January 2010

Jan 21st: 1 Year Later with The Rumpus

In giddy pleasure for our sisters, we are pleased to announce and celebrate the one year anniversary of The Rumpus, who for that whole full year has been feeding the nonstop glow of daily good. Now it’s time to enjoy that in the flesh (if you’re a NYer anyway). Those of us elsewhere can hang out in the spirit. But for those around, the digs are juicy. Looksee:

The evening will feature readings by a line-up of literary stars:

RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Atmospheric Disturbances

TAO LIN, author of Shoplifting from American Apparel

DEB OLIN UNFERTH, author of Vacation

JUSTIN TAYLOR, author of Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever

STEPHEN ELLIOTT, The Rumpus’s own editor and author of The Adderall Diaries.

With music by ALINA SIMONE and DIANE LOUVEL

WHERE: Broadway East, where Chinatown meets the Lower East Side. 171 East Broadway (nr. Rutgers). View Map. Kitchen will be open with a light menu of snacks.

WHEN: January 21, 2010

7:00pm – 10:00pm

$5

Advance tickets available here.

Hope to see you all there! Big love.

Web Hype / 14 Comments
January 5th, 2010 / 1:33 pm

Wack Bible Stories, by Ben White

After my last Wack Bible Stories post, Nanoism editor Ben White left some interesting comments. I got the sense that he knew more cool stuff about the Bible as it pertains to writing and asked him to contribute a guest post. He quickly obliged, with this great, gross story:

Lifestyle and Writing Advice from the Bible.

Watch Fox News long enough and you’ll hear that somewhere in the Bible something happens, something about “spilling seed,” and for that reason both masturbation and all forms of contraception are wrong. Your gut instinct might tell you that the story involves a mother surprising her son in his section of the tent when he’s home “sick” from Torah study, but it’s actually the story of Onan (Genesis 38:9-10):
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Craft Notes / 52 Comments
January 5th, 2010 / 9:14 am

new e-book at artistically declined press.  written by ja tyler.  WHEN WE MAKE OUR DINOSAUR.

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Reopen

Open Letters Monthly has put chapstick on the sow with a newly remade version of themselves. On their front page right now is a new translation of a Transtromer poem and a revisit with W.S. Merwin’s nastiest, blackened book The Lice.

.

And once more I remember that the beginning

Is broken

No wonder the addresses are torn

To which I make my way eating the silence of animals
Offering snow to the darkness

Uncategorized / 6 Comments
January 5th, 2010 / 12:22 am

Kate/Katie David/Dave

Why shouldn’t a book repress with its pages?

Every body is very old.

What is literal about the word ‘penis’? What do you think of when you read the word ‘penis’? If you are man? If you are a woman? Every body. For years I found it hard to imagine that my male friends also had dicks. Masturbation isn’t simulation.

“Ejaculaton is a waste of valuable resources.” Does this statement attack the female? Does this statement attack the male? Does this statement attack? Does this statement?

Some people find it hard to believe when people aren’t willing to concede that sex is sex. That in not thinking this, it is by some avoidance, some superiority, some hiding. The necessity of defecating is much more quietly acquiesced. No one questions the morality of the operation of negotiating the shitter’s ass with the shitting hole, though sometimes just as much skin is placed. And a longer lingering of air. Some of my friends find it surprising I can’t smell come. My urine the last few weeks has smelled like food. Ratios of water. Cookbooks.

Male and female rats have been shown to find it more difficult to sleep when the smell of a previously housed male rat lingers in the cage.

Sad. Dead guys and alive guys on a brightly colored graph.

Suppose an object is not required to reckon sociologically with every object it contains. Suppose it contains. Suppose even the objects that are the most accessible to placing in dotted-line-connected camps.

Fucking camps! [“See how he meant that two ways at once?”]

“Did your urethra write that?” [I wish it had.] “Which kind?”

Certain books are culled, not called.

Reading is a self-indulgent act. Blinking is a self-indulgent act, too. When books aren’t self-indulgent they aren’t there.

The politics of sitting.

Today I learned that the phrase “telefono” means Repeated blows to the ears rupturing the tympanic membranes.

When the first consideration is of a switch outside the object, the considerer has not listened. “How do I fit into this?” “All of this is…”

“These are my concerns.” “This is how I can make a [      ] via consideration.” “This is this.”

“Same/same.”

A Dissection of ‘the High Five’ in the Works of These Works Written By Those Body Formats under Pressure

What Meats Are or Are Not Avoided In the Production of My Favorite Tacos

“My Art of Your Art” “Art is”

“My Vote for the next new president”

The plane of organization is constantly working away at the plane of consistency, always trying to plug the lines of flight, stop or interrupt the movements of deterritorialization, weigh them down, restratify them, reconstitute forms and subjects in a dimension of depth.

Googling ‘penis book’ results mostly in porn. ‘Vagina book’ is much more widely varied, but contains instructions, jokes, costumes, less porn.

Trees get grown. Water in the food. Why shouldn’t a

Why shouldn’t a shouldn’t a shushushuhhhhiuushhhshhshhh h hh shhij kkkk kk kk jiui ui uiuuui uiudiu iu aisdhhakljshdf kjhasljkdflkajsd;l kfa;osdhf;jha s;jbdvk absdknvb kans dnvba;kjshdfjhasldjhfajkshdlfjhdjhfdjhfjdhfjdhfjdhjfhdjhf a jahdjfhaj;sjhf; a;sjh ;asdl.

Random / 37 Comments
January 4th, 2010 / 5:33 pm

Captain Beefheart on Writing

For years I didn’t get the music. I’d slam my fists in anger over those who’d say how Beefheart knew. Funny how often those things you come to like among the most are ones that make you angry to begin with. Accumulation of a grime.

“There is only the slightest movement of the fingers that makes the v-sign different from the Nazi salute. Always watch that.”

“They’re about to poke their genitals into our cream cheese moon right now. That’s my eye; the moon is part of me. Why don’t they poke it in the sun? They’re not very daring.”

“I don’t think there’s any way you can *know* music. The minute you *know* it, you stop playing, and the minute a person stops playing, the music isn’t playing anymore.”

“For instance, the English language is the only language that has an *i* before *e* except after *c*. What’s before an *i*? Before my eyes is a sea. But the *c* I see is a sea. I’m not that word-oriented. I’m trying to use words like music so that they don’t take your mind anywhere that I want them to.”

“It’s hard to use the English language. I’d rather play a tune on a horn, but I’ve always felt that I didn’t want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you’ve got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it’s better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.”

“There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers.”

“I was able to turn myself inside out, and that’s all I’m trying to do.”

BONUS: 2x Beefheart on Letterman (worth watching in full)

Behind the Scenes / 38 Comments
January 4th, 2010 / 4:11 pm

I interviewed Andrew Zornoza, author of the incredible Where I Stay from Tarpaulin Sky, about the book, influences, sentences, Chris Farley, photography, etc., for Bookslut. “I’m interested in new feelings that haven’t been mythologized yet, I’m trying to get as high and bent as possible. I can over-intellectualize after the fact, but in the moment, when I’m sitting in front of that computer, all that is far away, everything is far away…”

a sweet find from Jeremy Schmall- The Abe Books Weird Book Room. I would like to point out that I have actually read one of the books featured on the site (but not pictured here)–Dominique Laporte’s History of Shit.

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INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL HANEKE

apparently not a Haneke self-portrait

So I interviewed Michael Haneke about his new film The White Ribbon, which just opened in the United States and won the Palme D’Or at Cannes last May. You know Haneke, I think: Cache, Funny Games, The Piano Teacher, Code: Unknown, Benny’s Video… yes, you know Michael Haneke. Perhaps you even agree with me that he’s one of the world’s greatest living directors.

jolly!

We did the interview in a hotel in midtown Manhattan. He was slender and well-dressed with a beard the color of Malamute fur. As others have observed, he’s disarmingly pleasant in person—even jolly. If he weren’t so thin, he could be Santa Claus.

Even if you’re prepared for it, it’s remarkable to note first-hand how the cruelty, despair, humiliation and horror of his films have no counterpart in his demeanor. Actually, more than anything, he seems professorial.

Our Q & A is below. I’ve condensed some of my questions and remarks to streamline/clarify, and so you don’t have to read as much from me, but I’ve preserved just about every word Haneke said, intelligibility of the tape allowing. His English is fairly good, but unless otherwise noted, he’s speaking through a translator.

*************
Nick Antosca: Are you afraid to die?
Film & Massive People / 25 Comments
January 4th, 2010 / 10:08 am

Every Book and Magazine with Typos/Errors?

I am reading Face by Alexie and on page 35 there is a sentence that needs indenting. This a game, finding these tiny errors, locating them in magazines, canonical works, some huge publisher.

One part of me—the part editing The Broken Plate and about to teach about copy-editing—is paranoid. Many magazines feel less (or no) errors are related to the quality of the publication.

Some feel like a typo in a book is a human gesture, a beautiful mole, unsymmetrical ears, the smudge in the painting, the flaw that makes the thing.

How much is on the editor, the writer?

How closely do you look at your galleys (if you get them)?

Do you have a technique to catch errors? The writer, too near, as the worst diagnostic?

War story? One time a magazine had my word “years” changed to “ears.” That smarted a bit. Years, ears…

You?

(image by Mr. Eggers)

Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes / 69 Comments
January 4th, 2010 / 9:47 am