February 2010

R. Kelly on Writing

“It’s almost like mama jokes to me. You got some good mama jokes and I got some, you hit me up then I got some. You go first show me what you got and if they good we gonna trade off and use em. We just change up and trade up.”

“You’re trying to throw a rock at the top of the Sears tower.”

“When I’m up twenty I always play like I’m down forty.”

“I usually don’t hear my influences til the song is over with. When I’m writing I’m so into what I’m hearing on the radio in my head that I’m just like, ‘Wow, I can’t wait to finish this so everybody else can hear what I’ve just heard.’ It’s like there’s a monster in the backyard, and you’re just like, ‘Look out the window, y’all!’ I just want people to hear what’s in my head and I just be anxious to get into the studio and get it done. Once it’s done it’s like, ‘Oh man, that riff right there is like some Sam Cooke shit.’”

“My greatest competition is, well, me…”

“I’m pregnant by music.”

“It’s a silent competition. But it’s all good if you know how to keep it in perspective and have fun with it. A lot of kats don’t understand that the point of a remix is to make it better than the record, not just change it. They think that if they just change it that should do it, but what they’re really doing is just killing the original song.”

“Not only did I get an A in music but I got an A in ladies.”

“Sometimes the doctor has to inject his own self.”

Craft Notes / 26 Comments
February 3rd, 2010 / 4:21 pm

I wonder what Juked feels about Sotto Voce‘s design.

Two New Covers

Two excellent new covers for two books I am really looking forward to this year:

Patrick Somerville’s The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, from Featherproof Books Fall 2010, design by Zach Dodson

(which was just announced as a Featherproof title I think yesterday, on the heels of his smash The Cradle, and while you’re at it, take a look at the covers for Christian Tebordo’s The Awful Possibilities and Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s, (Daddy’s? wow), which are both also damn beautiful and exiting)

Tao Lin’s Richard Yates, from Melville House 9/7/10, photography by Michael Northrup

Behind the Scenes / 63 Comments
February 3rd, 2010 / 12:59 pm

If I have to hear the phrase pitch perfect one more time, I’m going to throw up in someone’s shoes. What does that mean? I mean, what does it really mean?

P.S. The second installment of Group Effort is coming soon!

ropes, strings, poppea and 3 stories by Daniil Kharms

Watch all 3 parts.

They are lovely like fish.

Author Spotlight & Technology / 2 Comments
February 3rd, 2010 / 11:22 am

Daniel Green of The Reading Experience has just posted a compilation of online interviews with contemporary writers over at Secondary Sound. Many classics are in there, but I also discovered a few I had not seen before. Feel free to supplement in the comments section.

Another arrow into February’s skull. New Hobart is out. All good, and this Laird Hunt interview (part two) amazing.

“I swear to God, I can’t read a book unless it has miniature numbered sections. I exaggerate, but only slightly.” -David Shields

Go read the full interview at Bookslut.

Author News / 10 Comments
February 3rd, 2010 / 4:07 am

“We had the feeling of a new morning / with the lights off.”

Looking for tic-tac-toe with yourself? When you are not even sure you have a self, when it feels more like a rumor shivering in a cathedral? Then hustle like a clod. Keep the night like an arm-around. And check out your new favorite poet, Jack Christian, who paints his boats to display the night and take you to it. He is all over the internet: featured at Ink Node, live at Sixth Finch, Thermos, and Gregory Lawless’s blog I Thought I Was New Here. He’s a poet of the fairgrounds, the airport, and the goodbye-for-real. I think his poem “I Am Yours” from Sixth Finch is my favorite of this web blitz, because it is true in the way that true-making is the only way true happens.

Author Spotlight & Web Hype / 10 Comments
February 3rd, 2010 / 12:30 am

Andrew Ervin is offering a copy of John Banville’s Kepler, signed by Banville, to the person who can correctly identify the most books in his milk crate bookshelf posted here. Send your list to our email and Andrew will find the winner tomorrow night.