ToBS R1: hating on Jonathan Franzen vs. hating on Jonathan Safran Foer
[Matchup #16 in Tournament of Bookshit]
You meet a woman and wake up to her bookshelf:
• 30-50 copies of Elle
• 1984
• [something by Chuck Klosterman]
• Everything Is Illuminated
You say, “Okay,” to her while she sleeps. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: emailing yr writing to people you dont know vs. readings w/ so many people reading no one listens
[Matchup #15 in Tournament of Bookshit]
emailing drafts of your writing to people you dont know
Right now I am picturing the recipient of one of these drafts: What, why? the recipient—let’s say she is a she—might be thinking, upon discovering this unexpected draft in her inbox. The brief note accompanying the draft says something that is nice enough, but also fundamentally presumptuous. It states the author’s reasons: “I’ve been a fan of your work [or blog, or Twitter] for quite some time now…” READ MORE >
ToBS R1: gordon lish vs. foot fetish
[Matchup #14 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Background – Feet
Casanova dabbing at some polenta around his mouth, glimpsing the toe cleavage of a passer-by, dropping his neckerchief, hanging his head, leaving his still-full plate on the table, going after her.
F. Scott Fitzgerald looking through the peephole at Zelda (hyperventilating in her chair), writing something in a notebook, lying on the carpet so he can see, under the door, her bare feet shuffling back and forth.
Goethe with writer’s block, sketching a foot, a viaduct, a foot, a cliff face, a foot, a shoe, a foot, a liberty pole, a castle, a foot, a foot, a foot.
Dostoyevsky at a bakery, queueing behind a woman, noticing her sandals, leaving loafless to follow her home, being invited in for vodka in his imagination, his stomach a sad animal.
Elvis looking at a pamphlet, blinking at the words “somatosensory cortex” rereading them for the fifth time, wishing he was holding a pineapple close to his face, wishing he was 13 again with his mother tired from work, taking off her shoes, relying on him. READ MORE >
{LMC} A Conversation with the Editors of Beecher’s
It has been a great month and some change talking about Beecher’s. I had a roundtable discussion with editors past and present about the magazine, what they look for, and what they hope for the future of Beecher’s.
Why the name Beecher’s?
Chloe Cooper Jones: Obscure Kansas history reference!
Iris Moulton: It’s meant as a reference to Henry Ward Beecher, an abolitionist who wanted to make sure Kansas would enter as a free state. He packed rifles for this cause in crates labeled Beecher’s Bibles, sneaking weapons for the cause. Chloe’s right, it is an obscure Kansas reference, and that’s part of why it endeared itself to us. And we felt like we were putting some serious ammunition in an unsuspecting package as we worked to assemble Beecher’s One.
Ben Pfeiffer: Also, we liked the simplicity of Beecher’s, the sound of it, and we liked the flexibility that name provides to future KU-MFA students: They can put their own stamp on Beecher’s while retaining continuity with earlier editorial boards. In the future, we anticipate editions with titles like Beecher’s Last Stand, Beecher’s Grocery List, and Beecher’s Carnival of Sadness. Even in the beginning we were thinking: “How do we build a magazine that lasts once we’re graduated?”
We Are Pharaoh
We Are Pharaoh
by Robert Fernandez
Canarium Books, 2011
136 pages / $14 Buy from SPD
We Are Pharaoh is Robert Fernandez’s first collection of poems, published in 2011 with Canarium Books. In this collection, we find ourselves located in a lush and tropical landscape; however, this landscape becomes quickly complicated by a fragmented lyric that ensnares all that crosses its path. While Fernandez’s poems are entangled in broad themes such as the lyric, human history, art, and the Sublime, the poems of this collection are primarily concerned with the cyclical and conflicted nature of upheaval. Although it seems impossible for one collection of poems to effectively reconcile so many disparate and limitless themes, Fernandez succeeds in creating a sense of cohesion. There is an inexplicable awe and certain joy that radiates from We Are Pharaoh as Fernandez tasks us with the challenge of tracing and teasing apart his root-like lyric—“A tangling of fruits and vases” where “the shade is verboten.” In this act of tracing, and “if [we] were to succeed,” we may discover what truths may lie “in blinding sunlight” above the foundation of this collection (84).
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December 5th, 2011 / 12:00 pm
December 5th, 2011 / 12:00 pm
ToBS R1: no-taste design aesthetic online magazine vs. facebook updates of what you ate / listened to
[Matchup #13 in Tournament of Bookshit]
In the Really Fucking Ugly corner, weighing in at less than a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a pound, is the entire coded structure of happydogmomlitjournal.blogspot.com. Happy Dog Mom Lit Journal is a newcomer on the scene, but has recently secured training with the Google AdSense and AdWords programs, showing off a stiff upper right corner text ad box that flits out ads for Moleskine journals and Tin House magazine subscriptions. Its ability to fly almost completely under the radar––to not have a single pair of eyes look at it, at all, for years, save the eyes of its own mother and master and pen-name bedecked story feeder, among the occasional algorithmic complimentary link bait––is truly amazing. It’s a stunning example of incompetence, laziness, a journey retarded before it’s even begun, and a complete lack of aesthetic sense beyond the named, repuked text-based emotional “landscapes” that can cohere, almost accidentally, under forty thousand clicks or more, here called curation. READ MORE >
Blake Butler—
The newest edition of Brad Listi’s Other People podcast features an hourlong & particularly wonderfully personal interview with Dennis Cooper.
7
Adam Robinson—
Booksellers, concerned about the prevalence of eBooks, are making their print books look better, says this article in the NYTimes. The paperback of Jay-Z’s book has shiny embossing and costs $25.
{LMC}: My Brain on Beecher’s
Beecher’s has been hanging out in my living room for a while. I read it. Summary, or “my brain on Beecher’s”: