Mike Young—
Are you excited for Berl’s Poetry Book Shop’s new permanent location in DUMBO? I am. Poetry trivia and book art exhibitions: yes. Contrary* to all the chemical hazing and missile rattling, it feels like there is a nice breeze of new poetry-heavy bookstores opening all over (see: So & So Books in North Carolina). Plus I’ve heard about people starting their own Mellow Pages style small press libraries in Oakland and Austin, and Vouched has a new San Francisco wing, with an Austin wing coming soon, I think. Where else? Let’s make a Lonely Planet Cool New Book Places in the comments.
*(I know, I know)
2
Interview w/ Melanie Page of Grab the Lapels
I recently stumbled across Grab the Lapels, a book review venue that describes itself as “ladies only — the books are written by women, and read by a woman.” In light of continuing conversations about both the VIDA count and related gender critiques in the publishing world, and the environment of literary criticism in general, I found the concept of this site really interesting. Melanie Page, the brain behind Grab the Lapels, was kind enough to answer some brief questions:
***
JL: For those that don’t know, can you explain the concept behind Grab the Lapels?
MP: Grab the Lapels is a website (so far, it’s just me) that posts reviews of prose—but everything reviewed is written by women. The only reason I don’t do poetry is because it’s not a comfortable place for me to review well. Not all reviews are 100% gushing/positive, but all of them are respectful toward the author. Reviews are posted on the 1st, 7th, 14th, and 21st of the month. They are posted not only at Grab the Lapels, but on Google+, Amazon Reviews, Goodreads, Facebook, and are linked to The Next Best Book Blog‘s site. The books I review can be genre, innovative, mainstream, whatever.
JL: Can you talk a bit about your past experience reviewing for other publications and what led you to start a review site specifically for and by women?
MP: I started with one review in The Collagist after Cris Mazza posted on Facebook that she wanted someone to review her forthcoming book. After I caught a typo in a book review at JMWW I was brought on to review there, and have done so regularly since 2012. I’ve also written for the Notre Dame Review, Necessary Fiction, The Next Best Book Blog, and American Book Review. In some cases, like NDR and ABR, the reviewer has little choice about what she reviews, but for the other publications I was often given a list of books from which I could choose. Most of the time the list was full of men and very few women, which bothered me. I started only choosing books by women after I reviewed a book that I thought was shallow and misogynistic (downright degrading, really) for one magazine. My review was so negative that the magazine shied away from publishing it, so I posted it on my Goodreads account and ventured out on my own.
Vote for your favorite experience
I guess this post is about the illusion of choice, and the anxiety of it.
The two big news stories of the day, aren’t really stories, and don’t really matter, unless you’re some kind of power player in NYC politics, or someone trying to make a living by manufacturing iPhones in an industrial park in China.
Home Alone
What if Macaulay Culkin’s parents never came home after Christmas and the movie just ended. What if his Munchian “scream” stayed glued that way, in some German expressionist hell. The aftershave wore off, his soft cheeks speckled with facial hair growth as testosterone came, the perceived alienation of adolescence followed by the real one—of traffic jams, grocery store lines, and distracted doctors who don’t look you in the eye—of adulthood, our walking parody of actualized nightmares. Every week or so, new burglars (subconsciously, pedophiles) would try to break in, and Kevin’s contraptions of evasion would become more and more sophisticated, personal and sadistic, until they resembled the death machines in Saw. In rare footage of Jeffrey Dahmer being filmed during Christmas by his father in the living room next to a tree, ridden with then technology’s VCR static, he leans away with such repulsion—for whom, one wonders—that you mistake him for a vanishing point, like some Renaissance man finally understanding depth perception. After the bodies and/or their parts were discovered in Dahmer’s apartment, they tore down the famous-yet-unrentable building, leaving all the residents at the whim of city housing. Jeffrey’s neighbor and former friend, a big black Baptisty woman, recalled having her “sanity pushed to the limit” having eaten sandwiches at his home. “I have probably eaten someone’s body part,” she says, addressing the camera in eerie second person, “how dare you do this to me?”
Publishing Genius 2.0 Kickstarter: 28 Hours Left!
George Washington once said, “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature.” Over at the Publishing Genius 2.0 Kickstarter, you can patronize both science AND literature by helping Adam Robinson publish 5 works of literature in 2014. That man has publishing down to a science! Once you contribute, you can enter for a chance for me to double your reward by commenting here. Or right here is fine, too; I’ll check both. Do it for science! Do it because George Washington said so during history! Speaking of history, here’s one of Publishing Genius Press itself. And if you like that dose of amiable reality about the mighty effort and unsurpassed talent it takes to build an independent press empire, you’ll be thrilled to hear that any Kickstarter donation of $25 or more gets you Adam’s e-book, Our Primary Focus, a history-in-interviews of innovations in the book business. SO hurry hurry and dig out as many pocket Washingtons as you can find and patronize PGP!
Exercise Routines of Skinny White Male Writers
I graduated 200th in my class out of 400 students. This talent for ridding the middle also translated to sports. During gym, when Coach Monty split the class into the jocks and the fats, I was first lumped into the fats because I was tall and lanky, a weird looking kid who appeared a bit too pretty and totally indifferent to the movement of a ball. But I would dominate the fats so I’d be placed with the jocks, and thusly be dominated by the jocks, and then sent back to the fats where I glided in for uncontested layup after layup. Once, I got rim, and someone referred to me as “speed demon.”
The Monotony of Work: Justin Sirois
Do you know this guy?
If you don’t, you should. His name is Justin Sirois and he is number one. (I stole “X is number one” from Noah Cicero.) If you asked me, I’d say: Justin Sirois is ace.
Ace Justin Sirois has an app. Who the fuck has their own app?!! Check it out. 4.99 never seemed so attractive. What can you get for 4.99? Not a pack of smokes, but you can get this app. Booms.
Author Spotlight & I Like __ A Lot & Massive People & Technology / 2 Comments
September 10th, 2013 / 12:42 pm
September 10th, 2013 / 12:42 pm
An Interview with Alissa Nutting
Alissa Nutting is the author of Tampa, a novel, and Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, a collection of short stories. Both are spectacular. Today, Alissa had a conversation with me about her new novel, how it was written, how it has been received so far, and the weird, scary, ugly mess that is American sexuality. It was great: you can and maybe should watch it. But regardless, you should buy and read her books.
Seth Abramson’s Using Me!!
— Seth Abramson —
***
[ “…….. I’m kind of thinking, believing, that even without these peculiar and exceptional contexts (and this is impossible for me to truly know) that there’s something really compelling here. Something really fascinating. Many of you will think I’m goofing around here. I am not ……..” ]
***
to follow is an excerpt from one of Seth’s newly-minted poems (available on Inknode (here) and on Youtube (here) where you can listen to the audio of the poem coming out of the visual of a disconcerting seated-figure):
“…Seth Abramson grabbed her. Threw her to the ground. Pulled off her pants. Ripped off her panties. Mounted her. Seth Abramson’s young pink balls rubbed painfully against her hairy twat. O Lord, he thought. O Lord. O Lord. And finally Seth Abramson collapsed in a young boy’s cumless climax. She pressed charges. Seth Abramson was arrested. But when they examined her they found no traces of semen or forced entry. And when they examined Seth Abramson it all made sense: he had a house-mouse cock…”
(from “Strangers,” a poem “comprised of 275 statements made by individuals I have not met.”)
***
And this, if I might say so myself, is excellent work (ha ha), and I say so, because I have a sense of humor, and because I wrote a “version” of this in my Adventures of Sex Ableton (# 11, to be precises) that I posted READ MORE >
Mike Meginnis—
Paul Dean plays the Spelunky daily challenge while discussing Kurt Vonnegut, chocolate cookies.
Comments Off on Spelunky, Vonnegut