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.
You’ve just got to check out this gallery of Star Wars religious art, over at io9.
New York Times best-selling Anteater?
When you think about it, the title of this post really asks two questions. The answers, as near as I can tell, are, respectively, nobody and nothing. But Felicia Sullivan (author of The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here and former everything-in-chief of the venerable & lamented Small Spiral Notebook) isn’t so sure. Over at her blog, she takes on what she calls “the culture of entitlement” within the literary world today. Then, in the comments section, Rachel Fershleiser (of Housing Works, Smith magazine & co-editor of the Six Word Memoir books) raises some questions about the assumptions underlying the arguments of the post. Things get pretty heated pretty quick, between the two of them and a third commenter named Les, who seems more interested in critiquing Rachel’s grammar than listening to what she says. (Felicia, on the other hand, dives in head-first). It’s an interesting back and forth between two smart people (and Les), who actually seem to be talking TO each other at least as often as they’re talking PAST each other, which in internet-thread terms is basically a miracle of loaves and fishes. I am still sorting out my exact thoughts about this debate/discussion, but forget about what I think for a second. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Fellow Workers,
We here at limited-edition arts annual The Agriculture Reader know that times are tough. The paper of record says ’09 was the worst back to school season in years! We’re feeling it, too. No, not because we’re under-employed and lack health insurance (though yes, that too) but because we’re trying to unload the last of our stock of AGR 3 in order to fund the production of AGR 4. To that end, from Labor Day till the end of September, we will be selling AGR 3 for a measly TEN DOLLARS. Your sawbuck gets you the current issue of our annual, which features writers such as Dennis Cooper, Heather Christle, Ariana Reines, Diane Williams, Matthew Zapruder, Christian Hawkey, Eileen Myles, Matvei Yankelevich, and many more. Some of the best work is by people you’ve maybe never even heard of, like Jen Hyde. All this plus a special section celebrating the work of the poet Tony Towle—and that’s just the words. The whole issue is custom-illustrated by the artist Joey Parlett, and all the layout and design work is done by Amy Mees and Mark Wagner—a dynamic duo, if there was one—and there was (is). Every cover is cut, stamped, stickered and colored on by hand, so each copy is unique. There are only 600 total in the world, and more than half of them are already gone. (The first two issues both sold out; we expect that this one will too.)
I focus on surfaces, since learning that Diego’s dying. On shallow stuff. I colect photos of handsome strangers, and endless gigabytes of porn. The scenes I like best lack plots and characters and sets—just boys in bedrooms, tearing each other up, snarling, cursing, savage. The perfection of pornography is that no one owes anybody anything afterwards, there’s no human contact, no messiness, shallowness. Sex for cowards. – from “Sex, Death, Facebook” at The Rumpus. Also, don’t forget the Rumpus Sunday Book Review supplement.
Hah! John Deming wishes. No, but seriously. Ken L. Walker has a mini-interview at Coldfront with the author of Rising, in which celebrity sex tapes for some reason don’t figure at all. Subjects which are discussed include: growing up in the Air Force, listening to Fleet Foxes, and writing after personal tragedy.
Yesterday’s birthday girl Julia Cohen wasn’t the only birthday girl this week, apparently. Adele Cecilia was born Thursday in Fayetteville, Arkansas unto Katy & Matthew Henriksen, the inimitable wife-husband team responsible for Typo, Cannibal, Narwhal, The Frank Stanford Literary Festival, and the Burning Chair Series. Facebook’s being a punk right now, but later when it stops, there are pictures of the happy baby and proud parents on Matt’s page. Big internet hug to all 3 of you.
Also, just a heads up- Sunday’s birthday girl is Joshua Cohen.
Dear Internet, it’s poet and blogger extraordinaire Julia Cohen‘s birthday today. How old is she turning? Not the issue. What’s important is that this is an opportunity to remember why we love Julia, and to avail ourselves of her work. We can read her poems at Web Conjunctions, Sawbuck, and Pilot. (We can find more links via her blog.) If we want to get her a present, we could buy one of her chapbooks- The History of a Lake Never Drowns, or, if we’re big spenders, When We Broke the Microscope (a collaboration with Mathias Svalina). We could also leave comments on her blog about how much we’re looking forward to the five–five–chapbooks she’s got forthcoming, including For the H in Ghost, which I single out here because I read it (or some version of it) in manuscript, and so am excited for all of you to discover it. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULES.
The Apocalypse Reader just got its 8th review on Amazon the other day. One Michael J. Mason of Orlando, Florida, wrote a review entitled “The only book I have ever disliked so much that I destroyed it!” Wow. Okay, well, I can take my lumps. Democracy is great, blah blah. In fact to be totally honest, there was something about the sheer vehemence of this headline that got me really, really excited. As Jesus puts it in the Good King James: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:16.) This guy seemed like he was fixing to boil. Oh boy!
But as I read MJM’s complaint, my heart sank. Turns out he was just another lukewarm asshole, who talked big in his headline but couldn’t sustain his concentration long enough–over the course of his one-paragraph review–to (A) actually describe for us the manner in which he destroyed the book, which would have been interesting, or (B) realize that that sound of one hand clapping was actually me hitting myself in the fucking head, because despite all his bluster and bullshit, he actually liked some estimable (albeit unspecified) percentage of what he read. I’m the last person to bristle at negative reviews, but it drives me insane when people take to a public forum and attack something they didn’t like, not because there was anything wrong with the thing itself, but because the thing itself wasn’t what they wanted. Imagine giving a 1-star review to a portable hard drive because it’s not a dishwasher. Now one of the things I’m proudest of about The Apocalypse Reader is that it happily blurs/ignores/defies the boundaries between genre-lit and mainstream-lit, in the name of Good Lit, period. But the price the book has paid is that it has been consistently plagued by incensed genre-monkeys, for whom I don’t doubt experimental literature (or literature, period) begins (and ends) with Terry Pratchett. (And at the risk of re-starting the Genre Wars that raged recently on this site, I’d like to point out the total number of “literary elitists” who have written in complaining about the book’s genre quotient is ZERO.)
Susie & Aretha Bright answer more sex questions at Jezebel, including “I’m a girl who comes too fast.”
Stanley Fish on reforms to college composition courses. And then, a little later, a follow-up column on the reactionary, ill-informed comments directed at him for writing the first column.
Up from Our Own Comments Threads– Ed Champion’s Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project now includes the letter Kyle Minor posted yesterday in the comments on Catherine Lacey’s post about said project.
Over at Coop’s place, there’s a Spotlight on Danielle Collobert’s “Notebooks.” >> he just left — when he leaves I never know when I’ll see him again — always chance encounters — or nearly — today I asked myself what little errors we’ve let come between us — I don’t know yet — I can barely guess — <<
And Christopher Hitchens remembers Ted Kennedy, as only William Logan can. I know this one sounds like the boring one, but it’s actually the most interesting of what I’ve posted here (except maybe the girl who comes too fast) and it’s utterly unlike any of the other six hundred Kennedy memorials you read or else avoided reading last week.
Actually, Hitch is probably only as interesting as the Benjamin De Casseres piece by Joshua Cohen in Tablet, which I blogged about here the other day (“Hope is the promise of a crucifixion”), but for some reason get the feeling nobody saw. So here it is again.
Top of the NYT website right now: a feature story on the troubled production of Where the Wild Things are, the new Spike Jonze movie based on the classic and beloved book of the same name, by Maurice Sendak. Reads the subhead: Spike Jonze is known for making videos and movies his way — fast, cheap and dirty. Sounds like Shanes Jones to me! Anyway, here’s to the future. If WB tries any funny stuff with Light Boxes, Team Giant will be here to lead the ALLCAPS consumer revolt. We’re here for you, boys.