You Were Wrong
In the ever-evolving effort to figure out how to use internet video to sell books, Matthew Sharpe has hit on this idea: introduce themes from the book in six silly, strange, short little videos in which the author plays a video artist named Marc Sharf.
Personally, I like them—I like the absurdist energy and the seemingly unnecessary play with identity. (Sharpe’s books are funny, but darkly funny. The character may be a way to break from that.)
So, what do you think? Is this a step in the right direction? Will these videos help sell books? (I was already on board, and my copy of You Were Wrong is on my nightstand.) Did he get you? Did he lose you?
(Weird that this post appears after a Jonathan Franzen post, eh? Franzen was a champion of Sharpe’s novel The Sleeping Father.
The First Rule of Literary Magazine Club: Join
I’ve been thinking lately it would be interesting to have a book club where instead of books, the participants read and discuss literary magazines, both in print and online. So often, there is a tendency to read casually, without reflection, and while there’s nothing wrong with that (I’m a fan), there are so many amazing magazines out there worthy of discussion. Often when I set an issue of a magazine down, I feel like I’m not done with it yet, like I want to talk about the writing I’ve just read but there aren’t many people in my life who would be interested in hearing about expectorating orifices or the way that one writer used repetition in really interesting ways or how that other writer tells the sexiest stories or how the last poem in the issue was really quite terrible with a detailed rant as to why.
Is a literary magazine club something you would be interested in joining? What format would you like to see the club follow? What kinds of things should we talk about? What magazines would you like to read? Should we get matching outfits? What should we call ourselves?
I’ve just started thinking through the logistics of a literary magazine club. It would be great to alternate from month to month between print and online magazines. I’d like to kick things off on October 1 with NY Tyrant 8. Who’s with me? (If you are, drop me a line at roxane at roxanegay dot com and I’ll keep you informed of what’s what.)
ETA: Editors, if you want our club to read your magazine and want to offer members a discount, let me know!
Uncategorized / 99 Comments
August 13th, 2010 / 12:36 pm
August 13th, 2010 / 12:36 pm
Critics on Criticism: Don Delillo
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If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.
Don Delillo, The Names
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Word Spaces (19): Lee Rourke
We bought this place in east London last year. The study isn’t finished yet, so I do most of my writing on the dining room table. It mostly always looks like this – unless our two cats have been on the table and knocked the books on to the floor, which is something they do from time to time. I know they enjoy doing this when I am out of the room. It doesn’t bother me that much, because cats will be cats. I didn’t write The Canal in this room; we moved here after I had finished it. I wrote The Canal in various cafés and pubs in Hackney, east London and I’m afraid I didn’t take photos of them.
I write longhand and then edit as I type it up on to my laptop. My laptop is quite old now and sometimes gets very tired, but it still does the job, so I can’t really complain. READ MORE >
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August 13th, 2010 / 11:44 am
August 13th, 2010 / 11:44 am
Learning lessens
Lamont Library, Harvard
Instead of ivy, mold crawls on the walls of my education. Of the eight Ivy League universities’ mottos, Harvard and Yale’s include “truth,” and Brown and Princeton employ “God.” My favorite is Darmouth’s, which speaks of a crying voice in the wilderness (probably referring to freshmen year in the dorms). In addition to Statistics 101, kids returning library books at Harvard are met with a lesson in the highly improbable. Graduating from where I did with the degree I did was my own lesson in the highly improbable, namely, a good career. I masochistically look forward to The Social Network, which partially takes place at Harvard. The first google suggestion for facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, besides his name, is “Mark Zuckerberg Girlfriend” — for success is not just measured at the bank, but by the lady next to you, her breasts and your eyes ideally pointing towards the same bright future.
What The Faust?
Funny how people think birthing is a “miracle” — it’s harder to stop than start — particularly when/if/because the babe is white. White babe? The babe with the pwr. White pwr? The pwr of voodoo. Who do? You do. Do white? Remind me of the babe.
Blake Butler—
Five Chapters is going the opposite direction of the current trend and expanding their electronic publishing module into print objects. They’ve just announced their first three titles, collections by Emma Straub and Jess Row, as well as an anthology. An interview with founder Dave Daley is up at Galley Cat, with his insight into sales #s and the logic of the shift.
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Magic the Gathering: Fear, Crumble, Lifetap
I don’t give a fuck: I like Magic. I haven’t played in at least ten years, but even just off my memories of the game up to, oh, 18, and later in the online versions, I will attest that MtG is the greatest and most intricately strategic and customizable game ever created. Fuck chess and backgammon. Magic is a universe where not only are there so many possible utilities under the array of spells and creatures you can involve in any given match, but also a ridiculous level of inner-tuning, logic, semantic, prediction, counteractivity, and innovation of nuts and bolts. It is the ultimate rendering of a game where to be successful you must decide your approach, construct your apparatus, and operate that apparatus under the manner of luck and the countless structures employed by each opponent. There are so many fucking spells.
Today I’m bored again and found my old archives of cards I have left after I sold most of them off when I quit in high school. I decided to pull 3 cards out at random and write about their utility. It seems to me to have a lot to do with manipulation of other entities, like words and systems of words.
Oh, and also, kiss my ass, Magic rules.
180 Comments
August 12th, 2010 / 2:11 pm
August 12th, 2010 / 2:11 pm
Julie Doxsee’s Favorite Object Combinations And Favorite Objects To Leave By Themselves
Julie Doxsee is doing a “blog tour” for her terrific new book, Objects For a Fog Death, so I asked Julie to write about her 5 favorite object combinations and her 5 favorite objects to leave by themselves. She did us better than my essaystic suggestion and wrote these “fabley little poem paragraphs.” I have used sophisticated Google Image Search techniques to jimmy up some complements. Enjoy!
Giraffe tooth/Helmet
You pull into a nook in the alley and my helmet clunks yours and this is a kind of talk we’re having but in the talk there is a kill wish and a rocket launch and a bright laser-beam lengthening our hearts across the sidewalk end to end. There is blood and light. You pull a giraffe tooth from your pocket, center it in your palm and say have you ever seen one of these? From under my tongue I pull a giraffe tooth. I center it on my palm and say yes. We sit this way until the shadows disappear. READ MORE >