Justin Taylor—
I focus on surfaces, since learning that Diego’s dying. On shallow stuff. I colect photos of handsome strangers, and endless gigabytes of porn. The scenes I like best lack plots and characters and sets—just boys in bedrooms, tearing each other up, snarling, cursing, savage. The perfection of pornography is that no one owes anybody anything afterwards, there’s no human contact, no messiness, shallowness. Sex for cowards. – from “Sex, Death, Facebook” at The Rumpus. Also, don’t forget the Rumpus Sunday Book Review supplement.
15 ‘Towering Literary Artists’ Who Are Still Alive
By request, a list of 15 living writers who I would consider ‘towering literary artists,’ even though that phrase itself comes with the baggage of being a little silly, but still. These men and women all spit fire line by line, and have been doing so for many years, and continue to do so, as we speak.
This list, of course, is somewhat arbitrary in its compiling, as I just jotted down the first 15 towers that occurred to me, and there are many others that could have, should have appeared on this list, a list that likely could go to at least 30, maybe 50, and especially had I included authors with smaller yet still growing bodies of work. Here I stuck to people who mostly have published at least 8 books so far (I think here only one of them has less than that) (and if I opened beyond that this list would be easily twice as long right off the bat), and with a dearth of poets as I am not quite as done up in that area as in fiction, and therefore this list also clearly reflects my taste more than would a neutral and objective list of towering authors (i.e. a lot of people would easily switch out Lish for, say, John Ashbery, etc., or perhaps Diane Williams for J.M. Coetzee or Cynthia Ozick or John Barth): this therefore is more those who I feel towering among my own mind, in my history, but who also clearly have made their mark across the world at large. Feel free to comment and let me know all of those I left out, or make your own list, etc.
David Markson
William Gass
What U Readin’ 4?
Ok, not to start the same argument all over again, but certain comments got me really wondering: if you think a book that meets or surpasses what Ulysses did for its time is not being created during our time, why the fuck are you writing? Better yet, why the fuck are you reading? To make the daisy chain just a little bit longer? Sure, maybe you think Ulysses as a book is actually boring (read: work) (haha), and the next book object that would do what it did now would likely look nothing like it (which is, I think, another misconstruing of my point: of course it wouldn’t! otherwise it wouldn’t be new…), but for my money if you are so dead in the water over the prospect of innovation (read: ingenuity, fun), and honestly believe that people out there (outside yourself) aren’t writing in such ways, I have no idea what business you have near printed matter, much less discussing it in a public forum. There are enough people to stir the swill. But really, though: why?
Addendum to this question (prodded by Q’s from Christian): Are you an amibitious reader? Why/why not? How?
Thug Motivation 104
How to have a good time
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How not to Interview a Boss
Coldfront mag gets exclusive snapshot of Farrah Field
Hah! John Deming wishes. No, but seriously. Ken L. Walker has a mini-interview at Coldfront with the author of Rising, in which celebrity sex tapes for some reason don’t figure at all. Subjects which are discussed include: growing up in the Air Force, listening to Fleet Foxes, and writing after personal tragedy.
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September 5th, 2009 / 4:49 pm
September 5th, 2009 / 4:49 pm
Blake Butler—
Two more good ways to blow a bunch of money: Criterion is running a 40% off Essential Art House sale & Dalkey Archive just announced their incredible slew of forthcoming fall and winter 09/10 books. Shit.
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Power Quote: W. S. Merwin
W. S. Merwin
“I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write”
-From “Berryman”
New York City subway top 10 books
The New York Times surveys what people are reading on New York subways, here are the top 10 books. (Click on the link for Newspapers and Magazines too.)
The first is about a girl with a dragon tattoo, the last is about a girl who played with fire. The second is from the guy who wrote about a girl with curious hair. The third is written by a guy with curiously no hair. The fourth was released by a publisher who was maybe thinking of the cover of the second book. The title of the fifth book is mysteriously not a year, and a handful of years pass in the sixth. The seventh was written by a woman who liked to cook food, and the second to last by a man who likes to think about food. In the eight book, the eponymous heroine’s suicide [is this where I say “spoil alert”?] involves public transportation, but don’t worry, by a train not a subway. The last time I visited New York, I pensively read the map and people’s faces. Good Job New York City, and onwards literature!