September 2009

(my) Zak Smith interview at The Faster Times

740423

From the intro (click through for the full piece):

The book is as much about life in the ’00s—and the schizophrenic, often abusive relationship most Americans have with their elected officials as well as with their own sex lives—as it is about Smith’s own particular experience in and of the alt-porn sub-sub-culture. We Did Porn is an exuberant, fearless, and badly-needed rejoinder to the mawkish dewey-eyed bullshit that plagues the latter-day memoir. The art’s not half-bad either.

Author Spotlight / 5 Comments
September 11th, 2009 / 11:25 am

Every September 11 McSweeney’s runs a transcript of remarks John Hodgman gave at a literary event shortly after September 11. His sentiments towards this difficult matter is very well handled, even inspiring. I enjoy reading it every year.

British Library Sound Archives


Check out this unbelievable treasure trove of audio material available for free:

The ICA Talks package consists of 1,000 hours of recordings of events at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in the Mall, London – made in the period 1981-1994.

Here are just a few of the talks I found that look especially interesting:

Michael Ondaatje (Discussion and readings of ‘Running in the Family’ and ‘Coming through Slaughter’)

Bohumil Hrabal and Julian Barnes, in conversation

Christine Brooke-Rose and A. S. Byatt, in conversation

Juan Goytisolo and Chris Rawlence, in conversation

Angela Carter discusses magical realism

William Gaddis and Malcolm Bradbury, in conversation

Dennis Cooper talks to artist Susan Miller about pornography, violence, lust, literature and politics on the occasion of the publication of his book ‘Frisk’

Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, in conversation

Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Philosophy through the looking glass

Web Hype / 5 Comments
September 11th, 2009 / 5:19 am

God, speaking of great criticism, the latest issue of The Quarterly Conversation devotes a good deal of its space (and an editorial response) to a JC Hallman essay on criticism. Enjoy.

there’s this.

“When she stepped off the elevator, my only hope for salvation was that Lorrie Moore had been drunk, or that there was something I didn’t know about her, like perhaps that she was deaf.”

Alternate titles for this season’s two most anticipated releases

blakeTAO

*click on covers to purchase original, and much better versions

Blake and Tao are two very talented writers, both in their own right spearheading the world of indie publishing in two very different ways. Just poking a little fun guys, good job both of you. I’m excited to read your books.

Author News / 32 Comments
September 10th, 2009 / 5:15 pm

As a follow-up to Michael Schaub’s riotous post about hitting the publishing motherload the other day, I though I’d share this guy’s project, which could possibly make him rich, but will likely just result in a wasted year of life. It also ties to Sam Pink’s last post, because the writer ‘relates’ to Julie Powell. Nice.

Comments Off on My Year of Everything

Word Spaces (16): Nick Antosca

Hi everyone. Here’s Nick Antosca‘s apartment and a few paragraphs describing where he writes. He wrote Midnight Picnic in this apartment. Thank you, Nick Antosca, for taking the time to do this post.

IMG00121I write in my bedroom.  I have a large bedroom for New York, so I can fit a small couch in it.  (My bedroom used to be half the living room, but we chopped it up when we moved in.  Three people live in what was originally a one bedroom apartment.)  My bed is in one corner and diagonally across from it is the black leather couch I sit on when I write (on my laptop).  This is really not ergonomic, but when I used to write at a desk, with ergonomic pads in an ergonomic chair, my wrists and back hurt a lot.  They don’t hurt now; I don’t know what that’s about, but that’s the way it is.

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Word Spaces / 28 Comments
September 10th, 2009 / 4:40 pm

GIANT REVIEW, special gchat collaborative edition: Shoplifting from American Apparel

BEEN CAUGHT2

Drew Toal and I were having such a great time talking about Tao Lin’s new novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel, that we figured we owed it to the world to go public. So we forced ourselves to not discuss the book anymore until we were both finished, then we scheduled a time to meet up online and gchat about it. We ended up talking about a lot of extra-literary stuff (maybe too much?) but given that it’s Tao, and that we know him, that was pretty much unavoidable squared, but I think we did a pretty kickass job with the book when we got around to it. Drew was at his office, in mid-town, and I was at my office, in my bedroom. After the jump, we get down to it.

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Web Hype / 159 Comments
September 10th, 2009 / 2:29 pm