Blake Butler
http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/
Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.
Blake Butler—
Dennis Cooper is interviewed in the new issue of the Paris Review (“I’m as interested by what sex can’t give you as by what it can.”)(as is Nicholson Baker)(as is a story by the rad Kerry Howley).
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Mark Leidner on Collaging
on the occasion of the release of Mark’s second book, Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me, which is absolutely the shit (for a taste, two of the poems appear here), and available now from Factory Hollow, and for which the cover appears as such:
Blake Butler—
What is the date of the recording of the last piece of music or album you felt genuinely emotionally affected by?
Boris Spassky on Writing
“I also follow chess on the Internet, where Kasparov’s site is very interesting.”
“I don’t want ever to be champion again.”
“Computer defends well, but for humans it is harder to defend than attack, particularly with the modern time control.”
“Time control directly influences the quality of play.”
“I lost to Bobby [Fischer] before the match because he was already stronger than I. He won normally.”
“We were like bishops of opposite color.”
“The power of hanging pawns is based precisely in their mobility, in their ability to create acute situations instantly.”
“The shortcoming of hanging pawns is that they present a convenient target for attack. As the exchange of men proceeds, their potential strength lessens and during the endgame they turn out, as a rule, to be weak.”
“Nowadays the dynamic element is more important in chess – players more often sacrifice material to obtain dynamic compensation.”
“If they had played 150 games at full strength, they would be in a lunatic asylum by now.” – (on Kasparov and Karpov, 1987)
“The place of chess in the society is closely related to the attitude of young people towards our game.”
“When I am in form, my style is a little bit stubborn, almost brutal. Sometimes I feel a great spirit of fight which drives me on.”
“The best indicator of a chess player’s form is his ability to sense the climax of the game.”
“I don’t play in tournaments, but I follow some.”
Shitty Youth, a film-in-progress by Adam Humphreys
Adam Humphreys (creator of the documentary Franz Otto) is making a film about Zachary German. Seems exciting. Here’s a sneak clip:
Art Observed (Lost and Found)
This week: You will make many changes before settling satisfactorily. You will attain the highest levels of intelligence. You should enhance your feminine side at this time. Your financial situation will soon be improving. Remember 3 months from this date! Your lucky star is shining. -TD
A Consciousness of the Luxury of Art: An Interview with Jon Leon
Last month I received a copy of the first issue of a new project by publisher James Copeland called Content, a series that releases uniform length and shape books each filled with “content” from an individual author without restriction. The first issue is by Jon Leon, a piece titled Elizabeth Zoë Lindsay Drink Fanta, which is at its most basic a series of photographs of the three famous women referred to in the title, manipulated and arranged by Leon throughout.
I didn’t quite know what to make of the book at first. I think I immediately thought, Why? But the book stayed out on my desk and I found myself continuing to look at it, and to think about the things Leon mentioned in the one page letter that accompanied the volume (reproduced here on Leon’s website), which includes the lines, “I wanted to talk about ‘the demented power of the lights,’ how literature is evil, the end of my ‘career,’ the end of the artists editions, my conceptual death, my simulation of life, my meltdown in print and on tape, my public facade, my disappearance from Los Angeles, my disappearance from the Atlanta scene, my disappearance from New York in the holiday of 2009. My resolution to ‘end this shit’ in 2010. To kill off the poems.”
Last week I had an email correspondence with Mr. Leon regarding the concept of the book, its assemblage, the context of creation and aging with creation, Lindsay Lohan, modeling, and disintegration in general, among other things.
2 New from Calamari: Gary Lutz’s Divorcer & Vincent Standley’s A Mortal Affect
Calamari Press jumps back to action with two exciting new titles, both now available for order: Gary Lutz’s Divorcer & Vincent Standley’s A Mortal Affect.
“DIVORCER is a collection of seven harrowing and hyperprecise short stories about ruinous relationships and their aftershocks.” $13
“A Mortal Affect is a satire of meaning systems targeting the role bureaucracy and cultural assumptions play in creating, distorting, and replicating the things we believe to be true. Informed by an absurdism in the Modernist vein, the novel is a celebration of error and folly that questions the wisdom of conviction and the faith in metaphysics. These themes play out in a fictional world inhabited by mortals and immortals, the oppressed and the oppressors. The former understand their condition of being oppressed but have no concept of freedom, while the latter emulate mortals but lack the ability to eat, reproduce, or die, even by suicide. Never allegorical or polemical, the novel operates comfortably within the bounds of comedy, avoiding the earnestness and self-conscious urgency common to the novel of ideas.” $18
The Last Days of Slash Lovering
Slash Lovering (1970-2008) was a Seattle poet whose work focused on the Internet. His work has been labeled “grunge” however his actual association with the music scene is not well established. He was however, confirmed as a freelance writer for Microsoft, writing marketing materials. He traveled in many software-related circles. In 2008 Slashed died in a bike accident while going home to his new house in Redmond. The bits of conversation that follow are based on notes.
“One of you fags buy me a beer,” said Slash. We were at a Belltown bar in 2007, a year before his death. I was underage with a fake ID. Slash was loud and he seemed extroverted, for once. We were celebrating his retirement from Microsoft.
“I’ll get you a beer,” I said. I met Slash at a dinner party with my parents in 2004. It was a street-of-dreams style house on the Sammamish plateau, outside of Seattle. It was the house of some Microsoft VPs, who my parents also knew from mingling with the parents of my classmates at the Overlake School in Redmond. Redmond is the home of Microsoft. I grew up about a mile from the main campus.
I would not have discovered Slash’s poetry at all except for a burned CD he gave me shortly after our first meeting. He was hanging around a punk show at a place called Dog City in the University District. I had driven out there on some desolate high school Friday. I was depressed and I didn’t know anyone at the show, so I left early and put the CD in my parent’s computer. The poetry was dense and short and almost always included elements of graphic design. I had always assumed that he posted his work to obscure forums, but to this date, the CD is the only evidence I have of his poetry.
“I gave this company my life. And they gave me a way to live, but not a good way. I had to make my own way,” said Slash. READ MORE >