Rethinking Experimental Literature / the Avant-Garde / what Henry Miller calls “the inhuman ones”
"Pond Scum" by Bill Benzon
I love Benzon’s photos of pond scum, especially because many of them feature manmade objects amidst the polluted water, which creates an interesting tension between the living and the dead. The juxtaposition of “nature” and “industry” also appeals to me. Bio and synthetic. Both are contagions. Neither are innocuous. Alone they seem dormant, put together they seem toxic. Or at any rate, they seem removed from humanity, forgotten, neglected, afloat in their own private universe. I’m beginning to think of “the avant-garde” synonymously: both living and dead: undead. Or more precisely, not-human, inhuman, unhuman, or as a kind of desire to dehumanize.
Conversation is cracking over at Montevidayo lately on the topic of “the avant-garde.” I tried to join in by offering some preliminary ideas about the connection between the avant-garde and dehumanization. But then other obligations got the best of me and I fell out of the conversation. Then, in the comment section of an interview I did with Noah Cicero over at WWAATD, I responded to questions by Stephen Tully Dierks and tried to extend some of these ideas by showing their application via specific literary texts (Beckett, Barnes, and Burroughs).
All of this to say, I figured maybe I’d do a thinking-out-loud post here on the topic.
Reincarnate hard
In Funny People (dir. Apatow, 2009), Adam Sandler, since diagnosed with cancer, teases his oncologist about looking like Karl, the blond villain in Die Hard (1988) who rises from the dead at the end of the film for a final shot at John McClane (Bruce Willis), only to be shot dead by the black cop, played by the guy who ended up playing Urkel’s neighbor. (I’ll spare you my theory on the subconscious racism of how all “good cops” are black, as if such casting were some progressive affront to the more common implicit stereotype.) It is sadly wonderful how all of you know what I’m talking about, these names and faces closer than our own cousins — that there are semi-dense clusters of cells in our brains dedicated to remembering these things, that we are somewhat thwarted by them, yet continuously rewarded. In Hollywood’s game, people can be anything, and Apatow is aware of the pleasure we derive in getting the reference, the erratic yet embedded memory of Karl, as Bruce Willis and John McClane are equally distilled with meaning in this regard. (“Where you try to kill Bruce Willis” is Sandler’s punchline.) The question is did the script call for an actor who looked like Die Hard’s Karl, or was the script cleverly revised, ad libbed even, once they noticed the similarity? The answer is less important than its instigator. Karl since has risen from the dead twice, an unlikely Jesus, save the perfect Aryan hair.
Online Literature Calender at Zine-Scene
Zine-Scene is a website devoted to promoting online literature through journal reviews, author spotlights, and its own literary quarterly, which reprints fiction that previously appeared in print only. Keeping with this mission we have launched an Online Literature Calendar. The calendar displays the release dates of online literary magazines and makes finding new literature easy and user friendly.
Kristen Iskandrian—
The new La Petite Zine is live & alive with fireworks from Matthea Harvey, Molly Brodak, Cathy Linh Che, Anne Cecelia Holmes, Taryn Schwilling, Colleen McCarthy, Jean Valentine, Lyall F. Harris, Montana Ray, Robyn Art, Jane Lewty, Carol Muske-Dukes, Stacey Tran, Stephanie Ford, Leanna Petronella, & Joanna Novak. Boom.
Call Heather Christle at (413) 570-3077
On the occasion of the release of her second book of poems, The Trees The Trees, which just came out from Octopus, and is indeed mazelike, Heather Christle has secured a phone number that you can call her at, through which she will read to you a poem. This begins today and will continue through July 14th.
The number is (413) 570-3077
Calls answered during Eastern Standard Times:
M: 10am-6pm
T: 10am-1pm
W: 10am-6pm
Th: 10am-1pm
F: 10am-6pm
S: 12pm-6pm
Su: 12pm-6pm
Get the book while you’re at it; it’s unprecedented, and gorgeous.
Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told by Paul Maliszewski
This week marks the release of Paul Maliszewski’s new chapbook, Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told, published by Varmint Armature, Trnsfr’s new publishing racket. Do pick one up. You shan’t regret it. The cost? A mere $8. And if you subscribe to Trnsfr, you’ll receive P.F.W.T.S.A.W.T.W.N.T. entirely free of charge. Be one the first 25 and Maliszewski will sign and number your copy, and almost certainly entertain fond and benevolent thoughts about you all the while. Now what could be better than that? Just go to here.
Ben Mirov is Unemployed, Reads Books, Lives in Oakland
I just moved to Oakland, CA from Brooklyn, NY. I’m unemployed, so I’m reading more books than usual. And growing a beard. Here are some of the books surrounding me and some thoughts about them and a pic of my beard.
Moving Day by Ish Klein (Canarium Books, 2011)
Usually when someone says a book of poems is “weird” it means the poems are ephemerally weird. Like the weirdness is a novelty to grab attention. Real weirdness permeates content and form, like it does in Ish’s book. The sentences and lines are like little adjustments to the readers attention. It feels like your being nudged into an ultimately more complex and valenced sensitivity of your self and the world.
sample lines: Yes, yes larval. / Larvelous was the eye—the stars, / they were wondering, “When is X coming out?” / Considering the material, X will be something!”
Nick Demske by Nick Demske (FENCE Books, 2010)
Sometimes when I read sonnets all I can think is “fuck sonnets”. I’m pretty sure Nick Demske thinks this too, which is why he wrote a book of sonnets. Feels like this book was written by your drug dealer friend in high school who was smarter and better read than everyone in your class, but was destined to burn out and spend the rest of his life as a low-level bureaucrat in the same town you grew up in. Poems feel like they are “in your face”. Some lines break in the middle of words in a way that is perturbing/engaging. Funny letter of congratulations on the back from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), better than any blurb.
sample lines: Unsanitized hypodermia. Full dorsal poetry. Homos say / What. Say what? Say when. I’m going to buttfuck / You in the mouth. I know where you live.
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July 1st, 2011 / 2:12 am
July 1st, 2011 / 2:12 am