Davis Schneiderman interviews John Waters @ TNB
John: Well, no matter what, the sign of an amateur is to answer your critics. Don’t ever write a letter to a bad review because then, first of all, people didn’t even know about it the first time, maybe, and then the critic gets to answer you and put you down again. I learned a long time ago, only an amateur answers his critics. Read the bad reviews once, the good one’s twice, and put them all away and never look at them again. The only time a bad review works is when you think “that could be true a little bit,” and then you learn, and then you debate it next time. I do read reviews. I don’t believe people who say they don’t.
On Beauty
In 2004 Zadie Smith published On Beauty, a book I haven’t read because tv is too compelling. That is less of a criticism of her than me, but I appreciate the semi-open mouth. This is a companion piece to “On Booty,” about similar concerns, probably. Zadie Smith has freckles, and while I got in trouble in the past for mentioning the physical attributes of a female writer, I’ll brace myself and say — by the way I’m drunk right now — that when I think of her, I think of the man who makes love to her, and how her freckles must seem so lovely, those tiny landmines of love’s fleeting expression, while he comes inside her. Life is a condom, it just doesn’t feel right. I also didn’t read the article about some new camera that makes people look more beautiful, because, again, tuberculosis is too compelling.
Kristen Iskandrian—
Do you have nostalgia? Do you have nostalgia for “life before the internet”? What makes you nostalgic? Does what makes you nostalgic actually exist, or did it ever?
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Matthew Simmons—
A head’s up: writers who have enjoyed the On Earth As It Is project, and would like to try to write something for it, will soon have that chance. My co-editor and I will have open submissions through the month of April. (I’ll make note of it here and on our Facebook page.) Also, the work we choose will become the last round of updates for the site. The site will remain up and the stories available to be read, but we will no longer add to it.
Califono
Califone is a band to get bent with – a stethoscope to the picked over cloud country, a mason jar of one eyed mermaids drink from. Good beauty, if you can get it.
For a time now, poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Solan Jensen have been making a long anticipated film about the ramshackle blues crew. They’ve just now come back from the darkroom with their own 68 minute dream, Made A Machine By Describing A Landscape. Shot between 2004 and 2008, the film follows the acclaimed indie-rock icons on the road and in the studio with “an exploratory, intimate, and at times experimental take on both creative process and performance.”
Out now from Indiepix Films.
Petrosino on Berryman
“I don’t know how to talk about Berryman after Berryman. It’s like trying to trace the sonic imprint of hip-hop after Run-DMC revolutionized all the beats. How do you describe the dimensions of a heartbeat? Where’s the end of one thing, and the beginning of the next? Open to any page of The Dream Songs and you’ll find much of the irreverence, wordplay, and formal variety that today’s poets currently display in service of the long-form poem. In this seminal work, Berryman doesn’t weave a tight crown of traditional sonnets, nor does he recapitulate the long, loose lines of Song of Myself. His imagination is a blade cutting a unique path through his material. He develops and applies his own odd, tri-stanzaic form to each installment of The Dream Songs. He twists syntax, makes up words, and takes overt pleasure in mixing lowbrow diction with high lyric concerns. The Dream Songs is a world in its own right, and the personality of Berryman’s randy doppelgänger, Henry, is what makes that world go round.” – Kiki Petrosino on John Berryman’s His Toy, His Dream, His Rest.
Andrew Weatherhead—
Have you ever read an anthology straight through?
I’m thinking about trying it with this best of fence thing.
