Lydia Millet Interview at Willow Springs
Sam Ligon interviewed Lydia Millet in Willow Springs. You can read the full interview here (pdf).
Millet: I was asked recently whether I considered my taste to be minimalist in prose, and I never thought of myself that way, but I do like a lot of space on the page. That is to say, not actual physical white space, but I like there to be space, as with, say, some Nabokov, where there’s a lot of metaphysical space that’s somehow created by the language. I don’t like to be overwhelmed with words. I don’t want someone to try to do some “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” with their verbiage. I want there to be room for the silence of the mind in the reading.
Well That’s Interesting: 3B Brooklyn
After college John Woods navigated a hectic maze of streets in downtown Brooklyn and dropped me in front of a fried food restaurant. He said, “Where is it,” and I pointed to a little sign in the corner of a window that said, simply, “3B.” I called a number someone named Matt had emailed me earlier in the day and was relieved to hear (your htmlgiant friend and mine) Catherine Lacey pick up. Into the phone she said, “3B Bed and Breakfast, this is Catherine.” I liked hearing a young person say something professional. It’s about time I got some respect around here. Catherine came down and let me in. John drove away, like my mom. READ MORE >
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March 5th, 2011 / 11:29 am
March 5th, 2011 / 11:29 am
Miller, Monica. Slaves to Fashion (2009)
Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora.
The Pale King Changes
Today at Conversational Reading, Scott Esposito linked to a Google document that showed differences between the recent David Foster Wallace excerpt in The New Yorker titled “Backbone” and a transcription of Wallace reading the same piece in 2000, what Wallace then called ‘a fragment of a longer thing.’
Esposito writes:
It’s common knowledge now that Wallace did not get close to finishing The Pale King, and that the book that will be published on April 15 represents a heavily edited and stitched together version of what Wallace left behind. Clearly, this book has been made to serve the many readers out there who would like to see a completed, standardized version of The Pale King.
For more, go to the full post.
Roxane Gay—
Jennifer Egan wrote a really interesting (and also unexpectedly moving) article about Lori Berenson, recently paroled in Peru after a very long incarceration. I didn’t realize she was both a fiction writer and journalist.
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Matthew Simmons—
Protest songs—once a total downer—can now INCLUDE STAR WARS REFERENCES! Things are better now. (In all seriousness, though, you should send IfIHadAHiFi a buck for their anti-Scott Walker song “Imperial Walker.” We’re all Wisconsin now.)
Look! Freaks and Feathers on the West Coast
Mike Young and Jamie Iredell are flying out to the west coast today (on an airplane, I think). They want to read to people on the west coast. They are nice people. They are calling their reading tour “Freaks and Feathers.” If you’re on the west coast and interested, check out their reading schedule.
Pilot Books, Seattle WA (TODAY 7pm)
Ampersand, Portland OR (3/5/11 7:30pm)
Ashland Public Library, Ashland OR (3/6/11 7pm)
Rancho Parnassus, San Francisco CA (3/7/11 7pm)
John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis CA (3/8/11 8pm)
KKUP 91.5 FM, Cupertino (3/9/11 8pm)
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo CA (3/10/11 tba)
Skylight Books, Los Angeles CA (3/12/11 5pm)
If you can, say hi! They’d like to see you too.
School of Hard Knocks
Frank Bill
There is a lot of talk about the MFA, pro and con, and a corresponding vilification or romanticization of the autodidact who goes it alone and succeeds. As a writer, I’m glad I’m better because I got one. As a reader, I say: Who cares whether the writer did or didn’t get one? All that matters is whether or not what’s on the page knocks me out.
My buddy Frank Bill went it alone, and he’s doing pretty well these days. Soon FSG will publish his short story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana and his novel Donnybrook. They’re gritty stories that might put you in mind of Larry Brown or Donald Ray Pollock or Bonnie Jo Campbell. Today he posted a brief synopsis of the hard road from there to here. It is full of long hours reading and writing and stuff like this:
I gave up my studies in Chinese martial arts to write. I lost two grandparents. My dog died. My wife lost both of her grandparents within six months. My mother was diagnosed with an incurable cancer. She went through a second divorce. I went from 14 years on night shift to day work. The economy went to shit.
Reading it, I thought: Here is a guy who works harder than any seven human beings. That’s no guarantee that you’ll ever find readers, but that plus some talent plus having something to say plus the ability to be like a small child who will never take no for an answer plus some good luck might do the trick. Now the good luck is the reader’s. I can’t wait for his books to come into print, so I can buy copies for everyone I know. Here’s a link to his blog post.
How I Got Here
Becoming is weird. I have theories: how I got here, what lead me, what pushed me out of one interest and into the next. I don’t get too high on rethinking and visiting my quick past, which, if I had to guess, is a big reason why I’m happy most of the time. I’m not that interested in my past, not as reportage, not as history. But consider this an essay in its primordial meaning: an attempt at a history. That black space with the electricity below it right above, that’s it.
When I was little I frequently made stuff. Stories, goofs. I was really into drawing, and applied to one of those mail-order Drawing Schools (to prove my might I had to draw a weird turtle boy’s face and include some mom money). My mom and dad, ever the best ever, obliged and encouraged me. Always. Throughout this entire post, remember that thread of encouragement. I’ve never lacked it from those close to me. If I’m not lucky I’m not anything else. Art class in school fed me, kept me wanting. I remember getting into a shoving match in second grade — was the kid’s name Kurt? — over who had drawn the better Star Wars TIE fighter. I fake hyperventilated when the teacher came to break it up, feigning something bodily urgent, and was made to stand against a wall and breathe slow. Kurt got punished, maybe spanked. I don’t know. It was Texas.
))$((
If you click on this candy comes out a sack of cowshit smelling like sea salt for sale, not for money but for time, clicking on 'download excerpt' will give you an excerpt of the whole thing, I hope that's okay!