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.
Kudos, Electric Literature.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUClJFjFEgk
What’s happening over at The Weaklings these days? Well, this week brought a bevy of guest-posts from some of Dennis’s Distinguished Locals.
Postitbreakup Presents…Auto-tune Day – A brief history of the use and abuse of the (in)famous pitch-perfection software.
At he '09 Grammy Awards, Death Cab for Cutie raises awareness about Auto-tune Abuse.
Bacteriaburger Presents…Nifty Day – A spotlight on the Nifty Erotic Stories Archive:
“Maintaining the Archive is done as a hobby: a volunteer, part-time effort. No one receives any compensation for or personal benefit from maintaining the Archive. Readers do not pay to access stories; authors do not pay to display stories; websites which host the Archive must make it accessible to all and do not pay for the content; stories are not obscured with banner advertising in and around them. The Archive does not own any of the stories and does not sell them or license them to others. All webhosting graciously is donated. Some readers help defray the incidental costs for which we are extremely grateful and hope that more readers will help in the future.”
And neither last nor least, Dennis himself presents “Recent works by some of the artists who also hang around here sometimes, Volume 6.” Some randomish highlights- a video of Derek McCormack & Kevin Killian reading, a story and a poem by Alec Niedenthal (whose work, btw, we just accepted for Agriculture Reader #4), and several more images like the pasted-below from Kier Cooke Sandvik.
Studious readers of this blog remember my post a few weeks ago about trying to figure out what books to pack for my trip to Hong Kong. Well, the seven I brought were the Oppen, Schulz, Cohen, Offill, Hempel, Kierkegaard, and Bloom. Also, Bluets by Maggie Nelson (Wave), the review copy of which arrived literally minutes before I left for the airport. Of those, I’ve finished the Cohen and the Bloom, have been picking at the Oppen (sparingly, but I dig what I’m seeing), am bottomed out about halfway through the Schulz, and haven’t touched any of the others. But that’s not to say I’ve only read two books. At a sweet secondhand store here in HK called Book Attic (that’s 10 Amoy street, if you’re passing through) I picked up a few titles. After the jump, I talk about the books I bought, and it becomes clear why I’ve illustrated this post with a photo of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
I met Jesse while I was in Israel earlier this summer. He was traveling with a surf board, and had plans to go from Israel into Beirut and then attempt to surf across the border. He actually attempted this, and his adventures were published in something called Ma’an News.
His regular web presence is Blogging the Casbah, which I highly recommend you check out. Yesterday’s post logged his visit to a Palestinian refugee camp in South Beiruit.
I think a big reason for this is that the international community has traditionally viewed the Palestinian problem as a West Bank and Gaza kind of issue. They forget that the Palestinian camps of the Levant are like tightly guarded prisons that have been subject to enormous campaigns from local governments to keep displaced Palestinians from being granted the rites of citizenship.
What a happy thing to stumble upon! Christine Schutt–NOON editor, 2009 Pulitzer prize finalist, all-around badass–has written a short essay for the New York Foundation for the Arts website, about her work as a creative writing teacher at the Nightingale-Bamford school for girls. It’s a great piece about teaching, but there’s also a highly informative craft essay tucked inside it.
I’m in complete agreement with Christine on this. I think reading one’s own work aloud is an essential part of the writing process. When something has been through enough drafts, I print it out and do an edit by ear, while listening to myself. The rule is: if I can’t say it in the world the way I’m hearing it said in my head, then it’s not done being written yet. And as a teaching tool, it’s incredibly useful for any kind of writing. Last semester, about mid-way through the course, I started encouraging my 101 students at Rutgers start reading their comp papers aloud to themselves, and the ones that did it improved measurably in areas like grammar, syntax, and overall coherence. What happened, I think, was that they heard with their ears what they couldn’t hear with their eyes. Once they saw the spread between what they thought they’d written and what they’d actually produced, they were in a position to start working on how to close the gap. Plus, that work to re-write sonorously forced them to do another whole revision. I think next semester everyone will be forced to do it from the get-go. But enough about me. Go read Christine’s essay.
![DSCF3118[1]](http://htmlgiant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/DSCF31181.JPG "DSCF3118[1]")
So the plan for today was to take the 1pm ferry from Central HK to Lamma Island, so I could check out the Bookworm Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant and supposed literary haunt. I planned to spend most of the afternoon there, and so went out loaded for bear- Joshua Cohen’s A Heaven of Others, the Selected Poems of George Oppen, Bruno Schulz’s Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, and some of my own stuff to maybe work on. So I actually manage to finish Cohen’s book–which I’ve been rocking through and loving for the past week–on the ferry ride over, then I get to the pier at Yung Shue Wan, and lo and behold, the bookstore is closed. No explanation why. Some woman says it’ll be open tomorrow–for all the good that does me, assuming it’s even true. Now what? Well, it turns out that this island I’m on is, like, an island, with all the things you’d expect to find on an island, such as beaches, woods, mountains, ancient burial sites, and a seaside trail that leads you through all of it. So me, Josh, George, and Bruno hiked from Yung Shue Wan to the other main village, Sok Kwu Wan. It was listed as a 90-minute hike, but I got up to some quality dithering, so it took me longer. Then at SKW I took repast of iced milk tea+coffee followed by a bowl of shrimp dumplings in soup, all in time to catch the 4:05 ferry back to Central. All in all, a stellar day, though it wasn’t exactly a victory for books. Maybe this is something books should think about next time before they fuck with me. To see about two dozen more pictures of my day-trip, with nary a book in sight, click the sentence above or else right here.
Would you ride this man's bus? And how!
I think this event sounds incredible, and since it’s from the people who put on the Poetry Bus Tour in ’06, you can expect it to meet, greet & beat expectations. It’s like the Warped Tour decided to become the Pitchfork Festival or something. Or like poetry-Lollapalooza decided to do what real Lollapalooza did. Anyway, here’s some of what you can expect if you hit the University of Washington, Aug 14 – 16. For info on pricing and a more detailed schedule, check the Wave site. Word is there are only 150 tickets to be sold, and a limited number of daypasses, so if you live up that-a-way and are interested, better get cracking.
READINGS — in the Henry Auditorium, with smaller, exclusive readings in the James Turrell Skyspace — featuring Joshua Beckman, Noelle Kocot, Dorothea Lasky, Anthony McCann, Richard Meier, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Geoffrey Nutter, Matthew Rohrer, Mary Ruefle, Dara Wier, Jon Woodward, Matthew Zapruder and Rachel Zucker;
SCREENINGS OF FILMS starring John Ashbery, Robin Blaser, Jane Freilicher, Denise Levertov, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, John Wieners, and others;
poetry book DISCOUNTS at fourteen participating local, independent bookstores (a map will be provided);
a BOOK ARTS PRESENTATION by Sandra Kroupa, the Book Arts and Rare Book Curator in Special Collections at the University of Washington;
the Henry Art Gallery and EXHIBITIONS, including exhibitions of work by Chio Aoshima, Jasper Johns, Ann Lislegaard, Jeffry Mitchell & Tivon Rice; new video from China; and photographic work by Imogen Cunningham, Nan Goldin, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Andy Warhol, and others, from the Henry’s permanent collection;
and more, to be discovered…
Front & Center on the NYT main page right now: a big profile about WTV on the occasion of his new book Imperial, a 1300 page study of California’s Imperial Valley.
Mr. Vollmann’s editors urged him to cut, he said, and he resisted: “We always go round and round. They want me to cut, and I argue, so they cut my royalties, and I agree never to write a long book again.” He acknowledged that the length of “Imperial” might cost him readers but said: “I don’t care. It seems like the important thing in life is pleasing ourselves. The world doesn’t owe me a living, and if the world doesn’t want to buy my books, that’s my problem.”
The 20th annual Hong Kong International Book Fair was held July 22-28, at the Hong Kong convention center on the Victoria Harbour waterfront, which I believe is the round building in the lower right corner of this photograph, which was shot at the top of the IFC tower. The book fair attracted massive crowds–you’ll see the line to get in just below–and was open daily from morning till midnight. Midnight! Admission cost $25HK, which is about three dollars US. After the jump, you get a dozen and change photos I took to document my brief foray into the exciting world of literature I can’t read.
Hey check it out! That literary tattoo project I posted about the other day got blogged at the LA Times.