I was lucky enough to score galleys of Miroslav Penkov’s East of the West, which is due in bookstores in July from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. I’ve read the stories twice already. They’re knockouts.

Penkov is a Bulgarian writer who writes in English. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas, and discovered his talent for storytelling in an Ellen Gilchrist workshop. After graduating, he spent four more years studying at Arkansas in the MFA program, and now he teaches at the University of North Texas. I first read his story “Buying Lenin” in The Southern Review, and I’ve been a big fan ever since.

Here is the promotional copy from FSG:

“A grandson tries to buy the corpse of Lenin on eBay for his Communist grandfather. A failed wunderkind steals a golden cross from an Orthodox church. A boy meets his cousin (the love of his life) once every five years in the river that divides their village into east and west. These are Miroslav Penkov’s strange, unexpectedly moving visions of his home country, Bulgaria, and they are the stories that make up his charming, deeply felt debut collection.

“In East of the West, Penkov writes with great empathy of centuries of tumult; his characters mourn the way things were and long for things that will never be. But even as they wrestle with the weight of history, with the debt to family, with the pangs of exile, the stories inEast of the West are always light on their feet, animated by Penkov’s unmatched eye for the absurd.”

You can learn more about Miroslav Penkov at his website, and preorder his book at Amazon.com or IndieBound. I’ll write more about him here (a review, maybe an interview) when the publication date draws nearer.

At The Marcel Duchamp Studies online journal, Francis M. Naumann begins his volatile evisceration of Wayne Andersen’s Marcel Duchamp: The Failed Messiah (Geneva: Éditions Fabriart, 2010) with:

This book is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who believes that Marcel Duchamp was an important and influential figure in the history of modern art in the early years of the 20th century.

And ends with:

I find myself in an equally complex dilemma in writing this review, for allowing its publication can only serve to draw more attention to a book that presents no legitimate justification for its existence.

Between those two phrases, Naumann pretty much chops the book to shreds for being uninformed, unauthorized, prudish, self-published, you name it. Except, in the one and only passage he quotes from the book, Naumann fails to accuse Anderson of flagrant misogyny, despite the utter repulsiveness of the quote:

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Pointed Tao in the direction of large group of people standing by the “correct” entrance of building.

Talked to Clay Banes in entrance, said something like “he’s distributing your book” to Megan.

While waiting for Tao to poop, looked into crowd of people and tried to discern the most acceptable way to hold MacBook.

Walked past an acquaintance while saying things like “hey” and “this is Megan” in a moderately-loud—for being in a bar—voice.

After writing “BRB” on newly abandoned promotional packet, approached bar to use “free drink” coupon for sparkling water, saw a girl I knew in college and said to Tao, “I know her from high school.”

Felt someone tap my shoulder and turned, vaguely aware of some girls that I don’t know talking to Megan, to hear something like “Jesus, hey, it’s Jesus, I—“

Saw 4 people moving “BRB” packet and looking confusedly at each other.

Said the word “chapbook” 8 – 15 times while looking nonspecifically at the crowd and sometimes hugging Megan.

Adam Robinson sat down on table thing next to us and said “So, you guys are married?”

Walked into a room in which Blake Butler and Gene Morgan and Gene Morgan’s wife, Jenny, seemed to be “chilling,” sat opposite Jenny.

Felt vaguely aware that people knew my name and had thought things about me, maybe, when Tao said, “This is Megan”

Heard someone say “can I say your ‘pizza’ tattoo” for third or fourth time about Megan’s lower-lip tattoo that says “pizza.”

Realized mid-conversation with Jenny that I had no idea how we started talking about Santa Claus.

Heard someone say “eight hours” in reference to snorting ecstasy.

Heard Tao impatiently say, “Oh it’s you again?!” and “You can’t type, are you okay?”

The room “erupted” in people saying “Andrew” with the “rew” part sustained at a high volume.

Thought the room became really quiet when I said “Andrew,” walked to hug him, and felt awareness that the back of my ass was maybe damp or something.

Saw someone I thought might be someone else, waved at them, said “Oh” loudly, then sort of beckoned for Megan to block that person’s view of me.

Timothy Willis Sanders and Andrew Weatherhead are wearing the same hat.

Said “that’s good, that’s funny, that’s the kind of detail people wanted to hear” to Megan, sitting to my left, as we both sort of stared either at the MacBook screen or, beyond that, at Andrew Weatherhead and Timothy Willis Sanders, seated on separate sofas, talking to each other.

Tao said to Adam Robison, “She got in a car accident” and pointed to my head and Adam said, “Car accident?”

Pointed vaguely at two people dancing on a stage, the only two people on the stage, and looked at Megan with a neutral facial expression.

Shortly after Tao ‘flung’ open door to some kind of dance party room and started writing his sentence, said, “Oh I have a good one” and he yelled, “IT’S NOT CHRONALOGICAL”

Pointed vaguely at [previous sentence] and said “it seems mean” repeatedly.

Sort of hugged my head with right arm, then quickly put it down when I became aware of potential sweat stain.

Said “the Get Up Kids covered this” with unfocused eyes.

Saw dancing girl approach a drink next to Tao’s and my water bottle, sat erect, and tilted head with intention to “intimidate.”

Pulled MacBook away from Andrew Weatherhead while he typed “drrrrhtup” from behind the MacBook, his hands sort of determinedly dangling toward the keys.

Tao said, “You look sexy” and I said, “I want to have sex” as we started meandering/peeking into a room where there were a lot of jackets and a girl sitting.

Andrew Weatherhead said “that’s not liveblogging, it’s a Word document.”

Said, “You want to get in on the live blog” and Timothy Willis Sanders moved his head in front of computer and said “LIVEBLOGGGGGG” in a sort of Adam Sandler tone of voice.

Pointed at a comma in [previous sentence] and stared at Megan.

Started talking to someone whose face I recognized from Facebook.

Said “that was freeing?” in a medium-loud voice, to seemingly no response, while within hearing range, I felt, of six people.

When it was my turn to write a sentence, realized Michael Kimball, Melissa Broder, Timothy Willis Sanders and Tao were staring at computer screen.

Felt strong, positive feelings toward Blake Butler as we seemed to stare non-awkwardly into each other’s eyes while saying things about Emory University.

Made eye contact with Lincoln Michel who said, “We’re talking about elephant urine,” to which I said, “Oh. Did you,” no one said anything for ~3 seconds and then heard him explaining something about elephants.

Heard someone say “Yerba ketchup.”

Said to Timothy Willis Sanders, “You went to a transvestite,” to the sentence I now know was “I went to a Chinese restaurant.”

Said “you spelled his name wrong and changed an ‘a’ to a ‘s.”’

Looked at ceiling, guess it’s painted black or something.

Said “seems apathetic.”

Stephanie Barber approached room out of breath and grinning and said between laughs/gasps, “That room, you have to go in that room” and looked at Melissa Broder and Michael Kimball sitting on couch.

Shook hands with Gene Morgan as he said “you guys having fun? yeah? it’s a party, a literature party.”

Tao said, “Where the hell are we” as we approached door with piece of paper that someone had typed “COFFEE POT!!!!!!!!!” on.

Saw someone who looked like Stephen Elliott but wasn’t.

Tao said “Any details?” while turning my body somewhat comedically to left and right and I saw an overweight black man ‘disappear’ into hallway near us.

Does the color red change the way you look at this photograph? It is difficult to escape the received standard ideas of red: Red as an erotic color, red the color of heat, red for danger, red means stop before you roll into the path of injury, red means embarrassment (but in this case later for the lovers who ought not have been together caught by the camera, their transgressions revealed by the resulting prints, which are made in a red-lit darkroom, and developed in a black-and-white developer bath lit red by the darkroom lamp, so the first time they’re seen they’re blushed [a word which means red has come into the cheeks, and therefore blood] by the red lamp, which means the first time the photographer sees them they already carry the color temperature that calls to mind the heat and the shame he means to initiate), and now we consider the role of the blood in the interpretation of emotions or intimacies, the way the swelling or engorgement of vessels carrying red blood reveals READ MORE >

“As Søren Kierkegaard said in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, I shall certainly attend your party, but I must make an exception for the contingency that a roof tile happens to blow down and kill me; for in that case, I cannot attend.”

Sometimes I see a picture of someone looking at someone else in a certain way — the tilt of the head, the position of the eyes relative to the face, the width of the pupils, the relationship of the head to the body, the proximity of one head to another head, the attention implied by the position of the eyes — and I think: I wish someone would right now be looking at me in the way that the person in the picture is looking at the other person in the picture, and that it made me feel the way I imagine it makes the object of the looking feel, and that the person doing the looking meant the looking in the way I imagine the looker in the picture means the looking, and that both of us were as attractive and therefore societally vetted as worthy of giving and receiving looks like the looks that are being given and received in the picture, and that the confidence implied in the giving and receiving of the looks was a confidence that corresponded to my ability to give and receive the looks rather than the confidence that corresponds to my ability to talk about thinking about looking at the people doing the looking.