77 interviews and now you people be happy goddamn you etc 14
5. Some MFA fuck will host the Oscars.
77. In other sad news:
14. Flash Fiction interviews Nicolle Elizabeth. I thank them.
My favorite part of it is that it isn’t getting another print run. Can I say that?
111. Kyle Hemmings interview at Dark Sky Magazine.
One of the biggest influences, besides other writers, was the nine or ten years I spent on the streets of New York, when I became addicted to the club scene.
1. Me here. My father brings novels to family reunions, funerals, and weddings. They are secreted in large pockets of his jacket. He brings them out, he reads them during the various proceedings. People have said things. But is this so wrong?
Tags: Dark Sky, James Franco, Kyle Hemmings, My father, Nicolle Elizabeth
haha, “people have said things.” but no, it’s not wrong. nothing is wrong.
frames jnco
I haven’t read McCarthy, but I’ve met him. He’s very nice. Smart, and fun to listen to. (he talked at length about all the best stuff: art, technology, literature, weird shit) I like what he says here. Although: isn’t there always a normative path & isn’t that mostly the widest path? I don’t know if now is the time where that path is most dominant…
77. Skimmers should click on that quotation – the speaker, too, is grieved at the truth that he’s announcing.
To me, McCarthy isn’t the innovator, nor the thin edge of some theoretical indie-wedge, that he seems to think he is or represents – at least, as he comes across in the lit press – , but I enjoyed Remainder (although the repetitions and flatness of the narrator’s narration – both essential to the story of the story – got somewhat boring towards the end). He’s not just a Warholian ‘concept’ artist, where the craft is almost all in the set-up and the execution fabricates, if the concept is subtracted, disposable stuff. McCarthy cleverly writes description and dialogue and shapes paragraphs that are interesting to read.
Kyle Hemmings is super underrated, I think. Happy to see him get a little shout out here.
the stroller in that picture says ‘baby’ on the side
i like strollers with a very clear purpose
I remember in Chicago twenty years ago this guy who would read walking down the street, for miles without looking up. Seemed odd then. Now everyone has a phone, does the exact same thing with a phone. Anyone gives your dad a hard time probably has a phone, does the exact same thing he does, but with a phone, which if it weren’t common would be weirder.
Someone find me James Franco’s email address so I can tell him to leave “Hot Water Music” alone. Please?
should be sexiest man alive, gdi!
Second that!
When I bought C I was expecting to be blown away. Instead what I found was a historical novel underlaid with a series of symbols that, aside from beginning with the letter C, seemed to be chosen arbitrarily. It feels as if McCarthy set up this chain of images then forced a story around them, a lot like Pynchon but without the manic prose and wit. What I found to be of most interest was the main character’s blankness, which I’m not even sure was intended.
C isn’t a bad book by any means. There are some passages that are written excellently, but I really think the press should stop holding it up as the beacon of hope for experimental fiction in the mainstream – it isn’t.
You know… the problem with making statements like the #77 lament he makes is that when you do this you’re always looking at just a part of the picture. One of the curious things about Literature is that it does not happen to be compositionally unified. Whoever painted this picture really needs to go back to art school. So… as a consequence we can make nothing out of the whole. Since we cannot make sense of the whole we look at pieces, we try to make diagnoses of the pieces.
I’m sure that most of the people here see the literary world quite differently than your average successful writer publishing ‘traditional’ works . . . in whichever traditional form you’ve chosen — and that’s another problem, because ‘traditional writing’, itself, cannot be unified.
So… I guess I’m getting tired of hearing these morose statements, these depressing commentaries on the State of Literature Today . . . whoever you are, you can think whatever you like and I sincerely wish you the best of luck in trying to figure out the nature and qualities of Literature as a whole — it really is a son of a bitch to try to figure out. But if the conclusion you come to doesn’t relate to my perception and conception of the literary world: do I care? No.
To me: Literature is the Small Press. It’s all about our fellow writers who just want to be able to put out as much possible of the works of people whose writings they love, and to be able to read those works as put out by others. To me, Literature is no longer about success but about making a contribution to other people. It’s like living for your friends, except that the friends of the writer happen to include lots and lots of strangers all across the globe, even people who otherwise wouldn’t really like you.
This is not resignation or even coming to terms with some sort of ‘reality’ . . . I think it’s more just a matter of my finally coming to realize what my place is, as an artist.
Perhaps that’s the most I can say about the literary world. It’s not about any greater ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, but rather about what each of us sees, as it relates to our own personal desire/needs as an artist.
HOWEVER DID YOU FIND THIS PICTURE OF MY DRESSED IN A PRINCESS DUNCE CAP
me not my
oh nevermind
You know… the problem with making statements like the #77 lament he makes is that when you do this you’re always looking at just a part of the picture. One of the curious things about Literature is that it does not happen to be compositionally unified. Whoever painted this picture really needs to go back to art school. So… as a consequence we can make nothing out of the whole. Since we cannot make sense of the whole we look at pieces, we try to make diagnoses of the pieces.
I’m sure that most of the people here see the literary world quite differently than your average successful writer publishing ‘traditional’ works . . . in whichever traditional form you’ve chosen — and that’s another problem, because ‘traditional writing’, itself, cannot be unified.
So… I guess I’m getting tired of hearing these morose statements, these depressing commentaries on the State of Literature Today . . . whoever you are, you can think whatever you like and I sincerely wish you the best of luck in trying to figure out the nature and qualities of Literature as a whole — it really is a son of a bitch to try to figure out. But if the conclusion you come to doesn’t relate to my perception and conception of the literary world: do I care? No.
To me: Literature is the Small Press. It’s all about our fellow writers who just want to be able to put out as much possible of the works of people whose writings they love, and to be able to read those works as put out by others. To me, Literature is no longer about success but about making a contribution to other people. It’s like living for your friends, except that the friends of the writer happen to include lots and lots of strangers all across the globe, even people who otherwise wouldn’t really like you.
This is not resignation or even coming to terms with some sort of ‘reality’ . . . I think it’s more just a matter of my finally coming to realize what my place is, as an artist.
Perhaps that’s the most I can say about the literary world. It’s not about any greater ‘reality’ or ‘truth’, but rather about what each of us sees, as it relates to our own personal desire/needs as an artist.