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.
Christopher Higgs’ post from the other day, “Tin House & Genre Fiction,” has broken 100 comments. One of those comments is from Tonaya Thompson, the author of the Tin House blog post, “To Genre or Not to Genre,” that Higgs was posting about. Thompson has also written a followup post on the Tin House blog, “Genre Redux.”
Anyone who read my original post as saying that we will discount any piece of writing out of hand is willfully misreading it. And I think that’s because my attack on “lazy” writing put a lot of people on the defensive, especially since I equated that with genre writing.
It’s a good piece, and if you’ve been following the thread, you should definitely read this new post. She seems rather generous to me, in terms of treating her detractors with credulity. She’s certainly more conciliatory than I’d ever dream of being, if similarly treated. (Ironically enough I have an obligation to disclose that I am published in the current issue of Tin House: an essay celebrating Needful Things by Stephen King, the very existence of which would seem to put the lie to a whole raft of commenter claims about TH’s–and my–genre-related biases.)
Anyway, for ease of access, after the jump find a copy of Thompson’s comment in the Higgs thread. It’s worth reading the comment before proceeding to the followup post, and you’ll notice that she asks for recommendations of genre writing to read, so feel free to leave those on her blog or on ours. You–or she–could also do much worse, I’d just like to mention, than by reading the Michael Moorcock book pictured above.
Yale University Press is publishing a book about the Danish Mohammed political cartoon controversy from a few years back. But, for fear of violence, this academic study of a dozen political cartoons is being published without the cartoons it is studying. Assholes. But don’t let me get all pissed about this. Here’s Hitch at Slate, pissed enough for all of us.
Over at New York Magazine, Sam Anderson expresses all my major feelings re Thomas Pynchon, more or less exactly as I feel them. (link via Rumpus.)
I should not, probably, hate Thomas Pynchon. He is an indisputably, uniquely gifted genius who shares artistic DNA with almost all my favorite writers (Joyce, Barthelme, DeLillo, et al). Basic demographics and taste-algorithms suggest, in fact, that I should be a full-fledged Pynchon groupie, the kind of guy who names all his hamsters Slothrop and slaps W.A.S.T.E. stickers on the windows of his local post office. But I can’t help it. My distaste is visceral, involuntary, and preconscious—a spasm of my aesthetic immune system. While I fully appreciate Pynchon in the abstract, as a literary-historical juggernaut—a necessary bridge from, say, Nabokov (with whom he studied at Cornell) to David Foster Wallace—sitting down with one of his actual books makes my eyebrows start to smolder. I find him tedious, shallow, monotonous, flippant, self-satisfied, and screamingly unfunny. I hate his aesthetic from floor to ceiling…
Hey everyone- it’s 1 AM here in Hong Kong. I’ve been at an all-Indian dance party for the last several hours. I’m pretty drunk right now, and I have to wake up in 5 hours, at 6 AM, to be out of the house at 7 AM to be at the airport by 8 to fly at 93. The flight is about 15 1/2 hours, and if all goes well I’ll be at JFK around 1PM on the 16th, which will actually be the same day I left. What’s the point of this post? It’s that even though I’m super-bummed that my EPIC JOURNEY is finally coming to its close, I’m hugely excited to be back in the USovA in time to go to this reading. Full details about it (swiped from reading curator Greg Purcell’s facebook post) after the jump.
It’s a criticism double-shot.
“This Planet is Not Yours to Rule” – n+1’s latest buckshot blast of capsule movie reviews by A.S. Hamrah. >>This second Transformers film is garbage, a big pile of useless scrap and refuse in every way, but there are shots in it of plastic beauty which use Megan Fox’s stress-tested porno face like an element in a James Rosenquist painting of car parts and spaghetti. But so what? James Rosenquist paintings already exist. <<
“In the Theater of Isak Dinesen” – by Joanna Scott at The Nation. >>Confession doesn’t leave much room for imagination except to demand its allegiance to the personal, which may leave readers less inclined to find value in the extravagant lies of fiction. It’s understandable, then, but no less disappointing, that the tales of Isak Dinesen–filled with children who dream too much, fat old nobles who are devoted to revenge, nuns who are good at weaving, servants who are good at cooking–would be easy to overlook.<<
Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in Their Creative Spaces (via Michael Hemmingson on facebook)
>>is there any definable characteristic that separates what is called “flash fiction” from what is called “short story” or “novella” or “novel.”<< (click thru for Sam’s whole post)
When I was younger I was obsessed with word-counts. I always wanted to know how long a book was “supposed” to be. No writer I have ever asked about this has ever wanted to give a straight answer to this question. I used to think it was because they were fussy and protective over their secrets, but now that I am older and wiser I understand that it is because they don’t actually know. Nobody does. When Amazon put in that feature with all the book stats, it was one of the happiest days of my life. I spent hours looking up every book I could think of, to see how long they all were. A few months ago, when I switched to a Mac, I was delighted to learn the Pages gives me a running word-count at the bottom of the work-window, and that if I highlight a section of text, I instantly get the word-count for that section. (This blog-window does the same thing, btw.)
But many years before the machines came to the rescue, there was one man who attempted to give me the answers I sought. READ MORE >
My friend, Jacob, at a bar tonight in Hong Kong (I’m back stateside this Sunday, if anyone’s keeping track) told me I had to go look this up. I’m drunk now, and my belly is full of spicy lamb kebab, but I did it anyway, and I’ve got to say, it’s a pretty beautiful, heartfelt, honest remembrance. If you’re only going to read one John Hughes memorial, make it this one.
There’s a new issue of The New Yinzer out. TNY is a Pittsburgh-based online lit journal, and the summer edition is guest-edited by Claire Donato, a poet whom we’ve loved on here before. (1 love, 2 love.) It’s a very strong issue, featuring several essays and selections of visual art (see Matchbox Museum piece, above). Here’s a taste of what’s inside (the journal is designed as a split screen with the TOC on the left and content on the right, obviating the need for linking to individual pieces)-
Katy Henriksen (essay) – “Handmade Books: Or, My Answer to an Increasingly Digital and Mass-Manufactured World.” A good bookbinding awl has a rounded, wooden handle for cradling in the palm of your hand and a sharp point at the end of the metal rod for piercing. For the Cannibal stitch we needed four holes in each signature, two an inch apart an inch from the top, and two an inch apart an inch from the bottom, making the total of holes punched for the issue exactly 4,000.
Brian Foley (poem) – “Older at Night.” It could be a photograph / We both live in.
Claire Donato & Jeff T. Johnson (curated gallery) – “Matchbox Museum.” Being resolute against all others in going forward, being not the moss, being the mess side by side. We’re current.
Matthew Savoca (essay) – “A Zen Essay in Which Nothing is Accomplished.” I want to get as many online literature writers as possible to buy Powerball tickets together, in the same way that many business people who work at offices do.
Blake Butler (short-short) – “Accident.” Her gums and tongue were scorched with symbols.
Ryan Manning (photographs) – “Sky Polaroids.”
And, oh yeah, I’m in it too- a few erasure poems and a short “thesis statement” on the practice of erasure. But my favorite thing in the issue, at least thus far, are Ryan’s photos.
