Ryan Call—
I can haz canon? Has the LOL internet meme gone too far? Or not far enough?
(via @asfmag)
16
Blake Butler—
Repeating the same thing over and over in social networks and blanket emailing my inbox is never going to make me want to buy a book. In fact, it might make me want to not buy a book. Try something else. Or better yet: just exist.
Against Transparency
It’s become a pretty popular complaint here and elsewhere: writers getting upset because there’s a literary magazine or journal who isn’t being up front about who they are and how they work. The primary complaint seems centered around the idea that editors should make themselves known to their potential writers and readers, so as to supposedly more clearly define the way the selection of work goes down, as well as lend some manner of culpability to the ramifications thereafter. As in, an editor can’t be a cock in a rejection letter, or have a real big backlog of responses waiting, without the attached weight that this will then affect their ‘reputation’ in the community. This is supposed to, I think people think, clean up on the editorial end any possible wrongdoing or ill treatment. When editors don’t do this, certain types like to claim they are “hiding behind” something, or otherwise somehow not operating on some kind of common ground of lit creation.
Who gives a fuck?
Choice Gleanings from the Doomsday Film Festival and Symposium
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy5rL5rRbwI
Gabriel McKee, the moderator of the panel I appeared on on Friday night, runs a very cool blog called sfgospel.com. There’s a double review up now of the new R. Crumb take on Genesis with the Wolverton Bible.
Nick Thompson, senior editor of Wired, was on the panel too. He spoke about the Soviet Doomsday Machine.
Then, at a second panel on Sunday, I found myself in the company of Bob Fingerman, John Joseph Adams (editor of Wastelands, the apocalypse anthology that came out shortly after mine, and which I have always privately regarded as my book’s worthy nemesis), plus two fine people whose names escape me at present, including a woman named Hillary who got more than a bit breathless when discussing Japanime, especially Akira and Legend of the Overfiend (see above).
Then somehow I wound up at this site Overthinking It (I think this was via the Rumpus, actually, but it’s Doomsday-appropriate) which I’m rapidly falling in love with. Here’s their explanation of the new technical term, “Ghost Ship Moment”-
The Ghost Ship Moment (or GSM), in its most basic formulation, is when the characters in a film learn what you know from the movie’s title.
Random / Comments Off on Choice Gleanings from the Doomsday Film Festival and Symposium
October 26th, 2009 / 10:35 am
October 26th, 2009 / 10:35 am
Top 5 MFA rankings rearranged
People are moaning about Poets & Writers’ “2010 MFA Rankings: The Top Fifty,” a list of the best MFA programs in creative writing based on likely variables such as funding, selectivity, and postgraduate placement. Though we are in the business of words, let us rank the Top 5 programs solely based off their website’s front page banner pictures, since they are to represent academic ethos, or something.
—
1. University of Iowa in Iowa City University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Any MFA program that would show a student on their hands and knees writing ‘retard style’ on the cement deserves to be re-ranked to No. 1. If they can’t afford desks, a press release on the subject would not be uncalled for. Notice the open notebook, as this student is probably transcribing some contemporary haiku: Raithins yah I like / Peanuths and cashthews too / my shopping lisp. The autumnal detritus of fallen leaves is a nice touch. Gravity, while inevitable, gives the uncreative something to write about.
In which I kick off ‘Mean Week’ with a quote from Lyn Hejinian that seems to implicate us all
Whether by fate, chance, contingency, purposelessness, irrelevance, or best
of all, uncertainty, we are thrown around, sometimes
at each other, and no matter whether the narrative is plot-based
or character-based, we are thrown from each other
in the end, carrying borrowed being, turning round
and round. “I’m going to color outside
the lines of reggae,” A proclaims; scenery makes a difference
and with it a new personality, but what about the dog
gazing rapturously into A’s face? It’s clear that he or she is alert
to small phrasings as well as to the water level
in the creek. But, in the end, he or she will drown
in the type of creek it seems to be, a flow of sympathy
over rocks, silt, the bones of a mule, past
laurel trees and sunbathers, under suds
and water-skeeters, to Mexico and the Pacific
and to xerox — as if that would keep things
in print. To pull experience out from under
the floating oak leaves would be an act of ingratitude
and betrayal. But to meet K and M would be an honor
and a pleasure as long as no one expects me to speak.
– The Fatalist, pp. 71-72
Treating Poetry Like it Matters: A Hearty Cheers
I want to get this up here before MEAN WEEK kicks off tomorrow. It’s a rider-thought attached to the previous post where I mentioned in passing that a Knopf publicist sent me a few poetry books this week. I don’t want to leave our readers here with the mis-impression that I was merely gloating over having been gifted with free stuff. Indeed, all three books were sent to me because I requested them, on the promise of consideration for review–a promise I intend to honor in all cases. But the interesting thing is how I found out about the books in the first place. Lena, the publicist in question, may or may not be a regular reader of HTMLGiant–I don’t know. But I do know that she decided to get in touch after reading Michael Schaub’s “Any Wonder We Tried Gin” post, which mentioned the poet Philip Levine. She wrote to say hello, mentioned that Levine has a new book of poems out, News of the World, and invited me to an upcoming reading in Brooklyn. Presumably, she wrote to me and not Schaub because she’d done enough leg work to know that I live where the reading was happening, and he doesn’t. Point for her. In any case, I couldn’t go to the reading, but I offered to take a look at the book, and invited her to keep me posted on Knopf-related poetry stuff. Since that time, not quite 10 days ago, she’s suggested a few other books she’s working on that I might be interested in–didn’t get irritated or write me off when I said no to stuff–and invited me to at least one other event. As it stands today, I now have three books to look at- the Levine, Marie Ponsot’s new collection, Easy, plus an oral biography of Robert Altman that I absolutely cannot wait to dig into (The NYT loved it) and which you, gentle reader, should expect to hear about at some length in the days and weeks to come. Lena has done an amazing job of making me feel like I–as a blogger–and poetry–as an art form–matter, two things which are more or less unheard of for a major press in these sad times (except of course at HarperPerennial, the forward-thinkingest imprint at any outfit great or small, advertiser on this website, and happy home of yours truly). The result of her efforts, which in total couldn’t have taken up more than fifteen minutes of her working week, is that I’m now not only inclined to actually read and thoughtfully consider three books I didn’t know existed this time two weeks ago, but my interest in Knopf has been piqued, and where and what that will lead to, who can say? Lena the publicist, a hearty cheers! Here, here!
Justin Taylor—
Walked out of the coffee shop and saw the neighbors were having a stoop sale–again. Last week I bought a copy of Derrida’ Writing and Difference as well as The Philip K. Dick Reader and a thick paperback book of erotic photography from Carroll & Graf. Today I picked up Sontag’s On Photography, Charles Simic’s book on Joseph Cornell, two volumes of Taschen’s 20th century erotic drawings, and Bruce Springsteen’s Pete Seeger sessions album with a bonus DVD. Total outlay: $4. (Aside: Why are these people apparently unloading all of their erotica? Why do I own all of it now?) Then I picked up the mail and found that my awesome new friend the publicist at Alfred A. Knopf, who earlier this week sent me Philip Levine’s new collection, News of the World, sent me two more books: Easy, a new collection of poems by Marie Ponsot, and Robert Altman: The Oral Biography by Michael Zuckoff. I’m excited about all these books, but maybe the Altman most of all. It’s cold and wet here in NYC and the train service is interrupted and pretty much everything sucks. And yet I feel like a million bucks. Thanks, literature!
Ryan Call—
Stacey Harwood wrote a letter to Poets&Writers in response to the MFA program rankings they published.
(via @notell)