My Fever
For the last week, a fever has been kicking my ass.
At the same time, in the moments where my brain hasn’t been too soft and clouded to concentrate on reading, something else has been kicking my ass. It’s Bill Cotter‘s book, Fever Chart now available from McSweeney‘s.
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September 12th, 2009 / 3:43 pm
September 12th, 2009 / 3:43 pm
Bad Jew Book Review
Norman Podhoretz’s new book, Why Are Jews Liberals? is organized around a non-thesis so idiotic it’s not worth discussing, but the NYT got Leon Wieseltier to do it anyway. It’s actually a pretty good piece of writing, considering the topic is a book that in a half-sane world wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Meanwhile, over at Tabletmag, Adam Kirsch has the slightly less disgusting but probably equally irritating task of discussing Rich Cohen’s Israel Is Real. Here are just two of the lowlights.
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September 12th, 2009 / 10:25 am
September 12th, 2009 / 10:25 am
Reading Russia: Chapter 1 of Viktor Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose
And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art. The purpose of art, then, is to lead us to a knowledge of a thing through the organ of sight instead of recognition. By “enstranging” objects and complicated form, the device of art makes perception long and “laborious.” The perceptual process in art has a purpose all its own and ought to be extended to the fullest. Art is a means of experiencing the process of creativity. The artifact itself is quite unimportant.
I’m slowly working my way through Viktor Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose (translated by Benjamin Sher and published by Dalkey Archive Press). I’ve read the introduction by Gerald Bruns, the translator’s preface, and the first chapter so far and have been pleased with the result. Especially fascinating to me is this idea of ostraniene (Sher admits to having translated this neologism by coining the word ‘enstrangement’) and how it works in art, or rather prose (fiction, for me). It seems to me that ostraniene is a foundational piece of Shklovsky’s theory; therefore, it’s worth devoting some time to here.
Chapter one, titled ‘Art as Device,’ begins with a discussion of art as an image-based sort of production.
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September 11th, 2009 / 7:27 pm
September 11th, 2009 / 7:27 pm
Three Good Things for Friday
1. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (Dir. Werner Herzog, Produced by David Lynch)
2. There’s a new champ in town, and he’s into innovation and breaking misconceptions (via Brian Oliu)
3. Remember when major labels put out fucked up music sometimes?
The Frying Of Latke 49
This is pretty great. A writer for The Simpsons gets “conversational revenge” on a Pynchon-obsessed post-doc student who does the whole “Actually, I don’t even own a television” thing at a party. (You know the guy. This guy.)
Oddly, it was television that got me into Pynchon in the first place. Remember that miniseries V from the ’80s? It was totally awesome, and was based on Pynchon’s novel of the same name, which…OK, hold on. I’m being told that’s not true. All right. Well, that makes sense. My literary life is a lie. Great.
Drew Toal—
“When you think about the community, it’s a place where kids can go and have an opportunity to learn more and have more access to what’s going on in life and things of the past as well.”
2
“In my wife’s arms, it behaved like a live mouse in water.”
Here in Massachusetts, where it’s raining a little on the chimneys, you get to thinking about Puritanism and grimly mowing the lawn, keeping yourself right in the eyes of Judgment, which is not so much a single set of floating eyes or even many sets of eyes but a vast eye-mucus gum, that sticky feeling of making one decision after another, freighted decisions, handled clumsy, bound for worry, leaving you fraught over past transgressions and mowing the lawn in the rain.
To feel better, you might want to read “Tied to Us” by John Maradik, American Short Fiction‘s web pinup for September. Maradik’s story is about the tension between inevitability and style. It opens by saying “She was an excellent kisser so we couldn’t help but have a baby.” That baby puts its foot in duck fountains and has a face like a zipper. Yards look outer-spacey. Necks pop like bullwhips. We might do well to mention Leonard Michaels or web-favorite Daniel Spinks. But Maradik’s story is also gooey and twitchy in a way that’s very much its own. Its got its own shoulders tensed at a very strange angle, which makes me want to tell you about it. It’s a good story. It’s a big lawn.
/ Lopez Ligon Butler / Book Tour
Forgive the indulgence here, but just wanted to drop a heads up to those in the NE U.S., as I’m about to hit the road for a week up in that area for a small troop of readings in support of Scorch Atlas, along with Robert Lopez, whose new novel Kamby Bolongo Mean River just came out from Dzanc (and is seriously a mindblower of new speaking and emotional wow), and Sam Ligon, whose wonderful Drift and Swerve came out earlier this year (and who we profiled here and reviewed here). It’s sure to be something like this…
9/12: Brooklyn, NY @ Barbes @ 6 PM
9/14: Portsmouth, NH @ River Run Books @ 7 PM
9/15: South Deerfield, MA @ Schoen Books @ 8 PM
9/16: Boston, MA @ Brookline Booksmith @ 7 PM
9/17: Providence, RI @ Myopic Books @ 7 PM
9/18: Clinton, NJ @ Clinton Bookshop @ 630 PM
9/19: Baltimore, MD @ 510 Series @ 5 PM
9/20: Philly, PA @ The Dive Bar @ 8 PM
If you happen to be around, would be awesome to hang out.
Also stoked this weekend that I’ll get to crash in on the Brooklyn Book Fest, hoping to catch Nicholson Baker, Ben Marcus, and Tao Lin all reading together on Sunday at noon. Weirdly awesome.
In the meantime, hope you guys have a great weekend and week. See you soon.
I Went To Two Readings Last Week
worst reader ever
In the past few days, I went to two readings here in Houston: the Gulf Coast Reading Series (last Friday) and the NANO Reading Series (this past Tuesday). Both readings were fun. I had a fun time. So thanks to both groups of people who make these readings happen. After the jump, some notes about both series, the authors who read, and the bookstores, if you’re interested.
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September 11th, 2009 / 12:37 pm
September 11th, 2009 / 12:37 pm