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.
Wag’s Revue #2 features an interview with T.C. Boyle, a handful of K. Silem Mohammed’s exactly-anagramatized Shakespeare sonnets (must be seen to be believed), Mathias Svalina, Kenneth Goldsmith, Stephen Elliott and more.
Rabbit Light #9 features poemfilms of Joshua Beckman, Dorothea Lasky, Graham Foust, caconrad, Brandon Shimoda, and more.
Rolling Stone doesn’t have Matt Taibbi’s epic takedown of Goldman Sachs posted on their website yet, but the good folks at SomethingAwful have OCR’d the whole thing and posted it.
Jesus Christ, it’s everything we love at once: The Rumpus has an excerpt from Zak Smith’s new book, We Did Porn: Memoir and Drawings, which Tin House Books will publish on 7/1. The excerpt, entitled “Barely Legal Whores Get Gang F**ked,” is a description of Sasha Grey going on the Tyra Banks show, plus some illustrations from the book. Smith, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, is the author of Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Happy Saturday!
Bianca Stone makes poetry comics. I’m really in love with them. The first time I met her she gave me a chapbook of a collaboration she made with Matthew Rohrer, and then last night, after we read together at Happy Ending, I was lucky enough to obtain two more sweet, sweet poetry comics: “The Secret Intimacies of Insects,” and “Book of Beasts,” a collection of her abandoned fragments, revisions, and drawings. I’m really excited to read these little books, and to get to keep them. I think you could do a lot worse with your Friday afternoon than make friends with Bianca’s work. Here’s her blog. And here’s a sweet little poem, comic-less but that’s OK, “Watching Superman” in the current issue of elimae (which, btw, also features Mike Topp, our own comment-thread regular Darby Larson, fiction by Elizabeth Ellen, Michael Kimball interviewing David McLendon, and more. Maybe somebody else will post soon about the new elimae.)
Slate’s got Henry Louis Gates Jr. interviewing Spike Lee about the 20 year anniversary of Do The Right Thing.
I just discovered this, and it’s awesome. Part 1 is a general discussion of Bloom and his work; Part 2 focuses specifically on The Anxiety of Influence.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_WtTx2x5sg
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj7p_brtNA8
Not pictured: Argentine sex kitten.
[Hat tip to my friend Pete for the link.] Well kids, another day, and another Republican turns out to be a lyin’ cheatin’ AWOL SOB. But I give the presumably-soon-to-be-ex-Governor credit for one thing–he’s a pretty decent prose stylist. He’s erotic, but not too trashy, and he’s upfront about his emotions and his mixed feelings, but you never get the impression he’s at loose ends. Check out this passage, from July 8 of last year.
[…] I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up. To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the back ground, the tranquillity that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds – and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.
Fuckin’ poetry, man. As I was just saying to Jeremy Schmall in gchat, if I was sleeping with this guy, and he was writing me letters like this, I’d totes be sticking around to see how things panned out. Read all they’ve got up so far (they promise more to come) here.
RELATED (in a sense): Greta Christina’s classic essay, “Are We Having Sex Now Or What?” (via Susie & Aretha Bright at Jezebel)
Hot stuff! In another commerce-related newsbreak, I just learned that Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point is finally available on US-formatted DVD. Have I mentioned that my birthday is June 29th? Just sayin’.