Blake Butler—
“From the very first chapter, I declared it a tour de force,” Oprah said modestly in Friday’s announcement. [via Shane Jones]
41
Usedbuyer addresses the fuss.
In Defense of Good Writing: Miss Ethel M. Dell’s Rare Interview on “All This Fuss About Proust.”
Why do you feel that commercial fiction, or more specifically popular fiction written by women, tends to be critically overlooked?
Ethel M. Dell: One has only to really look at the facts. One doesn’t feel one’s efforts to be overlooked in all venues. I do think the Times tends to overlook popular fiction, whether one is man, woman, white, black, or Hottentot. Many of one’s dearest readers tell one how very much they should like to see one reviewed more respectfully in the popular press, but what can one do? The prejudice against lady novelists is not however, I’m very glad to say, universal among the reviewers. The Monkton Combe Post for example, back when they had their book review section, used to say the kindest things about one’s little books…
Lynch LSD Walks Sprawl Tour
Our #3 face is sexy, we are almost 3. That's close to 7.
1. @ Montevidayo, Johannes Göransson posted an excellent consideration of Nathan Lee’s consideration of a few books on David Lynch’s work.
2. @ DC’s, Dennis Cooper posted an excellent roundup of fun and interesting oddity, including re: Drawing on LSD, Kathy Acker’s last work, an Urs Alleman interview, and lots of else.
3. @ Thought Catalog, Franklin Bruno wrote up a thoughtful consideration on Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch’s fantastic Ten Walks/Two Talks.
4. Next Friday, September 24, if you are in Chicago there is a launch party for Danielle Dutton’s brilliant new novel Sprawl, 7:30 PM at the Women and Children First Bookstore, also featuring Kate Zambreno.
5. In celebration of their about to be released second issue, Artifice Magazine is going on tour! A magazine on tour seems amazing.
Shelf Unbound — “Unbound” being a play on bindings online
Anybody got the skinny on Shelf Unbound?
A few months ago I started receiving press releases from them. They’re a new electronic magazine that promise to “feature the best of small press, university press, and self-published books.” Okay, cool, I was excited that a group I had never heard of was doing something that could be so monumental for indie lit, which is like my main deal. And they’re thinking big, I noted from the first of the three points they said would interest me, which was that they’re offering a free copy of the first issue to the first 10,000 people who request them.
To break that down, the two things that impressed me are READ MORE >
New New Site
This is the third version of the site in as many years.
We did some basic formatting to the posts.
We added TypeKit fonts to the site, because we were tired of looking at web-safe fonts. TypeKit is shitty on the iPad, so everyone there and the people on shitty and weird browsers will get to look at Impact and Gill Sans. Everyone else gets Chunk and Ratio.
We made the site “tighter” with less empty space. It’ll look good on your phones and fit on whatever screen you’re using, hopefully.
We added a Disqus commenting system, because the comments are a little out-of-hand. It is more complicated than the previous system, but has the potential to make things less anonymous, which I like. You can seem more like an actual person to me.
The ads at the top are for independent publishers only. The ad slots are $30 each, and there are two in each of the five spaces. We wanted to keep this cheap, for the people we love.
There are a few other things, but I’m tired.
There are a few more changes in progress, so if you notice irregularities, that’s probably why.
I hope you enjoy the site. It should be nice for a little while.
Special shout-out to Jereme Dean, Blake Butler, Jimmy Chen, Ryan Call, and my wife for help with the redesign.
If you have any questions, please email me at gene@htmlgiant.com. I’m here for you.
*Update* Disabled TypeKit on Windows machines until I can make it look nice. For now, only Mac users have pretty fonts.
We’ll Be Back Soon! Drink Pepsi Products!
Hi everyone, we’re about to go dark for the night. We’ll be a whole new HTMLGIANT (with new sponsors!) when we come back. In the meantime, why don’t you enjoy a refreshing Pepsi product?!
Two questions. When Witz came out, it felt like a lot of people were obsessed with the length of the book at 700 pages, as if the length were an insurmountable obstacle. Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom is about 570 pages long and way heavier because it is an infernal hardcover book, and yet I don’t hear a lot of chatter about the length of the book. Why is that? I hate hardcover books. When I say hate, I mean I react irrationally to them. Holding them makes me want to punch something. It’s uncomfortable especially because I am reading Freedom right now and it literally pains me to hold it. I should have Kindled it. Does anyone else hate hardcover books as much as I do?
Mark Borchardt & Mike Schank on Influence
Mark: Hey, man, you ripped that one song off, I hate to tell you, from Black Sabbath.
Mike: I didn’t. I wrote all the words.
Mark: Yeah, but, dude, I’m saying there’s an unconscious influence.
Mike: Yeah, but all your ideas come from somewhere else, Mark. You can’t make up an idea by yourself.
Mark: No, dude.
Mike: It’s gotta come from somewhere.
Mark: Yeah, but… Have you listened to the tune? That’s an exact copy.
Mike: No, it’s not though.
Mark: You changed one word.
Mike: I changed all… I used one word. I used the word “insane,” and that’s it.
[noise occurs off camera in the house]
Mike: What’s that?
Mark: The Ghost of Christmas Past.
Mike: …
Mark: You have to whisper, okay?
Mike: All right.
Mark: ‘Cause otherwise, we’ll get into trouble.
[from American Movie, 1999]
tumblr, twitter, literature
Getting reblogged feels just like being published, is.
Logic dictates I create the literary equivalent of this.
