Early 1Q84 / Murakami Roundup
At the Alfred A. Knopf blog, Chip Kidd discusses the process of designing the book jacket for the long-awaited American edition of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84.
Murakami’s Random House site offers “The Murakami Mix” READ MORE >
Alexis Orgera—
Steinbeck on rejection:
“I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt–and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails.”
–Lee in East of Eden
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Andrew Weatherhead—
My favorite basketball blogger, Bethlehem Shoals of FreeDarko, is covering the Barry Bonds trial for The Daily. I don’t know what the Barry Bonds trial is and I’ve never read The Daily, but his twitter account over the past few days has been hilarious. Best trial coverage I’ve ever read.
Second Somewhat Bi- oh wait Semi- no it’s Biennial Grammar Challenge!
This is for fun.
This is a contest. It is taken from a homework assignment in David Foster Wallace’s Extremely Advanced Composition class at Pomona College. It was a creative nonfiction workshop.
The contest is, correct these sentences for what Wallace, at least, perceived as errors in mechanics, grammar, punctuation, syntax, idiom, and/or usage. You get a point every time you are the first person to correct an error in comments (by rewriting the sentence correctly), but I’m going to wait to get lots of answers in to reveal the answers, so don’t hesitate to tackle a sentence that someone else has already tried. You may make multiple guesses on the same sentence, and you can guess out of order. Some sentences may have more than one error. One point per error. Prize TBA.
Some of these are pretty basic. Some are very obscure and speak to Wallace’s particular peeves, some of which I don’t share. The point is to figure out what he thought was wrong with these. No use arguing with a dead man.
And I quote:
English 183D 10 March 2004
” . . . every such phrase anesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.”–G. Orwell
(1) It was the yuletide season like I had never seen it before.
(2) We were in Innsbruck, Austria and we could not find a place to stay the night.
(3) We passed by the inn.
(4) It has made its way into the mainstream of verbal discourse.
(5) Cross burning began in medieval times on the green hills of Scotland, where clans used them to rally their kin and kith against enemies.
(6) “Get used to it.” I said to myself.
(7) As the president is a Christian, he prays every morning.
(8) I can support this claim with quotes from several published sources.
(9) It consisted of only two brief 50-minute workshops which one speaker enticingly described as “therapy session sized.”
Vicarious 7th Grade
This is a picture of three people whose identities are either already known or shall be implicated herein. What follows — not the picture, which happened in a cool city (not Dublin), but related discourse — took place within the last hour between (a) this contributor, (b) the lady in mention, and, separately, (c) our managing editor, a kind man who often offers emotional and grammatical counsel.
Our Atrocity Exhibition: A Theory of the Spectacle of the Banal: Within the Spectacle, A System Within A System Within A System Within A System Within A System
I lived in the desert and in the desert I had cable TV and an internet connection and the local CSA gave me basically all the food I need because I won a lifetime supply of it from some contest, I don’t know, and my great great grandfather or whatever owned the land I lived on so I didn’t have to pay rent and uh I had electricity and water by stealing it from my neighbor. My neighbor lived far away but I was creative. I didn’t pay for the internet or cable TV but I had them and I didn’t ask questions. Maybe somebody loved me and paid for them. The point is: I didn’t have anything to spend money on.
Miles away from my home in the desert there was a tent in the desert and in the tent there was a preacher, and the preacher encouraged all to stay within all that which was holy, because everything outside was sin. Sometimes I went to the tent and watch the men and women climb in the glass tank that held rattle snakes. The snakes would bite people sometimes but nobody screamed and no one collapsed in pain and I reckon they were de-poisoned, I’m not sure how snakes work, the adders in the desert leave slithers at at night my baby rattle shakes like death breeze.
Inside of my disconnection from the world at large I was exposed only to one thing: I saw the banalization of culture, I let it float over my head and wash my body, I refused to know of the existence of anything that was special, because here in this world everything to me was free and the machine of capitalism were the only gears still turning.
REBBECCA BLACK HAS BECOME A STAR
FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN
Modes of Love & Reason: A Bernadette Mayer Symposium
If you find yourself in or around Buffalo, NY this Friday, check out the day-long symposium dedicated to Mayer’s work…featuring CA Conrad, Dorothea Lasky, and many other superstars, including my wife, Caitlin Newcomer:
Hey Small Press!
I’m excited about Hey Small Press! an organization focused on getting small press books into libraries. They are the next thing in the new literary movement, which is focused not on publishing a journal or a book, but on providing a useful and specific service to the literature that is already being produced.
Hey Small Press! was founded by Don Antenen, a library employee in Kentucky, and Kate Hensley, a literature student at Harvard (and, er, editor of her own beautiful-looking Monolith Magazine). Together, they will select ten new books every month and send their curated list to libraries across the country, with info and ordering instructions. Here’s some copy from their press release:
Year after year, independent presses publish the most exciting books but lack the marketing budgets to get noticed by public libraries. The lack of marketing leads to under-representation on library shelves and lack of access for readers. HSP! exists to pick up the publicity slack and push hard to get these books noticed. Every month. Free of charge. Because amazing books should be available to everyone.
Nick Antosca—
The Paris Review is running ‘James Salter Month,’ a series of essays on Salter’s work, in anticipation of their annual Spring Revel on April 12. The most recent essay is on Salter’s famous story “Last Night.” Salter’s being honored at this year’s Revel with the Hadada Prize. Looking forward to it.