Justin Taylor—
The Rumpus has got a piece by the great Jim Shepard at the top of their page right now- An Appreciation of John Hawkes. Apparently, Shepard was a student of Hawkes’s at Brown. Aside from painting a fascinating picture of Hawkes, I really feel like Shepard is getting at something fundamental and urgent about the way that effective writing instruction functions, the inextricable dimension of personality, the deeply human nature of the whole enterprise. I said as much in the comments, which by the way have so far garnered responses from two other former Hawkes students: James Robison and Rick Moody (whose first story collection, The Ring Brightest of Angels Around Heaven, is dedicated to Hawkes), and the Brown-but-not-Hawkes-alum Shya Scanlon. Seriously. Go read this piece. Then order a copy of Travesty.
4
Friday Fuck Books, Let’s Watch an Old Movie
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBto_xnz2tw
That’s the opening to the movie WAX: The Discovery of Television Among the Bees.
Watch the whole movie here on WAXWeb, where the film exists as a hypertext document.
According to the New York Times, WAX was the first movie on the internet.
David Blair, the filmmaker, combines found footage with his own scenes and narration to tell the story of a beekeeper interested in the dead.
Those familiar with Craig Baldwin’s movies—like the wonderful Tribulation 99 or the copyright infringement celebration that is Sonic Outlaws—might enjoy Blair’s movie, too.
Someone on IMDB said:
“i gave it 3/10 and even that’s a gift. the strange thing is that i can’t keep myself from suggesting certain people see it. hopefully you’re not one of them. the quality is impossibly bad yet somehow some elements sort of stuck in my brain. if you figure out what that’s about, let me know?”
So, there’s a recommendation for you. If you figure out what the movie is about, let that person know.
Creative Writing 101
For people who are following this series, I’m starting to think that it will make the most sense to post 1 per week, on Friday, which will cover both meetings of the class during that week (on Tues & Thurs nights). To come home and do the Tuesday post that same night or the next day would be too much, besides which if the class is actually checking in here, it might feel a little too rapid-response. I’d rather let the whole week play out, then do the post-game and give everyone (me, them, you) the weekend to mull it over and/or forget it ever happened. So that’s the new plan, and here we are with the field reports from 9/15 (Schutt & Dickinson) and 9/17 (more Berman, Percy Shelley, and a writing exercise). And for people who are just coming to the series now, the first two installments are here (1) and here (2). Everyone else, I’ll see you after the jump.
Uncategorized / 28 Comments
September 18th, 2009 / 1:30 pm
September 18th, 2009 / 1:30 pm
Recommended Reading
Uncategorized / 18 Comments
September 18th, 2009 / 5:08 am
September 18th, 2009 / 5:08 am
FORECAST 42: CHAPTER 19 by Shya Scanlon
Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast.
CHAPTER 19
In her dream they were still together. Unhappy. Asseem scowled at Helen, clearly blaming her for the movement of her arms down the sides of her body and onto her back. Her fingers poked and prodded, roaming freely as her hands pulled them across the fenceless farm of skin. The couple was in an immaculate bedroom, and as Asseem stared at her in disgust he walked around and picked at small scabs on the wall. She tried to speak, but her accent was so thick she couldn’t understand herself—some kind of vowel-heavy heaving and moaning, a familiar word escaping now and then only to be pulled back in, kicking and screaming, to the vague morass of soupy sounds. She watched as he made his way from one side of the room to the next, the open sores behind him oozing, pus running down the walls. She looked out the window. Rain was coming down in puddle-size drops, and she began to hear it on the roof, a series of thunderous beats that blended into a steady roar and shook the walls. Helen looked back at Asseem and again tried to speak, to call out above the noise, but her voice was entirely drowned out by the rain, and her boyfriend continued to pick scabs and stare cruelly, his judgment distorting his face so much it took on twenty years, growing older as she watched. Then the puss began to take shape. It slowly pooled together at Asseem’s feet and formed into the bric-a-brac of childhood, cluttering the floor. Helen tried to stand, wanting to plug the leaking holes, but she was held in place by her arms, their white knuckles blending in with the bleached cotton sheets. The sound of the rain grew louder, Asseem’s scowl deepened, and the floor was filling up, now a sea of small objects: toy cars, pens and pencils, stuffed animals and books along side so much trash. It was climbing up her boyfriend’s legs, building beneath him as he dug deeper into the walls, his eyes now filled with a blank stare that was not, she realized, looking at her, but past her, through her. He was being consumed. Fearing for Asseem’s life Helen began to yell, to overwhelm the room’s racket with her own, and though she could still not understand her words she could begin to pick her sound out within the cacophony and it grew, louder than the beating rain, louder than the mounting rumble of debris until at last it finally broke like a fever at its peak and all sound stopped.
Justin Taylor—
You know how I’m always going on about Joshua Cohen’s genius? Sure you do. “Oh he wrote something about Jews again,” “oh his books are awesome,” “oh he cooks the best Thai fish balls”–blah blah blah. Well here’s the proof everlasting, kids, as if you needed it. This is what it looks like when JC forwards you a Youtube video.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo
Blake Butler—
Do you like going to readings or do you think they are boring or useless or something? What do you like or not like about them?
Power Quote 2: Herzog
“It does not bespeak great wisdom to call the film The Bad Lieutenant, and I only agreed to make the film after William (Billy) Finkelstein, the screenwriter, who had seen a film of the same name from the early nineties, had given me a solemn oath that this was not a remake at all. But the film industry has its own rationale, which in this case was the speculation of some sort of franchise. I have no problem with this. Nevertheless, the pedantic branch of academia, the so called ‘film-studies,’ in its attempt to do damage to cinema, will be ecstatic to find a small reference to that earlier film here and there, though it will fail to do the same damage that academia — in the name of literary theory — has done to poetry, which it has pushed to the brink of extinction. Cinema, so far, is more robust. I call upon the theoreticians of cinema to go after this one. Go for it, losers.”
-more via The Awl
NYC Area Alert: What’s better than AIDS? Fun Literary Events!
The venerable and perpetually awesome Housing Works Bookstore–a nonprofit that helps homeless people with AIDS in NYC–is throwing two events in the near future that you should know about. The first one is Thursday (as in The Day After Tomorrow) and it is a Literature Quiz Show, emceed by father-daughter team Kenneth and Jenny Davis, authors of Don’t Know Much About Literature: What You Need to Know but Never Learned About Great Books and Authors. All comers are welcome to get in on the action, and you’ll be playing against literary notables such as Garth Risk Hallberg, Jason Boog, Ed Champion, and HTMLGiant’s own Catherine Lacey. I wish wish wish I could be there quizzing it out with ya’ll, but I’ll be stuck doing the next best thing–hanging out in New Jersey generating fodder for more Creative Writing 101 posts. Full event details here.
And hey, now that you know how to get to Housing Works, why don’t you come back the next night (Friday) for something called the “Read-N-Rock-N-Roll YA Variety Show” which will feature Frank Portman, the author of King Dork (and, apparently, the dude from Mr. T Experience–who knew?) reading “and singing” from his new novel Andromeda Klein. There’s a lot more going on at this, but if I let this post get any longer Father Blake is going to slap me with a “read more after the jump,” so just click here if you want to learn more about the special guests at the Portman thing.
Uncategorized / 10 Comments
September 16th, 2009 / 11:59 am
September 16th, 2009 / 11:59 am
Taking old one-eye to the optometrist
Dr. Millmoss gave hippo gas.
Had some minor eye surgery today. Negotiating the New York City subway with no depth perception (they taped an aesthetically displeasing patch to my face) is tricky business. Would it kill them to use some Snake Plissken apparel? Anyway, I started Interneting one-eyed artists, and revisitedsome of the timeless cartoons of James Thurber, one of which I share now with you all, my beloved dual-eyed brethren. Beware of hippo, nature’s most aggressively hungry creature.