I Am Not Sidney Poitier
I Am Not Sidney Poitier
by Percival Everett
Graywolf Press, 2009
270 pages / $16.00 Buy from Graywolf Press
Rating: 8.4
Adjectives frequently used to describe Percival Everett include “intelligent” and “hilarious,” and are also apt descriptors for his seventeenth (!) novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier. It is difficult to imagine a funnier book dealing with issues of race and identity, or a more sophisticated comic romp. The humor (and confusion) begins with the title, which refers to the novel’s main character, literally named Not Sidney Poitier. The “ill-starred fruit of a hysterical pregnancy” that lasts two years, Not Sidney is an orphan raised by Ted Turner who comes to resemble the actor Sidney Poitier. The unexpected death of Not Sidney’s mother leaves him with incredible wealth in the form of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corp.
4 Comments
August 4th, 2011 / 12:04 pm
August 4th, 2011 / 12:04 pm
Ontology of the Cat Poet
THE BIRTH OF THE CAT POET’S CAPACITY FOR PASSION
OR, THE MAKING OF A MAN CAT OF LETTERS
Witness my house’s cat George Jackson pen his magnum opus. Below are some notes provided by Susan Sontag from her essay on Marina Tsvetaeva titled “A Poet’s Prose.”
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Being a poet is to define oneself as, to persist (against odds) in being, only a poet.
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Actually, the frontier between prose and poetry has become more and more permeable — unified by the ethos of maximalism characteristic of the modern artist: to create work that goes as far as it can go.
[GEORGE SAYS: “NO. POETRY IS THE HIGHEST FORM. I REFUSED TO ADMIT THE UNREFINED SCRIBBLINGS OF A NON-POET.”]
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Homage to others is the complement to accounts of oneself: the poet is saved from vulgar egoism by the strength and purity of his or her admirations.
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Poet’s prose is mostly about being a poet. And to write such autobiography, as to be a poet, requires a mythology of the self. The self described is the poet self, to which the daily self (and others) is often ruthlessly sacrificed. The poet self is the real self, the other one is the carrier; and when the poet self dies, the person cat dies. (To have two selves is the definition of a pathetic fate.) Much of the prose of poets—particularly in the memoiristic form—is devoted to chronicling the triumphant emergence of the poet self. (In the journal or diary, the other major genre of poet’s prose, the focus is on the gap between the poet and the daily self, and the often untriumphant transactions between the two. The diaries—for example, Baudelaire’s or Blok’s—abound with rules for protecting the poet self; desperate maxims of encouragement; accounts of dangers, discouragements, and defeats.)
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In prose the poet is always mourning a lost Eden; asking memory to speak, or sob.
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All of Tsvetaeva’s George’s work is an argument for rapture; and for genius, that is, for hierarchy: a poetics of the Promethean.
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To be a poet is a state of being, elevated being: Tsvetaeva George speaks of her his love for “what is highest.”
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There is the same quality of emotional soaring in her his prose as in her his poetry: no modern writer takes one as close to an experience of sublimity.
I am drinking gin & wrote about 7 songs as they came up on random in my itunes while they played part 3
Dr. Dre, “Deez Nuts,” The Chronic
Damn. The sample after the phone call at the beginning of this song with the dude with the weird voice talking about nuts makes me feel scared. I honestly wish I was black. I just sat here listening for a full two minutes of the song before I wrote that. I don’t think it’s bad to say that. People seem to get mad if you say things about things like that. My friend Ben told me the other day that he realized that all of my characters I’ve ever written are black. I want to believe that. This song is part of the album that made me start drinking gin when I finally started drinking, which wasn’t until I was 26, or maybe 27. I told everyone who drank that they were stupid for it a lot I think. Then I was just doing it. I wish I was the keyboard in this song; actually I wish that the most.
Mogwai, “You Don’t Know Jesus,” Rock Action
That’s a good title for a song. I don’t even care what the song does after the title. I think more people should be attacked for things about god but indirectly like a song title that kids who chill in rooms probably put on and laugh about. Maybe this shitty ass band laughs about it too. I have to check to see how long this song is because I don’t know if I can take guitars for this long. Fuck, it’s 8 minutes and three seconds. That’s the worst. No song with guitars in it should be that long. Guy Piciotto has that songs where he says he realizes that he hates the sound of guitars, and it seems like that’s like me hating books and words. Had a conversation about that last night, like would I hate teeth if I were a dentist, is that my personality, or is it more situational. God, fuck this song. This is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard with all this swirling treble. Who decided Mogwai was okay to think was good. It seems like they were a band that could have just existed in their house playing shitty shows in whatever city they are from forever and self releasing bullshit for whoever forever and never been something people talk about except a guy who works at a label picked them up and then they became whatever they are. Things like that happen. I wish I was listening to “Deez Nuts” again instead of this song…. Let me slow down a second. Maybe things can be good… Just looked, three more minutes left, and noticed this album is called “Rock Action.” I forgot about that, fuck this shithole song. No really, fuck these guys.
Brian Wilson, “Our Prayer/Gee,” Smile
They are harmonizing. They always do that. One of the first records I ever had was “Endless Summer.” My mom got it for me at a garage sale I think. I liked looking at the cover of it a lot and playing the music. I don’t think I understood the music but I understood that my mom bought it for me and that meant more than other things. I’m older now. I am scared of songs that make me remember things because then they can be weapons. They are going “bom bom bom a bom” or whatever. That seems not such a weapon, but maybe more then is one cuz of that.
Wire, “Let’s Panic Later,” 154
When I had a, uh, class at Georgia Tech for web design we had to build a website to show we could do certain things and I made one about how much I hated British music. That’s not so true anymore. I wish I had a pretzel as big as me that I could lay against and hump and eat at the same time. Seems like these guys are “experimenting” on this song, like they said “hey let’s experiment” and like went in the booth and were looking at each other all weird through the glass like surprised what they were doing and yet intense at the same time so the performance seemed legitimate. I wonder if they are proud of this still. Panicking now seems better than later.
The Melvins, “Goose Freight Train,” Stoner Witch
I saw these guys a few times, they were wearing cloaks that looked like dresses. It’s really quiet here tonight in my house except for that I’m playing music. I used to think that music could keep you safe, like if you were playing it it filled the air and if people were outside your house they wouldn’t be able to move through the silence to hurt you because the silence made it impossible for them to come through the same way. I like the name “Goose Freight Train” but I don’t know what it has to do with this song. I see a big goose going on a track through the night kind of smiling and brighter than everything around it. This song reminds me of mowing the lawn. Couldn’t help but just wondering after I paused between that last sentence and thinking about what would be next if I am stupid. I’m probably stupider now than I was three years ago but smarter than I was five years ago. Does aging work like that? I feel like I can feel me aging with this guitar line, like it is counting time in a nonmusical way and more in the way people actually age. I don’t know how I haven’t misspelled anything in this whole paragraph while typing, only the word “Melvins” is underlined in red. I want to get licked in between the eyes by
The Minutemen, “Spillage,” Double Nickels on the Dime
I mean, all their songs sound the same. It’s a cool song, the one song, but it’s all of them. Gian just texted me, “I like that dude. I like his sense of humor.” Trying to remember who he was talking about. D. Boon and Cliff Burton probably chill. My TV seems to be watching me.
Young Jeezy, “Time,” Trap or Die 2
Man his voice is super all tricked out on this song, like he’s over enunciating his southern accent. It works pretty good like when Project Pat does that. There are people singing in the background here, makes me feel like I want to walk out of the house to the church across the street and walk inside it and stand there and see if I can see something. I actually don’t think I’ve ever heard this Jeezy song somehow. My computer is full of a lot of songs I’ve never heard and are just sitting there inside this machine. People worked on them and did things to make them and they are there. Ie9f=0eif0uer-ufadohf a slofjalksjd flkja sld. He is saying “tie-um” when he says “time” and that’s confusing. I feel ugly, but not physically really, just in general. I have eaten tortilla chips for dinner every night this week. Looked at the top of the screen and it says “Chrome” which feels better to see than “Safari.” What is happening to everyone. Stop saying “tie-um,” dude, it feels messed up. I want to go on a really long walk that feels like a short walk at the end of it and I just sit down there wherever seems like the end of the walk.
Blake Butler—
lol re: “Time spent on the blog is time spent away from something else: writing another book, contacting book clubs, taking a part-time job and investing that money in advertising or a publicist.” from Author Blogging: You’re Doing It Wrong by Livia Blackburne.
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Sean Lovelace—
To have your writing solicited, and then to be rejected by said solicitor, is good for you.
I asked a bunch of writers to write down everything they know about Glimmer Train magazine w/o research
i know it is called glimmer train. i picked one up in a barnes and noble once. i never read a story in it except for if it was republished in an anthology maybe. i submitted to glimmer train once i think a long time ago. i never got interested in glimmer train for some reason.
– Darby Larson
Untitled
Untitled
by Paul French
Beggar Press, 2011
784 pages / $19.95 Buy from Beggar Press
Rating: 0.0
Paul French’s Untitled (2011) is either his most brilliant or most obnoxious novel yet—probably, it seems, his most obnoxious. What’s brilliant about French’s novel is this: for Untitled French has invented, not just fictional characters (as you might get in a realist novel), not even just a fictional world (as you might get in a sci-fi novel), not even just a fictional universe (as you might get in a fantasy novel)—Untitled isn’t set in our universe, it isn’t even set in our dimension. For the novel French has invented fictional systems of mathematics, of physics; electromagnetism, nuclear forces, gravity, French has done away with them altogether. French’s characters aren’t made of cells, and within those cells atoms, and within those atoms protons and neutrons, and within those protons and neutrons quarks. French’s characters aren’t even length/width/height-type characters: whatever dimension Untitled is set in, it’s not the traditional dimension in which one would set a novel (the third). READ MORE >
53 Comments
August 3rd, 2011 / 12:05 pm
August 3rd, 2011 / 12:05 pm
Oil Changes to Garlic
Jono Tosch is a poet and artist who blogs at Oil Changes, a rolling document that knocks you over the head with its absurdist, agricultural, and poetic thought. Jono bangs a drum similar to what I imagine Thoreau would kick and scream like today were he to be wormholed from the past and into our era. And like Thoreau, Jono is a self reliant, rare to ask a hand for help unless it was of a total necessity.
But now, Jono is asking for help, help to fund a month of “agricultural research” on the famed garlic farm of Stanley Crawford, author of Log of the S.S. Unguentine. By helping him make his way from Massachusetts to New Mexico, Jono promises to trade ” top-notch road and farm content if you pony up some gas $$$.”
Art Observed (Denouements, Dead Ends, and Intermissions)
Some of these pictures are honest glimpses at moments I’ve had or places I’ve been, while others are staged for their drama or to convey a certain mood, and most are taken with my cell phone camera (a.k.a. faketography). This week: Play possum, always look on the bright side, watch your step, and don’t get captured. – TD
It’s Okay to Hug Your Ten Years Ago Writing Self
I’ve been going through my older writing I never did anything with to see if I can send any of it out. In 2000 and 2001, I wrote my master’s thesis, a short story collection called How Small The World. I wrote a bunch of other, mostly insane stories about, well, most of the themes I’m still writing about. I was 26. I was writing literary fiction for the first time after writing genre fiction, erotica, for years, so I was trying to learn the rules as I wrote and also trying to be less filthy. I only sometimes succeeded on that front. Some of the stories hold up in that I’m not totally humiliated. Don’t get me wrong. There is embarrassment but I’ll survive. The stories are certainly workshoppy at times, a bit ponderous, slow moving, introspective, and far more sedate than what I’m currently writing but they’re also publishable with work. This is how I spent my summer vacation–identifying the strange preoccupations I had ten years ago and pretending I don’t have a whole new set of preoccupations now.