Crunk-okov
Life posted a bunch of photos of Nabokov goobin’ around back in the day. [via Rake’s Progress] Seems like a guy worth hanging around.
For some reason all I see is Jimmy Chen.
Hopefully this comparison will encourage Jimmy to parody the pictures by getting his partner to snap some shots of him in action. It’d be something to live for. Jimmy?
Jimmy?
Blake Butler—
A node has been added to Ander Monson’s site with new corollary info and text for his apparently next forthcoming book Vanishing Point (Graywolf, April 2010). Lots to read and sneak through, I think he is even calling them e-galleys. I now have a new supreme text anticipation.
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Fourteen Hills, I’m sorry
The editors of Fourteen Hills have written a smart, generous, and, ultimately, positive response to my childish heckling of their having recently sent out a 700+ day form rejection.
Uncategorized / 54 Comments
November 17th, 2009 / 6:15 pm
November 17th, 2009 / 6:15 pm
West Coast Things To Hear Out Loud
Want to hear people read drunk sonnets and other things? Here are some places you can hear them soon on the West Coast:
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 21st: SEATTLE, WA
Daniel Bailey + Evelyn Hampton
7PM @ Pilot Books: 219 Broadway E, Seattle, WASUNDAY NOVEMBER 22nd: PORTLAND, OR
Daniel Bailey + Matthew Simmons + TBA
7PM @ Ampersand Books: 2916 NE Alberta St., Suite B, Portland, ORMONDAY NOVEMBER 23rd: ASHLAND, OR
EMERGENT FORMS: A 21st-CENTURY READING SERIES
Daniel Bailey + Lacey Hunter
7PM @ Bohemia Gallery: 552 ‘A’ St, Ashland, ORWEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 25th: OAKLAND, CA
Daniel Bailey + Chelsea Martin + Bucky Sinister + more
6PM @ Caldecott Office Space: 5251 Broadway, Oakland, CA
A gentle reminder: Publishing your friends is not necessarily cronyism
Cronyism, the practice of promoting some people and excluding others purely on the basis on personal relationships, is bad and to be avoided. The word brings to mind corrupt politicians who award high-ranking posts or lucrative contracts to their old pals when they have no business or training to do the work.
But things work differently in the realm of publishing. When someone publishes a story or poem or even a book by his or her friend, colleague, student, or lover, there’s a good chance that it isn’t an instance of rank favoritism. Many times, the reason the two people are acquainted with the person in the first place has quite a lot to do with their writing.
People become friends through all sorts of avenues, but I would put it to you that most writer-friendships develop because of some overlap in the two people’s aesthetic values and writing styles. What are the chances, really, of meeting another writer at the gym or at some bar? Most people are not, after all, writer-people. So the chances are slim, compared to meeting one at a reading, in an MFA program, or through another writer. If you both picked that reading or that grad school to attend, you probably have something in common already. If you choose to become friends, that’s probably a sign of something even deeper in common, writer-wise. READ MORE >
Writing Prompt: Rot
(Image is a gelatin silver print made from expired photo paper by Alison Rossiter.)
Step one: go to your files and pull out an old, old draft of a story that has never been published and never been finished.
Step two: give it a brief reread to remind yourself what the heck you were doing.
Step three: beginning at an unfinished section, begin to rot the story. Eliminate all unnecessary words from the final sentences of unfinished sections first. Make the meanings of those final sentences as ambiguous as possible.
Step four: start to infect the finished portions of the story with the same sort of rot. Pull out words from the middles of finished paragraphs if they were eliminated by rot in the unfinished sections. Eliminating a word gives you a foothold in those sentences and allows you to rot nearby sentences, too, but only the preceding and following sentences.
Rot out the story slowly, and with care. This is not simply hacking and slashing away at an old story.
Bonus: Rot out an entire character.
Blake Butler—
The magnificent Ninth Letter is running a holiday special for subscriptions, and $5 back issues, bam!
Nicole Steinberg’s Spooky Boyfriend
Here is a poem I enjoyed a lot. If you click the poem’s title you will find more poems to enjoy by this enjoyable author. After you do that, you can click around the website and find other enjoyable authors. Perfect system, am I right?
Getting Lucky in June
Long Island has a certain sinister allure.
My best friend and I went to the mall
for vitamin face-lifts and scrambled egg
whites: she, an adorable, Japanese club-kid
and me, a ladylike wiseguy. We met a playful trio
of beachy-nudes in nurse shoes, heavy-handed
with the blush—like, too much pink. The rich
are different from you and me. My ultimate
statementy item would be a slick Snoopy
timepiece or old-school ylang-ylang. I can’t
see myself eating face cream at a Hollywood
power breakfast. I’m happy being my husband’s
utilitarian pin-up girl, subversive little hotcake;
sweet gypsy thrown round his neck, barely there.
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
November 17th, 2009 / 1:01 pm
November 17th, 2009 / 1:01 pm
Blake Butler—
Unfriend is the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year: “Novelty words making the shortlist were “deleb,” meaning a dead celebrity, and “tramp stamp,” referring to a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman.” [via clusterflock]
Justin Taylor—
Hey, The Rumpus scored an interview with Paul Auster. Way to go, Juliet Linderman!
Also, for ya’ll NYC’ers, The Rumpus is at the Highline Ballroom tonight for their monthly shindig. This round features Starlee Kine, Rick Moody, Jonathan Ames, Todd Barry, Eugene Mirman, Care Bears on Fire (which the website describes as quote kid-core, which I assume is Spanish for “must be seen to be believed”), and special surprise guests TBA–well not TBA actually, I don’t think they’ll be A’d at all, which is why you want to go, so you can find out who they are.
But let’s just pick one of the people we actually know will be there–and we’ll do it random–and talk about what we think of them. Okay, uh, Todd Barry. Have you ever seen Todd Barry? Todd Barry’s a funny dude. I’ve seen Todd Barry. I laughed at Todd Barry, which is just what Todd Barry wanted. He wants it, I whispered to the girl sitting next to me. And she nodded back, because it was true. There was also another time I saw Todd Barry, but I’m pretty sure that time I was sitting next to a guy. Oh, look, here’s Todd Barry now.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7nnpv0Otw&