like some accursed happenstance copyist and performing unsuitable for a mind such as my own.
Variations on Hating Part 2! The Young Philip Roth Rebels
I had- and still have, but that’s another post- a huge crush on Philip Roth. Look how hot he was. In an earlier brief post (click here), I touched on a certain artist’s need to embarrass herself. I often feel the same. I think Roth did, too. Perhaps it’s a youthful impulse. Regardless, I believe Roth has three masterpieces (One which is actually four books): Zuckerman Bound (which consists of The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson and The Prague Orgy ), Sabbath’s Theater and American Pastoral. (Oh, And possibly The Counterlife goes in there too.) READ MORE >
Variations on Hating: A Miniseries: Dido Merwin on Sylvia Plath
Dido Merwin lived in one of these beautiful houses at some point in her life. In the biography Bitter Fame: A Life Of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson (which is not as good as Janet Malcolm’s book, The Silent Woman, although it is more extensive), there is an appendix that contains a nasty thing written by Dido Merwin called “Vessel of Wrath: A Memoir of Sylvia Plath”:
Arsenic Childhood Food
One of the most seminal bits from Bill Hicks’s seminal ‘Relentless’ performance seems to have something to say about something bookwise also, but instead of trying to rummage that, let’s just relive the Bill:
On the other hand, I enjoy creative marketing. Creative marketing is fun, if the product is actually worth having. Or if it’s not. People are trying to ‘learn to use the internet’ or are accidentally ‘having fun with the internet.’ I have found myself thinking about this a lot lately: promotional tools that do not feel like promotional tools.
I have had little to zero palpable results.
Mostly things just happen.
This blog post is apropos of nothing. Jimmy just deleted a post about Tao selling his myspace, after I commented saying it seemed obviously fake, I felt bad after that. I like ideas and thinking. I like thinking. ‘Hmmm.’
I remember the first thing I ever searched in a search engine when we finally got internet at my parents house on a computer in my room by myself: ‘jenny mccarthy nude.’ It was one of the best days of my life.
You didn’t have to market Jenny McCarthy’s tits to me. They were. [Subliminal shoutout to Ryan Downey.]
What is a book? Where is blood? I miss the TV show Hee-Haw, even though I never watched it when it was on. I like the band the Birthday Party, and that is one of my favorite band names for some reason.
None of the statements in this post have had any direct application or intent behind them, and that’s because they are genuine thoughts. Chew on that.
I’m going to bed.
Literary Doppelgangers: Brett Easton Ellis and Benicio Del Toro
Ryan Bradley tipped us off to this latest doppelganger. According to Dark Horizons, Benicio Del Toro might play Brett Easton Ellis in a movie adaptation of Lunar Park.
Is this a case of true literary doppelgangerism? Or is it just, like, movie news?
I don’t know. Brett, what do you think?
I think he’s interested just because he’s rarely offered Anglo parts. I think that’s one of the reasons it was very exciting [to him].
Amelia Gray !!! FC2 !!!
Mad congrats to the firestorm known as Amelia Gray, who has just been announced as the winner of 2008 FC2 Ronald Sukenik / American Book Review contest:
Lidia Yuknavitch, our final judge chose Amelia Gray’s manuscript titled Museum of the Weird as this year’s winner. A complex and piercing collection, as poetic as it is poignant, Museum of the Weird features twenty four short stories that collectively expose both the hilarity and heartbreak of life in the twenty first century. Congratulations again, to our winner, Amelia Gray!
Like T.I. said: what you know about dat?
Mega congratulations to Amelia. I am super excited for her. I hope it includes two of my favorites, There Will Be Sense from DIAGRAM, and ‘Diary of the Blockage’ from Caketrain.
If you have not already picked up her first collection AM/PM from Featherproof/Paper Egg, now’s the time, kid.
BLACK OCEAN ACCEPTING POETRY MANUSCRIPTS UNTIL JUNE 30TH AND I AM SITTING BY AN OVEN THAT IS ON AND IT SMELLS LIKE GAS I AM DIZZY
go here for submission guidelines. i didn’t know these mahfackahs was in chicago. i’m finna walk a manuscript over pretty soon.