Blake Butler—
Mike Young weighs in off-site on yesterday’s gender boink. “Why do you need to have that stupid haircut to maintain civil order? You don’t.”
8
2 new from Brave Men
Wantttttt…
Now Available for purchase from Brave Men Press
front
THE BLACK EYE
Brian FoleyBrian Foley has had poems appear or are forthcoming in Typo, Fou, Glitterpony, No Tell Motel, Sixth Finch, and others. He edits SIR! Magazine and was recently selected by Pam Rehm for the Academy of American Poets prize. He lives in Massachusetts where he attends the MFA for Poets and Writers at Umass Amherst.
Cover is letterpressed with black ink on red paper.
Printed in a limited edition of 150.
22 pages.$9
Roundup: In which we get religion, then get stoned, and are chock-full of hatred and family values
Super Best Friends
Jewcy has an interview with Michael Muhammad Knight, author of Journey to the End of Islam. This one is a must-read.
Also in Islam-related news, the South Park guys finally got the death threat they’ve been gunning for, but it was kind of lame, and posted to a blog, and issued as a kind of speculation that Trey Parker and Matt Stone would “probably wind up like Theo van Gogh.” Also, it’s already been taken down from the site where it was posted. To learn less about this story than I’ve already told you, go to Gawker, where I got it from.
Slate’s got the latest installment of their title-like-a-Slate-parody-but-actually-pretty-fascinating series “Why I give my nine-year-old pot” (spoiler alert: he’s autistic and it helps him). In this latest episode, when Marie’s dealer goes out of town, she learns the hard way that not all strains of pot work the same. Her son J doesn’t respond to anything quite like he does to the White Russian that nobody in town seems to have in-stock!!!!
Speaking of great strains of pot, last night I got this email from Ronnie Scott of The Lifted Brow. Subj: “Too much bongs.” Text: “Whoops! I put about a fifth of our August issue online.” And it’s true, by God! Diane Williams, our own Jimmy Chen, Kim Chinquee and more!
Have you heard about Scott Baio’s twitter-based war with Jezebel.com? They’ve posted a handy complete timeline of their conflict with him. It gets really good when his wife Renee steps in, via facebook and calls the entire Jezebel staff “FAR LEFT lesbian shitasses!!!! No wonder you’re all lesbos because what man in his right mind could put up with your cuntness? Scott Baio has more class in his piss than all of you all!!!” Yes, because that’s how you prove classiness, with homophobic slurs and a piss joke. Big win for family values!
Speaking of family values, if you fell into a coma in 1995, and just woke up this morning, you may not want to read the rest of this sentence because it might make your heart and brain simultaneously crumple into powder under the crushing realization of just how much has changed. Okay, are you braced? Are you ready? Green Day’s Broadway musical is a smash hit, says Charles Isherwood in the New York Times. Also, this thing called 9/11 happened, but I’ll tell you about that later.
I Hit It With My Axe: His Body Closes the Door with its Pieces
Zak Smith/Sabbath plays D&D with friends. He makes a good DM.
meta-blah
I’m reading Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star. Lispector is a powerhouse writer, no question about it. Her sentences are like the rapture, like the world is ending all around me and there’s only this, her words, and I want to grab them by the fistful and hide them in my shirt pocket for safekeeping, even though doom and thunderbolts are all around me. BUT, but, even as I read, I’m skeptical because the book is metafiction, and I’ve found myself increasingly bored with metafiction.
Mike Young—
Spooky kudos to Nick Antosca, whose book Midnight Picnic is a finalist for a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award in the Novella category. If you’re wondering how to deliver your own congratulations, Nick likes swimming and Cuban sandwiches. Good work, Nick!
Landschaft Mit Haus
I am in love with this series of paintings from Maria Zaikina. I now have all of the images rotating automatically through my desktop background.
(via but does it float)
most writing prompts suck
So I will try a not-suck one (warning: it might suck). Begin your story/exercise this way:
Socks you wear daily (not yours), revolver, dog you love, dragged out back in the snow falling darkness, dragged behind the dumpster with gun placed to head…Go.
Now, go ahead, say that is lame. Hell, I agree. Way too many images. Crazy off-the-page-subtext. Even seems a bit forced, possibly melodramatic. Even leaning prescriptive.
That’s a prompt?
Maybe the genre of prompt is actually like swimming a true mile (anyone?), as in tougher-than-I-fucking-thought?
Well, fuck. And you. And You try. One sentence, please.
Can I get a non-cliche prompt?
I do not want 1. Which god are you? 2. You drank a milkshake and feel weird. 3. Knock, knock. What was that?
Anything else is cool.
Add your writing prompt (this might appear later in a textbook. And I’m the type of person to pay you .00002 % royalty as opposed to those bastards stealing your idea at 0001%, ha, ha [no, seriously, ha, ha]).
Uh. The point is write ONE sentence as a writing prompt. Let’s see it.
The success of The Failure by James Greer
The Failure is a hell of a book. Greer is a funny writer, a smart writer, and a talented synthesizer of contemporary life with an older kind of storytelling. It’s greatest success, though, is its chorus of voices.
The plot, briefly: Guy Forget has discovered a scheme to make money on the internet, but he needs start-up cash. Unable to secure it from family, he decides that, with his friend Billy, he will rob a Korean check cashing business.
Much of the book is dialogue, characters in conversation, with little scene setting beyond the précis masquerading as a chapter title at the beginning of each section. The book moves back and forth through time and location—the introductions for each paragraph are the signposts that put the writing that follows in context. With no moments to stop and look at the scenery, as it were, the weight of the novel is right there on the characters. The book is concerned with a different kind of location. The location of the relationships between its characters.
Guy and Billy are the book’s down-at-heel Abbott and Costello. Guy, like all great losers, considers himself moments away from the win that will change his life. Billy, his dim bulb partner-in-soon-to-be-disastrously-failed-crime.
Let me ask you a question: who do you think would win in a fight between a squirrel and a cat? said Guy.
-Depends on the cat, obviously, said Billy. -But in general the cat. I had a cat once, used to kill squirrels and bring them back to the house, as presents, or trophies, or something…
Uncategorized / 11 Comments
April 21st, 2010 / 6:51 pm
April 21st, 2010 / 6:51 pm