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.
I Want It All To Be Kind of Shitty: An Interview with Johannes Göransson
I can’t say enough about how important the work of Johannes Göransson has been to me, both as a field of language and image, and as a person. Besides co-editing both Action Books and Action Yes, two places where you can always depend on reading work that is new, singular, challenging, and actually fun, he has published four full length books of his own work, including Dear Ra, A New Quarantine Will Take My Place, Pilot, and most recently Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate from Tarpaulin Sky, as well as translations of important Swedish writers like Aase Berg and Johan Jönsson [if you haven’t read his Swedish issue of Typo, holy shit], and wrangling of the insane machine that is the hybrid litblog Montevidayo. Not to mention being a teacher (which, when reading some of his students’ work, and what mechanisms he gets out of them so early, equals a particular feat), a father, a husband, and a person. In no small words, a fucking force.
Over the past few weeks I exchanged emails with Johannes about all of the above and more.
* * *
BB: I remember reading pieces of the Pageant years ago I think under the name New Torture Operations, yeah? How did this project begin and manifest itself into the book it is, on an assemblage level?
JG: Yes, I think that was one early version of what became, among other things the pageant. It also became the second half of the performance piece The Widow Party and my novel Haute Surveillance (which is not published). Assemblages do play a big part in the way I compose these. In part they come out of a piece I wrote over a couple of years a few years ago, The Black Out Sessions or The Secessions (it has many names), and which I haven’t and won’t publish (well I did publish some of them before deciding that it wasn’t the right thing to do), but from which I create various assemblages – such as in The New Torture Operations, The Widow Party and Pageant, all of which form assemblages between torture and fashion, the anorexic body and performance, atrocity and kitsch, colonialism and the nuclear family.
When I was working on these Black Out Sessions I was also studying Brazilian-Swedish artist-poet Oyvind Fahlstrom’s work from the 1950s and 60s and he uses this funny pun – he doesn’t make “collage,” he says he makes “kalas,” which is Swedish for “party”. And the way this works out is that his artworks parties (though it’s usually translated as “feast”) on other works of art or texts. So there’s a party on Mad Magazine, or a party on Burroughs etc. So the Black Out Sessions were parties on just about anything I could find. I was both very creative and totally unfocused so I decided this wasn’t a finished text but something that I would party with/against/on with these other manuscripts. The Black Out texts became a kind of “party” energy which I used on other texts and subject matters to form assemblages. In the particular pieces that are in The New Torture Operations and pageant are parties on this 19th century antique textbook a student gave me years ago – what every student needs to know about the world. This includes chapters on astronomy, “The Vasty Deep,” and “The Flowery Kingdom” (China). A lot of what a student needs to know, it turns out, is about the morality of various colonial ventures (Stanley and Livingston get their own full chapter). Interestingly my home country of Sweden gets I think one sentence in a paranthesis and it’s something like “… (in difference to the Scandinavian countries, about which not much is known other than that they are the ugliest and least intelligent of people).”
25 Comments
June 2nd, 2011 / 1:15 pm
June 2nd, 2011 / 1:15 pm
Breast Stein Blood Drug
1. Simmons is running in a fundraiser for breast cancer, and generously giving away unique objects if he gets $600 in pledges. Consider making a contribution.
Also, if you happen to be in Portland tomorrow, Simmons is reading with Tim Horvath in support of the new Conjunctions here.
2. At Jewcy, a great interview with Paris Review editor Lorin Stein by Adam Wilson.
3. Joe Hall & Brandon Shimoda discuss their recent titles from Black Ocean on the radio at The Blood-Jet Writing Hour.
4. Tao Lin has a new weekly column on Vice involving Drug-Related Photoshop Art.
Damien Hirst on Writing
“Every day your relationship with death changes.”
“You’ve got to be oblivious to other people-the push and pull of other people’s opinions, the way other people measure success. It’s then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things. And that’s very difficult because everyone wants to be better than they are. You’ve really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you’ve just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.”
“I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.”
“Artists are like everybody else.”
“And I think, you know, I like it, so I can’t understand it, I think if you’re gonna have this stuff going in your ears, you might as well have some stuff going in your eyes.”
“I wanted a shark that’s big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.”
“There’s always something you missed or something you didn’t notice or somehow you got wrong… I don’t really have a beginning.”
“Architects don’t build their own houses.”
“I always feel like the art’s there and I just see it, so it’s not really a lot of work.”
“I’m more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg’s my main influence.”
“Sometimes when you’re drunk you can see better.”
“I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they’re taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it’s a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it’s unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.”
“People say to me that my work’s sensational. And I go, “What’s wrong with sensation? It’s like touching skin.” Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It’s not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it’s sensational art.”
“I don’t think I invented anything. It’s like I just saw it, just because I did it first. The road was there. It was going to happen.”
“It’s good to have a title that’s not just one word. If you’re gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.”
“There’s no possible way you can get what you want.”
“The great thing about painting now is that I’ve gotten to the point where I can forget everything just by doing it. And I never used to be able to do that.”
“I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. I’ve found out there aren’t any. I wanted to be stopped but no one will stop me.”
“I don’t mind if it falls over… if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.”
“Warhol said a brilliant thing. He said if anybody slags anything off, make more.”
We’re Looking for a Reviews Editor
This is an open call for a position as Reviews Editor of HTMLGiant. Responsibilities would include organizing regular posts and reading/selecting/soliciting incoming reviews. Modest monetary compensation. Interested parties please email blake [at] htmlgiant [dot] com with anything you think I should know. If you don’t hear back, we filled the spot. Thanks! Thanks to all who responded so fast. We got more than we expected. More soon.
I am drinking gin & wrote about 7 songs as they came up on random in my itunes while they played until they ended
“Slow Down” Snoop Dogg, Da Game is to Be Sold Not to be Told
I remember when this album came out like while I was in high school or right after I got out, a bunch of my friends liked Snoop and felt curious to find out what Snoop sounded like on No Limit having moved from Death Row after all that weird shit was going on. We went into a Media Play that since has closed and not been replaced as a business near where I hung out when I was in high school and shit, we took it out and immediately listened to it in my Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot without driving anywhere, we just sat there and like listened to the beginning of the tracks and I remember feeling more and more pissed off by each, how he had changed, there was all this UNHHHHH from Master P on it, and like on this song there was this weird production singing, it felt synthetic, I think we took it out after only really previewing each track and I never listened to it again, I might have returned the CD to Media Play like was so easy to do back then, even with severely used shit, I had a good scam system going where I could buy used and return for full store credit, I’m kind of digging this track right now though does that mean I got older or that I was stupid then or that I appreciate cheesiness in a different way or
“Trapped Under Ice” Metallica, Ride the Lightning
Damn I used to listen to this album on repeat after I finally was able to get a copy of it from one of my friends, I think I tried to buy it at Turtles once with a Turtles coin I got for my birthday but my mom saw the weird death penalty cover and looked at the song titles and probably asked the guy at the counter what was up with the CD and ended up deciding I wasn’t old enough to buy it yet, though she never really censored anything else I did she was careful about music at least until i was in high school or some shit though she didn’t stop me from getting it elsewhere, I think I bought C&C Music Factory instead that day which in retrospect seems more vulgar. Ride the Lightning is still a solid metal record, you can’t really fault a dude wearing a Ride the Lightning T or putting these songs on, I think I remember this album less than Master of Puppets or And Justice For All, I even liked the Black Album but pretty much after that I didn’t listen as much, this song is making me feel further away from the computer screen or maybe it’s because I’ve been sitting still for 7 minutes so far typing without taking a break. Seems like James Hetfield would be chill to hang out with but probably the other guys would be less chill and kind of interested in doing their own things
“Horse” Brian Eno, Small Craft on a Milk Sea
I downloaded this album the other day off of google blog search and I think previewed two of the tracks and it seemed okay but I didn’t really explore it much after that, I kind of prefer Eno’s pop albums though Music for Airports kind of got me through the first half of 2008. This sounds too much like it was influenced by Venetian Snares or something. It makes me want to go eat tacos but that might be unrelated to the music because I always want to do that. I don’t like the way the main background melody is reminding me of Egypt while the bassline reminds me of standing in a small room looking at vegetables. I wonder what Brian Eno does during the day, if he likes to go outside or if he’s mainly an inside kind of guy. I wonder if he ever still calls David Bowie or if they’re not cool. I like the name of this album better than this song. I need to check my email cuz my gmail tab says two new emails since I started writing this.
Win Limited Edition Prints from There is No Year
Pardon the shameless self post, but it’ll be quick: Harper Perennial has agreed to give away framed, original limited edition prints of three images created by Justin Dodd that appear in There is No Year (examples of which are above). There are two ways one can win:
(1) The book includes information of the odd deaths of certain young celebrities. An example: “Rainer Werner Fassbinder died with a cigarette in his mouth and blood pouring from one nostril.” Comment here with some kind of information of this sort about a person that doesn’t appear in the book, also in one sentence.
(2) Take a picture of yourself close to a mirror holding the book and put it somewhere online, then post a link here.
Three winners will be selected (1 or 2 by choice from the death facts, 1 or 2 at random from the pictures) to received a framed edition of one print of any image in the book, your choice, or I will choose for you. Others chosen at random from the celeb facts may receive a copy of the book.
Winners be selected this Sunday.
Thanks for the indulgence.
There are No Entities, Only Processes: Re: Frank Hinton’s I Don’t Respect Female Expression
Frank Hinton has a book out, I Don’t Respect Female Expression, published by Safety Third Enterprises.
Reading Frank Hinton is bracing, like stepping outside on a brisk, windy day freshly showered, contacts newly put in. I feel unsettled and unsure. An implacable menace hangs over these pieces like death every moment. The book is thematic at the language level. There is talk of physical and emotional bonds. There is meditation and joyless sex and animals in traps and death and death. Almost every piece directly or indirectly involves death. Hinton has spoken in an interview with Dark Sky about doing Osho’s death meditation.
Like waking from death meditation, sensory details are heightened: clementine juice filling one’s mouth; thick curls of hair crowning the base of a father’s penis; etiolated skin; a round, plump ass; the taste of one’s t-shirt collar.
24 Comments
May 24th, 2011 / 1:39 pm
May 24th, 2011 / 1:39 pm
Blake Butler—
LOL re Dale Peck: “Literature cannot be saved, because literature saves us. When it no longer saves us, it is no longer literature.”
29