15 Rich-Ass Authors I’ve Suddenly Decided To Like
I really enjoyed reading Blake Butler’s list of “15 Towering Literary Figures,” and Christopher Higgs’ list of “15 Significant Contemporary Women Writers.” Both were great, and I disagreed vehemently with those who criticized Blake for not putting more non-Americans on his list, because we all know that Americans are the only people who are any good at anything. Sorry, foreign losers! I also disagreed with whoever called Christopher a self-hating sellout to the gynocracy, whatever that means. Actually, I guess I said that. To myself. Just now.
Anyway, there was one glaring problem with both lists: Very few of the writers mentioned are super fucking rich. So I decided to make a list of 15 authors who I am going to pretend to like from now on, in the hopes they will send me money. I mean, Brian Evenson is a good writer, but is Brian Evenson going to keep you in expensive hookers and 40-year-old Laphroaig? No, Brian Evenson is not. So have fun drinking store-brand sodas with Jorie Graham and Diane Williams, guys! I’ll be in Ibiza, pronouncing “Ibiza” pretentiously, with my 15 new best friends:
Dan Brown
John Grisham
Win Joanna Ruocco’s The Mothering Coven
I received an extra copy of the wonderful Joanna Ruocco’s new novel The Mothering Coven, which has just been released from Ellipsis Press.
Robert Coover said, “Ruocco’s Coven is an engagingly whimsical tale, graceful and inventive, with its own distinctive lexicon, reminiscent of the works of such writers as Ronald Firbank or Coleman Dowell. It toys with language and knowledge somewhat like an emerald-eyed black cat in the book toys with a large bird. Batting it about playfully. Coaxing something new out of it.” Nice. Having read Joanna’s work in many other places, and thrilled by it, I couldn’t be much more excited to dig into this.
On page 22 of the book, there is this sentence: “Neck pimples,” yells Ms. Kidney.
Ms. Kidney seems to me a great character name. Nothing like a good character name, don’t you think?
Leave a comment on this post with your favorite or one of your favorite character names, from any book ever. The name that tickles best, to me, will win a copy of Joanna’s radical new book. Contest goes till Friday morning. Thanks!
In the meantime, you can still buy Joanna’s book, along with the new title from Norman Lock, and the amazing two first releases by Ellipsis (Eugene Marten and Eugene Lim!), each individually, or for a limited time all together for $40, shipping included. Too good.
Luca Dipierro animates Lydia Millet
Second in the line of video trailers for short stories from Electric Literature (the first having been for Jim Shepard, mentioned here) is a stop motion animation from the wonderful Luca Dipierro, who took a single sentence from Lydia Millet’s story to create this one minute reel of beauty.
Here is the sentence: “Sometimes he wished he could gather all the dogs he loved most and walk off the end of the world with them.” from her story Sir Henry.
Zombie Faulkner
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elbJ4hy5C7A
Inglourious Bang Bang
Good afternoon to all HTMLGiant readers–
Let me introduce myself as Brittany Dennison. Blake Butler has kindly offered me the opportunity to do some posting here at HTMLGiant. If you’re interested, you can deduce my likes and dislikes from my tumblr, or by googling “Brittany Dennison” (here is a link in case you aren’t familiar with this process). You can also find me on facebook, but I can just tell you now that my profile is set to private. I can also recommend searching flickr or vimeo for additional clues; I’m not sure there’s anything featuring yours truly on youtube, but if there is, please let me know, as I’m curious. I am in two of these photos.
Blake, to answer your question, I saw Inglourious Basterds just the other week, and my feelings towards the film undulated as much as Brad Pitt’s hold on a Southern drawl. To be fair, I have a lot of mixed feelings towards Tarantino in general; glorification of violence seems like a petty trick and a cowardly way out of true cinematic exploration, but I do recognize that he is a genius storyteller and filmmaker. Part of my repulsion is guilty pleasure that leads to mere guilt (yes they’re vile, but I just can’t stop watching), and part of it is the feeling of inadequacy I feel when I watch his films. I have a novice understanding of film, so many, if not all, of his references allude me. So, I was caught off guard when I found a shocking similarity between a scene in Inglourious Basterds and another film…
Ryan Call—
The Rumpus now has a funny woman writer, Wendy Molyneux, who managed to write this humor column before reporting to her “regular day job knitting tampon cozies and being best friends with everybody.”
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men Trailer
Just feels so wrong.
(Thanks to Gian for the heads up.)
Blake Butler—
One of my favorite writers, new or ever, Sean Kilpatrick, has selections from his novel Sucker June online now at Spork. I mean, these are sentences. In the worst way. “He’ll cream himself flowery and miss my big holy penetration.”
I’m Not Really Sure This Will Work, But Here Goes: A Reading Group
I’m updating this post and bringing it up “above the fold” just to, y’know, make sure everyone who’s interested has a chance to comment. It looks like we’re going to be reading MAXIMUM GAGA together and talking about it. Because it’s DIFFICULT.
Original post:
For a while I’ve been thinking, you know what HTMLGIANT needs, it needs — no, you know what the WORLD needs, it needs — no, HTMLGIANT and the WORLD are the same thing — you know what we should do, I’ve been thinking, what we should do is, like, a reading group. READ MORE >