Two Things
I’m working on some longer things to post here over the next couple weeks but in the meantime:
At Slate, Robert Pinsky offers three rules for writing a book review.
Anil Dash writes about how to foster productive online communities on your website by managing comment threads.
Subcrime
Art is crime because it departs from municipal, state, national, and moral codes, introduces puncture, rupture, lawlessness, collapse. Sometimes Art-as-crime reveals the criminality in the current hygenic system or makes visible a kind of filth that is under threat of extermination. But is the reverse true– is crime Art? If I’m being honest, I ‘d have to admit that some crimes are also Art. I think Fascism had/has a big art component– the brutal State was made like a brutal artwork. This is a sad and flummoxing fact and this is why people so often come back to Fascism when they’re trying to grapple (or not grapple) with Art as maximalism.
Maybe it’s just more accurate to say that Art and Crime are both limit experiences– sometimes they double with each other, sometimes they split from each other, sometimes they feed off of each other, sometimes they destroy each other, sometimes each causes the collapse of the other.
At six-thirty or seven I’d get up, scramble Marilyn some eggs–she was eighteen, I was nineteen; we’d been married that August–make toast and coffee. She’d go out to work, and I’d start writing. I’d work all day, with a couple breaks for extracurricular sex in the local men’s rooms and a stop at the supermarket for dinner makings. Right before five, I’d start cooking again. In general, I believe I work a lot harder today than I did then. Today I’m a five-o’clock-in-the-morning riser. Although I do stare at the wall a lot.
The Authentic Animal, Caption Contest / Book Giveaway
Many Dave Maddens exist in the world. There’s the one from The Partridge Family, the one who is a video game executive, the one who is a musician, the one who is an Australian police commissioner, and the one who is a writer who wrote a book that will be published by St. Martin’s Press two weeks from today entitled The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy.
To celebrate its release, Dave and I came up with an idea: I roamed the web and found various pictures of taxidermied animals, which I sent to Dave. He then responded to each of the pictures using his vast knowledge of the field…you’ll find the pictures and his responses after the jump…you’ll also find a picture without a caption and this is where you come in…
Dave has graciously agreed to give away a free signed copy of the book to the person who comes up with the most best caption to that final image. You have one week from today. He’ll select the winner next Tuesday.
For those of you who aren’t clever, or who aren’t selected by Dave, I highly recommend pre-ordering the book now…it’s about taxidermy folks…you can be sure it kicks ass. Also, you can find out more about the author here.
click
I need the structure, or an urge to the structure, a tickling vision, a hint or itch or organic flux to the structure (this is why I teach so many scaffolding-of-fiction based classes—we all have our biases) to begin the writing, to flow. What do you need? What do you need for the click to kick in (Brick: It’s like a switch, clickin’ off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden there’s peace.) ?
What sends you on your writing way?
I’ll Drown My Book
I irrationally don’t like Kickstarter. Mostly because I have no money to contribute. I would like, however, to introduce to you the first project I’ve ever donated to.
I’ll Drown My Book will be the first collection of conceptual writing by women.
Conceptual writing is emerging as a vital 21st century literary movement and Les Figues Press wants to represent the contributions of women in this defining moment. By supporting this project, you will ensure that women claim their literary space. Edited by Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody and Vanessa Place, the book includes work by 64 women from 10 countries. Contributors respond to the question: What is conceptual writing? I’ll Drown My Book offers feminist perspectives within this literary phenomenon.
Blake Butler—
A new Brian Evenson story, “Anskan House,” appears online as an excerpt from the new issue of Redivider.
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Art Observed (Opening Salvo)
Artists have a responsibility to indulge and nourish their ideas, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first. This weekly blog post, Art Observed, is one of those ideas. It seeks to function as both an abstract, non-linear diary of sorts, and as an exercise in observation and image curating. My artwork relies heavily on the juxtaposition of images, their cohesiveness and contradiction, as well as the conclusions that the mind reaches when forced to reconcile the two. For the most part, I will opt to let each set of 10 images speak for itself, but will include some brief commentary if I find it necessary or illuminating. – TD
Book + Beer: Murakami and Flat12
Cats. Clinical sex. Whipping up a quick miso soup. Music. Two fingers of bourbon before you go to bed. Psychic teenagers and the Sheep Man. Wells and tunnels. A quest. Death and loss. You know the material. Who in the fuck even reads Murakami? Go ahead, take my Indie Card away. (It wasn’t doing much for me anyway, expect for the 10% discount on skinny eyeglasses.) Sometimes I’m just in the mood. A sort of literary sorbet. Yo, H, how did you get into writing?
In April 1978, I was watching a baseball game in the Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, the sun was shining, I was drinking a beer. And when Dave Hilton of the Yakult Swallows made a perfect hit, at that instant I knew I was going to write a novel.
Oh fuck off, dude.
As someone here said once, Murakami can really write about food. And drinking beer.
Last night I was at this reading In Indianapolis and had several Flat 12 Half Cycle IPAs. The Half Cycle is so named due to its blending of single and double IPA characteristics. Extremely hoppy! Made dry hopped with a pound of high alpha American hops in every barrel! (You are allowed to use three exclamation marks your entire writing life, and I just used two.) Shit. I could feel the alcohol fluttering through my mouth, into brain, fluttering past brain, into ceiling. I felt like a tube. The ceiling was golden.