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.
Wayne Koestenbaum’s Humiliation & Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl
Just released from Picador’s “BIG IDEAS // small books” series is Wayne Koestenbaum’s 184 pp meditation on Humiliation, which I read in two 2-hour sits on a stationary bike punctuated with a few seatings on the toilet. It felt good to read this book in those places, which is often where I read anyway but don’t as often get to admit with relevance, but at last, here is a book in which those sorts of places might well be the center.
Humiliation operates in many ways at once. In short, numbered sections referred to as “fugues,” themselves cut up into numbered chunks of information, Koestenbaum goes forth into dissecting how the experience of being humiliated operates on a person, and therefore creation. The span of references here are quite wide, revolving quick enough to keep the brain moving as quickly as Kostenbaum’s dissective eye wakes each one up. From craigslist ads such as “HAIRY ITALIAN WANTS TO HUMILIATE A GENEROUS BITCH,” to Koestenbaum’s lurking in men’s rooms for encounters (and politicians caught inside the same), to de Sade and Artaud and Basquiat and Michael Jackson, and so on, the feed remains continuously engrossing in that way that all acts of humiliation seem to, publicly and privately, in spectacle, though here handled through Koestenbaum’s sharp and self-aware way of parsing act into idea.
“The reason I’m writing is to silence the deep sea-swell of my humiliated prehistory,” Koestenbaum writes, “a prologue no more unsettling than yours.” One of the major ideas explored here seems the matter of identity and experience that arises from the very act we work as people most ways to avoid: being humiliated. In each transaction there is the victim, the abuser, and the witness. Koestenbaum pulls off this weird shift of internal self-creation mixed with the experience of the other in an incredibly balanced method of veering back and forth between cultural commodity, confessional remembrance, and pointed commentary. A lot of questions are asked, moments are raised, allowing a kind of skin to rise up rather than some definitive proclamation of the idea. The book itself seems to both reveal and reveal and turn and turn, the way we might try to pretend to not be looking at something in the presence of someone else, though unable to fully look away. The moments of the facing, too, are powerful for how plainly they’ve been laid out. The book ends with a list in the spirit of Dodie Bellamy of some of Koestenbaum’s humiliating experiences: “My mother pulled a knife on my father, whose shocked aunt sat watching on a black leather chair. (The knife had a dull blade.)” or “A kid in seventh-grade gym, on the soccer field, called me a ‘wop faggot.’ I was flattered to be mistaken for an Italian.” The chain of small hells is both cringey, silently grinning, desperate, and wise. These things are laid out for us to take them, and this too becomes part of the machine, a kind of revolving door of do what you will with this, and please be kind. That at the same time Koestenbaum bares such skin he makes his subject so impossibly addictively paced and by turns tickling that it is impossible to put down becomes both a welcoming and a silent stab of implication: we are right here and he can’t see us and we can see all of this of him, which is the nature of the transaction of all making, and all taking. READ MORE >
Art Observed (Dreamin’ and Drivin’)
This Week: Why not, you text everywhere else right? If you see something, say something. Turn that frown upside down. The car is a perfectly poetic place to die. It’s never too late to change directions, but hurry, cause no one lives forever. – TD
Blake Butler—
An excellent interview with Ben Lerner by Tao Lin is an online exclusive at the Believer.
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Blake Butler—
What writers do you think are the best, or really good at all, at dialogue? And in what way?
Robert Mapplethorpe on Writing
“I don’t know why my pictures come out looking so good. I just don’t get it.”
“I just want to be written about as a normal artist.”
“I recorded that because it happened to me. I wasn’t making a point.”
“I don’t think any collector knows his true motivation.”
“I played around with the flowers and the lighting, so that was a good way to educate myself.”
“I wish I could be elegant.”
“I’m not a photojournalist.”
“If I am at a party, I want to be at the party. Too many photographers use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers.”
“My lifestyle is bizarre, but the only thing you need to know is where the darkroom is.”
“One must ease the public into it – that’s an art in itself.”
“The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.”
“The photographs that are art have to be separated from the rest – then preserved.”
“To make pictures big is to make them more powerful.”
“Whenever you make love to someone, there should be three people involved – you, the other person, and the devil.”
“With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.”
Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes Style Sheet
Deadspin has published the style sheet from Nicholson Baker’s latest, House of Holes, a self-proclaimed “Book of Raunch.”
Here are the As & Bs:
Alphabetical
a-holes (38)
assbones (44)
assbuns (199)
asscheek (33)
assclenching (200)
asscrack (239)
assfucking (175)
ass jeans (240; see query)
assjunk (180)
ass pants (241; see query)
assplay (224)
ass-slappy (220)
ass-squeezer (27)
asstrunk (180)
asswood (57) READ MORE >
Blake Butler—
Tao Lin’s next novel, reportedly titled Taipei, Taiwan, has been sold to Vintage. More info at the Observer, “I honestly feel, to a large degree, like me and everyone else are close to death and that the awareness of this has, to me, precluded thoughts of “making it” (this is a theme of the novel).”
Spatial Anomalies in Kubrick’s The Shining
How Stanley Kubrick used Escher-styled spacial awareness & set design anomalies to disorientate viewers of his horror classic The Shining.
[Further maps & thoughts on this film and others here.]
I am drinking gin & wrote about 7 songs as they came up on random in my itunes while they played part 3
Dr. Dre, “Deez Nuts,” The Chronic
Damn. The sample after the phone call at the beginning of this song with the dude with the weird voice talking about nuts makes me feel scared. I honestly wish I was black. I just sat here listening for a full two minutes of the song before I wrote that. I don’t think it’s bad to say that. People seem to get mad if you say things about things like that. My friend Ben told me the other day that he realized that all of my characters I’ve ever written are black. I want to believe that. This song is part of the album that made me start drinking gin when I finally started drinking, which wasn’t until I was 26, or maybe 27. I told everyone who drank that they were stupid for it a lot I think. Then I was just doing it. I wish I was the keyboard in this song; actually I wish that the most.
Mogwai, “You Don’t Know Jesus,” Rock Action
That’s a good title for a song. I don’t even care what the song does after the title. I think more people should be attacked for things about god but indirectly like a song title that kids who chill in rooms probably put on and laugh about. Maybe this shitty ass band laughs about it too. I have to check to see how long this song is because I don’t know if I can take guitars for this long. Fuck, it’s 8 minutes and three seconds. That’s the worst. No song with guitars in it should be that long. Guy Piciotto has that songs where he says he realizes that he hates the sound of guitars, and it seems like that’s like me hating books and words. Had a conversation about that last night, like would I hate teeth if I were a dentist, is that my personality, or is it more situational. God, fuck this song. This is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard with all this swirling treble. Who decided Mogwai was okay to think was good. It seems like they were a band that could have just existed in their house playing shitty shows in whatever city they are from forever and self releasing bullshit for whoever forever and never been something people talk about except a guy who works at a label picked them up and then they became whatever they are. Things like that happen. I wish I was listening to “Deez Nuts” again instead of this song…. Let me slow down a second. Maybe things can be good… Just looked, three more minutes left, and noticed this album is called “Rock Action.” I forgot about that, fuck this shithole song. No really, fuck these guys.
Brian Wilson, “Our Prayer/Gee,” Smile
They are harmonizing. They always do that. One of the first records I ever had was “Endless Summer.” My mom got it for me at a garage sale I think. I liked looking at the cover of it a lot and playing the music. I don’t think I understood the music but I understood that my mom bought it for me and that meant more than other things. I’m older now. I am scared of songs that make me remember things because then they can be weapons. They are going “bom bom bom a bom” or whatever. That seems not such a weapon, but maybe more then is one cuz of that.
Wire, “Let’s Panic Later,” 154
When I had a, uh, class at Georgia Tech for web design we had to build a website to show we could do certain things and I made one about how much I hated British music. That’s not so true anymore. I wish I had a pretzel as big as me that I could lay against and hump and eat at the same time. Seems like these guys are “experimenting” on this song, like they said “hey let’s experiment” and like went in the booth and were looking at each other all weird through the glass like surprised what they were doing and yet intense at the same time so the performance seemed legitimate. I wonder if they are proud of this still. Panicking now seems better than later.
The Melvins, “Goose Freight Train,” Stoner Witch
I saw these guys a few times, they were wearing cloaks that looked like dresses. It’s really quiet here tonight in my house except for that I’m playing music. I used to think that music could keep you safe, like if you were playing it it filled the air and if people were outside your house they wouldn’t be able to move through the silence to hurt you because the silence made it impossible for them to come through the same way. I like the name “Goose Freight Train” but I don’t know what it has to do with this song. I see a big goose going on a track through the night kind of smiling and brighter than everything around it. This song reminds me of mowing the lawn. Couldn’t help but just wondering after I paused between that last sentence and thinking about what would be next if I am stupid. I’m probably stupider now than I was three years ago but smarter than I was five years ago. Does aging work like that? I feel like I can feel me aging with this guitar line, like it is counting time in a nonmusical way and more in the way people actually age. I don’t know how I haven’t misspelled anything in this whole paragraph while typing, only the word “Melvins” is underlined in red. I want to get licked in between the eyes by
The Minutemen, “Spillage,” Double Nickels on the Dime
I mean, all their songs sound the same. It’s a cool song, the one song, but it’s all of them. Gian just texted me, “I like that dude. I like his sense of humor.” Trying to remember who he was talking about. D. Boon and Cliff Burton probably chill. My TV seems to be watching me.
Young Jeezy, “Time,” Trap or Die 2
Man his voice is super all tricked out on this song, like he’s over enunciating his southern accent. It works pretty good like when Project Pat does that. There are people singing in the background here, makes me feel like I want to walk out of the house to the church across the street and walk inside it and stand there and see if I can see something. I actually don’t think I’ve ever heard this Jeezy song somehow. My computer is full of a lot of songs I’ve never heard and are just sitting there inside this machine. People worked on them and did things to make them and they are there. Ie9f=0eif0uer-ufadohf a slofjalksjd flkja sld. He is saying “tie-um” when he says “time” and that’s confusing. I feel ugly, but not physically really, just in general. I have eaten tortilla chips for dinner every night this week. Looked at the top of the screen and it says “Chrome” which feels better to see than “Safari.” What is happening to everyone. Stop saying “tie-um,” dude, it feels messed up. I want to go on a really long walk that feels like a short walk at the end of it and I just sit down there wherever seems like the end of the walk.
Blake Butler—
lol re: “Time spent on the blog is time spent away from something else: writing another book, contacting book clubs, taking a part-time job and investing that money in advertising or a publicist.” from Author Blogging: You’re Doing It Wrong by Livia Blackburne.