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.
Last night I was out with some people, and one of them was Erica Plouffe Lazure, singer in The Dog House Band (pictured above), which is the Bennington MFA-based country-rock outfit whose membership also includes David Gates and Sven Birkerts. Unsurprisingly, the woman in the all-writers-band is herself–wait for it–a writer. Here’s “Evisceration Line,” a sweet (read=”sad”) short story at Keyhole magazine. And here’s a short-short at SmokeLong Quarterly, “Green Monster,” accompanied by a Q&A with Erica. Also, “Cadence,” in the thoroughly un-link-to-able (because it exists in the actual physical world) McSweeney’s #29. Finally, this is as good a time as any–better than some–to remind you that if you’re in New York, you should come see The Dog House Band play the Opium/Gigantic/Bomb Party at Bowery Electric this Wednesday, August 26th. Special guests will include John Wesley Harding, one of the Pierce Sisters, a short play directed by Ben Greenman, and other stuff that I can’t remember off the top of my head. But here’s the thing you click to get yourself a ticket. They’re ten bucks in advance, fifteen the day of, and “all pre-sales get free VIP access”–whatever the eff that means. Anyway, I bought mine, so I guess I’ll find out.
Here’s a fun toy! Translation Party translates your English sentences to Japanese, then back to English, then back again, until it achieves equilibrium. Naturally, hilarity ensues.
OPEN CALL: The Rumpus is looking for funny women:
Elissa Bassist talks about the under-representation of women in humor. Her consideration of this trend happily includes links to all seven (only seven!) female-authored Shouts & Murmurs columns of the past year. After you’ve read about the problem, you, too, will likely be hankering for a solution. Well, be your own solution! That is, if you’re a woman, and if you’re funny. Read the Guidelines for Funny Women Submissions to the Daily Rumpus . It says the deadline is September 15th, and then the “additional deadline” is never, because you should never stop writing. I’m not sure if that means this Funny Women thing will recur at Rumpus or if it just means you should love and believe in yourself–but stop bothering Elissa about it after September. Seems like the easiest thing to do would be to write something funny now, and not have to worry about it later. But that’s just me–and I don’t qualify.
Also, this is less by women, and less funny, then above, but it’s still really good. From “Why I Write,” by Stephen Elliott (click thru quote to essay).
Every human existence not conscious of itself as spirit, or not personally conscious of itself before God as spirit, every human existence which is not grounded transparently in God, but opaquely rests or merges in some abstract universal (state, nation, etc.), or in the dark about its self, simply takes its capacities to be natural powers, unconscious in a deeper sense of where it has them from, takes its self to be an unaccountable something; if there were any question of accounting for its inner being, every such existence, however astounding its accomplishment, however much it can account for even the whole of existence, however intense its aesthetic enjoyment: every such life is none the less despair.
– The Sickness Unto Death
“Goldman Execs Blame anti-Semitism” for Negative Press About Their Looting, Pillaging, and Defrauding of the Country. And now they’re worried about an even bigger shit-storm coming when they hand out bonuses.
Yes, we all know anti-Semitism exists in the world. Those of us born Semites even smell it from time to time. It’s real. (For example, did you see this totally bizarre video from a Nevada Town Hall event?) But it’s also a pretty safe bet–damn near axiomatic, in fact–that when someone raises the anti-Semitism flag out of nowhere, and twirls it around like a coked-up majorette, time to reach for your wallet and make sure it’s still there. From one Jew to another, Lloyd Blankfein- go fuck yourself.
Charlie Gasparino’s Sympathy for Goldman, at Daily Beast.
Previous post at Giant with link to online copy of Matt Taibbi’s enormous piece on Goldman’s crimes, here.
Extra fun: my old boss, Alexander Cockburn’s “My Life as an ‘anti-Semite’.”
NYC REMINDER: Lutz, Schmburg & Krusoe at St. Mark’s series at SOLAS Bar TONIGHT. Details here.
Earlier today, one of my favorite editors asked me to be part of a “best of the decade” theme issue his magazine is doing later this year. This wasn’t a proper assignment, he just wanted me to name some books–fiction or non-, but not poetry–that I thought were among the best published in the last ten years. I have no idea how many people he asked to do this, and I don’t know whether the nominations will be aggregated into a master “top however many” list. Or maybe we’ll each get one or two picks and a note explaining them. I’ll let you know when the issue comes out. But in the meantime, I thought it might be interesting and fun to pass the question along to all of you. What do you think are three of the best books published in the last ten years? Leave it in the comments section.
(via Best American Poetry blog) “The Revenge of the Epigoni” by Lynn Chu, on why the Google settlement sucks. Thing is, Chu pretty much starts in the middle of the argument, so going to the BestAmPo post first for some context is actually a pretty good idea.
I needed a new bookshelf. before breaking down and ordering one from Staples.com ($49.99 for a wooden 5-shelf) I decided to try the thrift store next door to my apartment. They have a ton of bookshelves, apparently NONE of which are for sale. Probably this is because they’re covered in books which ARE for sale. I didn’t need any books. In fact, books are why I was having this whole shelf-problem in the first place. But then, there, sitting on top of a pile (and btw, if you’re just going to pile the books anyway, why not sell me the shelf? piles work even better on floors than on shelves) I spotted Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry edited by Ezra Pound and Marcella Spann. Mine for one hot crumpled dollar bill. No tax. From the back cover: “It is a statement by example of the ‘Pound critical canon’ and, as such, a short course in the history of world poetry…” It will have pride of place on my new bookshelf, which Staples will be delivering sometime tomorrow, along with the pink plastic pencil case ($.50) I ordered to tip the total price over the $50 line and therefore earn free shipping.