{LMC}: A Marvel of Words
The most incredible thing about Beecher’s Magazine has already been commented on by many, but I will say it again: the thing is gorgeous. Each page is made of elegant, thick paper I don’t know how to classify except to say it’s the kind of paper on which you would print your resumé. The binding is exposed, with black string hanging off its sides and glued down in place. Then there is the cover: on an open expanse of white there is nothing but the letter “b,” its stem shaped like a rifle, with a small red “1” just above it. The “1” refers to the issue, which is Beecher’s first-ever. With this beautiful design, we are off to a good start.
The opening story is Alec Niedenthal’s “Sailing.” I have no idea what this story is about. What are we to make of lines like, “During the day I will make Roger play like he is me and I will play like I am Roger so that Roger, the barbarous queller of my passion, can finally and for the very first time bestow his suffering on me…”? Or, “Then I will have Ralph, I mean Roger, I will have Roger and Dog during the day to take care of, until father comes home and I am his pale sacrifice on the floor.”
Philadelphia Magazine vs. CA Conrad
There’s a lot of talk currently surrounding a recent article in Philadelphia Magazine and the public confrontation between the publication and CA Conrad. In the magazine’s December “List” issue, the Philly mag devoted one list to things the city would be better off without, i.e. “10 Things We Need to Get Rid Of” (seemingly available in print only). Included on the chopping block was the city’s long-running tradition of the Mummers Parade. The Philadelphia poet disapproved, claiming that the Mummers was a street level, middle class event dear to the city, its history, and its people and that the magazine was exercising a characteristically elitist, classist, 1% attitude. He first voiced his complaints on the Philadelphia Magazine Facebook page requesting they apologize to Mummers. The magazine’s online editor eventually blocked him from commenting, which resulted in Conrad visiting the office to speak with the magazine personally and subsequently being removed by security. You can begin to follow the story with the editor’s PR-ish letter on CA Conrad’s comments and behavior, then move to CA Conrad’s account of the event and his being escorted out of the office building. I would also encourage you look at the comments made by the public on these articles and the action on the magazine’s Facebook page; the majority seems to be supporting Conrad. Some are especially outraged that editor Tom McGrath (as a Philly culture editor) didn’t even know who CA Conrad was, or that the magazine would Facebook-flaunt that Conrad had been removed from their offices.
Personally, upon just hearing this story, I admire Conrad’s determination to voice his opinion, objecting to and requesting dialogue about the magazine’s choices. His walk to the Philadelphia Magazine’s offices on behalf of a cultural tradition or group of people he values is a tangible, powerful act. I like the artist like this, refusing to be safely contained as the Philadelphia Magazine attempted to do in denying Conrad visibility on Facebook or in an office, instead requesting he write an e-mail (which basically doesn’t exist in the public realm). I think his choice solidifies the role of the artist or poet in his/her city. He expanded the immediacy and impact of his voice by committing the physicality to back it.
But this event also raises a lot of questions for me about the responsibility of an artist or individual to their community, about the visibility or method of communication being given, taken, or denied here, etc. I’d love some thoughts as this sinks in.
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Katie Smither is an artist and writer living in Austin. She works at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas and does a lot of things on the side, or strike that and reverse it.
ToBS R1: NaNoWriMo vs. ‘What is your novel about?’
[Matchup #12 in Tournament of Bookshit]
On “What is your novel about?”…
The kneejerk hatred of “Wiyna?” has partly to do with the dread of trying to encompass an entire novel in a soundbite, along with the sense that revealing something that took a lot of effort and patience to write a novel about, something that the author may have spent a long time probing the aboutness of, something that now probably has an amount of sacredness to the author, to casually remark, “It’s about…” can be taken as an attempt to devalue/demystify the novel from the author’s point of view.
But for as loaded as the question comes at the author, it is almost a necessary question for the asker on a primary level. To be in conversation with an author who says, “I wrote a novel.” and says no more, it’s human nature to at least think the question “What’s it about?” or “What is it like?” or “Can you please give me some kind of concrete idea or image related to your novel so I can attach it to my memory of ‘you wrote a novel.'” One reason the asker may not completely appreciate the weight of the question is because many products of mainstream entertainment have obvious aboutnesses. For the sake of casual conversation, “Schindler’s List” is simply about the holocaust. “J. Edgar” is about J. Edgar Hoover. “Superman,” “Spiderman,” and “Batman,” are about Superman, Spiderman, and Batman, respectively. When your novel’s title is a bit abstract like “There Is No Year” or “Us,” the mind has a hard time nailing down even a thread of aboutness. And human beings like aboutnesses. They like people who like aboutnesses. So answering the question politely may leave an impression on the asker that this author is a nice person and maybe we can be friends now. READ MORE >
John Ashbery is a chill bro
Cool questions!
ToBS R1: literary marriage vs. child of famous author’s novel
[Matchup #11 in Tournament of Bookshit]
So what about Percy and Mary Shelley? That’s a literary marriage I can get into. They lived in a big house in Switzerland and floated around an ambiguous sexual circle and wrote pretty fun shit. I mean, if you’re going to get married to a writer that seems like a fairly successful way to go about it. Personally I’ve always been pretty wary of the idea of being… with… a writer. So maybe the open thing works? Maybe the only reason to marry a writer is so you can have sex with your bros and still be accepted by society? I like Keats and Byron; they seem chill. But that’s not even the best thing about the marriage. Only through such a union would any of us have seen Frankenstein, and I like Frankenstein. The problem with this argument lies in the fact that the sci-fi/horror story directly refutes literary marriage’s win. Mary Shelley was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Wollstonecraft was a famous author, and Frankenstein is a novel. So it’s a draw. Disregard the Shelleys. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: announcing yourself as ‘available for interviews’ vs. following several thousand people on twitter
[Matchup #10 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Announcing yourself as ‘available for interviews’ seems fine to me. I don’t see anything wrong with letting people know that you’re available to be interviewed. It’s different than saying ‘interview me’ (command) or ‘I need people to interview me’ (desperate) because it conveys information in a non-obligatory manner that also makes the person announcing it seem busy and ‘prestigious,’ to some degree, via the implication that s/he isn’t always available to be interviewed.
Following several thousand people on Twitter seems like pussy shit to me. Following a small amount of people means you either fuck with people you like and/or follow people based on the quality of their tweets. Following no one means you don’t fuck with anyone else’s tweets. Following several thousand people means you fuck with whomever and/or are trying to garner ‘follow backs’ to increase your amount of followers. To me, following a small amount of people or no one is hard; following several thousand people is pussy shit. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: “everybody has a story” vs. “show don’t tell”
[Matchup #9 in Tournament of Bookshit]
“Everybody has a story”
But I don’t like the story of a woman unsatisfied with her marriage, her greying hair still shoulder length from the 60s, taking a creative writing class at the community college, getting all nervous in her Hyundai parked outside under a leafless tree, going over in pen, again, the final revisions of her 3000-word story: the one about a woman her age, of average median household income, whose husband is also a strong but silent type reoccurring satellite figure in her empty life; who, like the amateur in jean overalls now crying in her Korean-made car, also drinks gin in her pajamas at night while playing solitaire, in an unnamed though evocatively New England-y town, whose racial demographic is similar to hers, except in the story the friendly mail man who dies of cancer because something needs to fucking happen is African-American, which her instructor (a man with both a novel and pony-tail “out”) told her she should include before she submits it to Glimmer Train, because those ladies are into black guys probably. READ MORE >
ToBS R1: ‘is the author of’ vs. bowties
[Matchup #8 in Tournament of Bookshit]
BOW TIES
Seems like boys (girls later) who wear bow ties are either those who’ve never seen their own asshole or they’re so preoccupied with their own asshole they carry a snapshot of their asshole in the leather handbag they refer to as a ‘tote.’ Either a douche or a douche. There are exceptions, of course, as there always is with FASHION, that grand meatus of illusion, and so we’ll give pervs like Pee-Wee Herman a pass ’cause he knew that in order to sport a ridiculous trademark you gotta show a little dick. The tools I’m talking about are the casual bow-tie wearers, the straight twink walking down San Francisco’s Valencia Street with a Vonnegut tattoo whose ‘girl’ owns more accessories than books, and who has never read Tom Wolfe but knows enough to pass him off as a ‘fashionable guy’ and there’s something about that bow around a str8 twink’s neck that makes me think of a half-assed suicide attempt, a bottle of Tylenol PM chased with a bottle of $10 corner store Gnarly Head Pinot Noir, or ‘X marks the spot’ like DECAPITATE ME HERE FOR GOOD HEAD. I’ve attended three readings where the readers wore bow ties and I imagined their soft putty nutsack flesh twisted around the neck instead of the $19 American Apparel polka-dotted cotten. I attended San Francisco’s Literary Death Match and met Todd Zuniga and stared at his bow tie the same way my ex-boyfriend stared at women’s tits. Seems like bow ties would be much cooler if they were made of ball flesh, not to mention pleasing a man’s sack would be easier/more accessible, tho it depends on the dickhead. I don’t really know how I feel about girls in bow-ties. I mean, I like the gender-queer bois who sport ties, but straight girls who sport bow ties seem like bitches who don’t give head and powder their puss. I guess if a girl has to wear something around her neck I’d rather it be a dog-collar attached to a leash, but that seems mean. Maybe if Vonnegut had sold these instead of overrated paperbacks, I’d appreciate the attempt to convey intelligence through neckware. Tie a bomb around your neck and whisper ‘god is in the details.’ READ MORE >
A “Portable MFA?”
The Portable MFA in Creative Writing
by the New York Writers Workshop
Writers Digest Books, 2006
280 pages / $8.99 (electronic) Buy from Amazon
Rating: 4.7
In August, something called “The Portable MFA in Creative Writing,” written by a group of people from the New York Writers Workshop, was offered as a free download on Amazon. Among its claims: “Get the core knowledge of a prestigious MFA education without the tuition.”
Reader, I downloaded.
READ MORE >
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December 1st, 2011 / 4:17 pm
December 1st, 2011 / 4:17 pm
ToBS R1: Calling yrself editor-in-chief of online jrnl vs posting pics of other people’s books on facebook
[Matchup #7 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Why do you call yourself the editor-in-chief (or even the chief editor) of an online lit journal? This isn’t The New York Times. It’s a fart with a header. It’s a blogspot. You are the editor-in-chief of a blogspot. I hope you cite your role as editor-in-chief of the blogspot when you submit to other blogspots. I hope mad honeys come to your release party for the blogspot. I hope you get a lot of ass.
Lucky for you there is a literary action that is a shade lamer and that is…
Posting photos of other people’s shitty first books on fb with the caption “Look what came in the mail! Going to be a great weekend!”
No. It is not going to be a great weekend. READ MORE >