Justin Taylor is the author of the story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, and the novel The Gospel of Anarchy. He is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader, Come Back Donald Barthelme, and co-editor (with Eva Talmadge) of The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. With Jeremy Schmall he makes The Agriculture Reader, a limited-edition arts annual. He lives in Brooklyn.
We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
– Orthodoxy
Justin, my love, I’m not sure what to say about Tuesday’s event at the NYPL. It’s at the NYPL. The big, main one, with the lions. Patience and Fortitide, bitches! It’s our only big event in celebration of I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets, the only Six-Word Memoir book written entirely by 13-19 year olds. We’ll read from the book, talk about the project, show videos, take questions, and lead the room in a six-word slam. The best part will be the young writers who will share their six-worders and the stories behind them. They are brave. They are 13. They make your spring chicken ass look as old as Philip Roth.
Our facebook page for the event says: The ultimate six-word memoir slam — Larry and Rachel, friends and fans, teens and adults alike take the venerable New York Public Library by storm for a celebration of all things six. Share your stories and support the amazing teen writers braving the stage to tell theirs.
The library says:
http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/eventdesc.cfm?id=5829I say: Peeps should come. Support the youngest readers and writers in their debut publications. I’ll bring candy.
Love,
Rachel
All this week I’ll be posting small chunks of the thousand and one new books translated and/or written and/or published by Ariana Reines. We begin with Reines’s new translation of Charles Baudelaire’s My Heart Laid Bare, published in newspaper format by her own Mal-o-Mar Editions.
In a brief introduction to the work, Reines explains: “The text of My Heart Laid Bare consists of notes toward an autobiographical work that Baudelaire did not live to complete, according to Poe’s dictum ‘If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment the opportunity is his own–the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple–a few plain words–“My Heart Laid Bare.” But–this little book must be true to its title.’ […] None of these fragments was prepared by Baudelaire for publication, and though they appeared posthumously under various expurgations, their intimacy and ultimate incompleteness will make misprision and outright error, with respect both to interpretation and to translation, more or less inevitable.” What else could you ask for, really? Below the fold, I pick out some favorite fragments.
Here’s Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing, introducing this Guardian article about the Kindle. (Link clicks through to the Guardian piece.)
What, me huckster?
Tkacik’s indictment of Gladwell is incisive, epic, merciless, and right. It runs a full seven web pages and is worth reading every word. Now, the next time you see someone reading Blink and reflexively go to slap it out of their hand, you’ll be able to explain why you did it. Here’s a choice gleaning from fairly late in the piece. Click through to start at the beginning.
Also, it’s worth looking at this piece in light of this website’s ongoing discussion of what good criticism can or should look like. The piece is occasioned by the publication of Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, but it could hardly be considered a mere “review” of that book. And yet, it’s not a NY/LRB-style essay, where the book(s) provide a sort of anchor for a larger discussion about something else. Tkacik seems completely at ease in Gladwell’s catalogue, moving with an apparent lack of effort through and between his books. She has a clear thesis that is developed, amplified, and otherwise nuanced over the course of the essay. A writer who disagrees vehemently with Tkacik’s thesis and all her supporting arguments–or a writer who couldn’t care less about Gladwell one way or the other–still has a lot to gain from reading this essay. It’s a stand-out example of a particular kind of long-form criticism.
This weekend the Times has got Harold Bloom on a new biography of Johnson. It’s a good piece, but the real action is in the bio-line, where it is revealed that Bloom has two new books coming out–Living Labyrinth: Literature and Influence and Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems. I assume the former is a new book of criticism, and the latter an anthology. I popped onto Amazon but couldn’t find listings. Will investigate further and then report back. Try to contain yourselves.
Also in the book review- a new collection of poems by Amy Gerstler, Joanna Scott is irritated by the new John Irving (sounds about right), and the review of the Robert Altman oral biography has gotten me increasingly excited about reading it.
The following propositions have been urged: First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic. For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. The objection is that if you merely bear it, you do not grin.
–Orthodoxy, “The Eternal Revolution”
Q: Hey, did somebody say “Justin reviewed the new Stephen King for Bookforum?”
A: No, nobody said that.
Q: Oh, okay then.
Jeremy Schmall and I will be hosting an Agriculture Reader event tomorrow at the NYU Lillian Vernon Writers House (58 West 10th Street). We will be presenting Ag alums Heather Christle, Joshua Cohen, Diane Williams, and Matthew Rohrer. The reading starts at 5:00. There is no cover, and there will be refreshments provided. Copies of AGR #3 and Heather Christle’s The Difficult Farm will be available for sale. Hope to see you there.
