Blake Butler—
Be sure to check out the incredible Dalkey Archive Summer Sale, where through June 4 you can get 5 Dalkey titles for $35, 10 for $65, or 20 for $120 (shipping included in the U.S.). These people work my credit card hard at least twice a year, and I love them for it.
Alexis Orgera—
Are there cool poems and/or stories about motherhood? This is a serious, not sarcastic, question.
Matthew Simmons—
A link from my friend Dan: Sri Randal Randal stands on a ladder and connects people to disembodied spirits. LA readers, please go see this man for me.
The Night LOST Became A Soap Opera
I’m really impressed by all the journalists who could calmly sit down and bust out a thoughtful response to the finale of LOST last night or even this morning. Not me. It was such a royal disappointment, I can hardly put my words together. After a six year commitment, I am left feeling like maybe I should have broken up with it five and a half years ago.
Why?
Because last night the writers of the show invalidated all of the things that made the show unique and intriguing by opting to focus on the human characters rather than the one character that made the show what it was, the island. I sure as hell wasn’t tuning in every week to find out whether or not Sayid would redeem himself or Ben would turn out to be a good guy or who Kate would choose to make out with or if Charlie was ever gonna kick his heroin addiction. That’s the soap opera shit that you can find on any television show. No, I tuned in every week because of the mystery, the mythology, the numbers, the Others, the Egyptian shit, the time traveling, the donkey wheel, the electromagnetism, the Dharma Initiative, the Hanso Foundation, the smoke monster, the disease, the question of fertility, quantum physics, immortality, whispering ghosts, haunted cabins, magical ash, fountains of youth, glowing caves, etc.
Unfortunately, the writers decided those things were superfluous. And thus, they chose to turn a brilliant and mysterious epic into a mere soap opera. Ask yourself: without the island, how is LOST any different than Days of Our Lives?
(*As a side note, this is exactly why Battlestar Galactica ended up sucking: it, too, lost sight of what made it unique and succumbed to becoming a soap opera.)
Amy McDaniel—
Best food writing award goes to Zach Golden and Russ Phillips for their website, What the Fuck Should I Make for Dinner. Seems to be new every time it is refreshed. Via Natalie Lyalin.
Adam Robinson—
Don’t forget to win the original Light Boxes b/w the new Penguin one. Buy an indie book and send the receipt to lightboxescontest@gmail.com. Longer post saying the same thing here.
My Mother is the Father of the List: An Interview with Joshua Cohen
This month saw the release of Joshua Cohen‘s latest novel Witz, an 824 page monster of language from Dalkey Archive. The book focuses on the occasion of the plague-death of all the world’s Jews, save one, Benjamin Israelien, who in his newfound cultural superstardom becomes an object of replication, then becomes the hunted. Beyond the plot, Witz is enormously powerful for its invention, its sound, its complex rhythms. Each paragraph and sentence alone is an orchestral thing, which in the larger context, and in the locomotion of the brutal, beautiful and often hilarious plot’s rising, becomes easily one of the more courageous and stunning outfits in the last at least dozen years of publishing.
Last week or so I spent a few days emailing back and forth with Joshua about the book, his process and influences, faith, language, and the like.
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May 24th, 2010 / 11:33 am
May 24th, 2010 / 11:33 am
This is a mess
Ever feel like this?
Like most writers, I have this knack for suffering, for being a complete mess. Maybe this is disclosing too much about myself, but I’ve had this conception that to be a writer—an artist—means that I have to suffer, that happiness somehow inauthenticates my “work.” Even though I know this is a myth, I fall for it every time. I’m a fool like that.
Nicelle Davis Poem
(click to enlarge)
Poem text first appeared in an e-chap published by Gold Wake Press.
Nicelle Davis lives in Southern California with her son J.J. Her poems are forthcoming in, Mosaic, The New York Quarterly, Two Review, and others. She’d like to acknowledge her poetry family at the University of California, Riverside and Antelope Valley Community College. She runs a free online poetry workshop at: http://nicelledavis.wordpress.com/.