A Thing That Has an Equalizing Effect
More sections from The Equalizer!
The Equalizer 1.3: Joshua Corey, Stephanie Anderson, Buck Downs, Shanna Compton, Laura Carter, Peter Davis, Alana Dagen, Reb Livingston, Cody Walker, John Cotter, Craig Santos Perez, and Chris Martin.
The Equalizer 1.4: A selection from John Gallaher’s Guidebooks.
The Equalizer 1.5: Cynthia Cruz, Reb Livingston, Allison Gauss, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Cody Walker, Buck Downs, Barbara Cully, Peter Davis, Lucas Farrell, Stephanie Anderson, Noah Falck, Carol Fink, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Matt Hart, Maureen Thorson, Amy King, and Chris Martin.
The Equalizer 1.6: Lucas Farrell’s “The Dual-Shade of Six-Prong.”
Archive Cursor Corp. Catalog NYU Face
1. If you missed last night’s live reading/q&a with Grace Krilanovich, it is now available for archived viewing here (in multiple parts, below the live feed screen).
2. Richard Nash announces Red Lemonade, the first imprint of his new Cursor publishing apparatus, including three compelling titles: Someday This Will Be Funny by Lynne Tillman (Apr 2011), Zazen by Vanessa Veselka (May 2011), and Follow Me Down Kio Stark (June 2011).
3. Timothy Donnelly’s Cloud Corporation gets a 2 page review in the latest issue of the New Yorker (partial preview online): “…In Donnelly’s hands, we feel again that we live again in a universe with a god.”
4. Giancarlo DiTrapano writes about cluster headaches at Thought Catalog.
5. Arthur Neresian & Tony O’Neill will be reading together at the NYU Bookstore on Wednesday, Oct. 20th at 7pm.
4. We now have an HTMLGIANT group on Facebook you can ‘like,’ if you feel like that.
Grace Half-Off Intimacy Entertainment
1. Monday of next week (Oct 11) we’ll be hosting a live web interview / reading with Grace Krilanovich, author of the truly fantastic The Orange Eats Creeps, here on the site at 9 PM Eastern (that’s 6PM on the West Coast). Mark it! The novel was just selected for the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award.
2. Dzanc is running a 50% sale on many of their titles, too good a deal to pass up on if you’ve got some gaps in that collection you’ve been looking to fill.
3. This week The Faster Times is running a multipart epanel on intimacy and social networking involving myself, Stephen Elliott, & Christina Kingston, hosted by Jesus Angel Garcia. Part one is here, with part 2 following today, etc.
4. Those who were interested in the Wallace-inspired A Failed Entertainment exhibit I posted about at the beginning of this year should check out a new development in the series, with an open call for new exhibits for forthcoming exhibitions of the event.
Slice and Scan THIS
1. What do we think about “slice and scan”? {Jennifer Howard, “Digitizing the Personal Library,” Chronicle of Higher Ed}
2. Viral poetry! Michael Schiavo has just released the first two sections of his pdf poetry project, The Equalizer: First Series consisting of 75 poets, 15 sections, distributed to anyone who wants to read every other day during the month of October. What makes it viral? Schiavo includes this blurb with his emails:
Please forward this email and attachment to interested readers. If you’d like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they’re released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant@gmail.com. Visit michaelschiavo.blogspot.com for more information, including updates & links to websites that will be hosting some or all of The Equalizer sections. Feel free to post this PDF to your blog or website. Please include the names of contributors in your post.
The Equalizer 1.1 is Summer Block, Jim Behrle, Macgregor Card, Mark Bibbins, Emily Anderson, Aaron Belz, Don Share, Cody Walker, Christopher Salerno, Amick Boone, Adam Clay, Buck Downs, Stephanie Anderson, Owen Barker, and CAConrad.
The Equalizer 1.2 features Matt Hart’s “Write This Today While You Were.”
I’ll keep posting sections here, but get on the mailing list; it’s like a giant chain letter without any threat of sudden death if you don’t forward it along. I think it’s a pretty cool idea. Thank you, Michael. READ MORE >
A Brief MFA Discussion Round Up
This weekend I spent some time thinking about how much people love talking about MFAs, what they’re good for, who should get one, why they’re terrible, how much they cost, why they’re wonderful and on and on and on. I never imagined that a college degree could generate so much vigorous discussion. I love it.
At The Rumpus, Anelise Chen wrote an essay about the MFA Ponzi Scheme. It’s a great, witty essay that makes good, if not commonsensical points. The comments are pretty intense with all kinds of opinions being shared about the MFA with a great deal of cost/benefit analysis. I love when writers get all math-y. I don’t have much of an opinion on MFAs. I do not have one. I do believe one should never pay for graduate school but that a graduate education is awesome. There are worse things someone could spend their money on, like drugs, though for some, that might be something better to spend their money on. I don’t judge.
Roundup
Christian Lorentzen does the Malcolm Gladwell.
The Guardian Books Blog on “How Writers Review their Critics.”
Elif Batuman’s epic piece in the NYTimes Magazine on the purgatory of some of Kafka’s papers.
There’s a great piece over at The Millions on what it means to be a “best bookstore” and how, contra the insidious “death of books/bookstores/reading/literacy” meme that we’re all always seeing spread around, there’s actually a lot to be excited about on these fronts. Among the other fun stuff in the piece, is this offhand list of “the top 10 booksellers in America … Stephanie Anderson from WORD, Emily Pullen from Skylight, Michele Filgate from Riverrun, Rachel Fershleiser from Housing Works…”. The article also mentions a crucial point first made–by Rachel F.–on the Housing Works blog, that many of the best bookstores in NYC have opened rather than closed within the last ten years. Counter-meme, anyone?
Every time you think you know Joshua Cohen, he finds something else to surprise you with. Apparently, homeboy has been (or is now?) publishing a new unpublished piece of short fiction every week on his website. Check out the Paragraph for Liu Xaiobo.
And finally, something I was right about. Remember back when we were talking about the suicide of Kevin Morrissey at the VQR? In a comment on that post, I argued that the charges of “workplace bullying” leveled against VQR editor Ted Genoways appeared off-base and reductive. I suggested that people read Emily Bazelon’s Slate reporting on the Phoebe Prince case. Well, a couple of days ago Slate published a big new piece by Bazelon about the VQR, what workplace bullying really is (and isn’t), and how the media made a caricature out of Ted Genoways. You should go read that piece right now.
ARob AGin Catfish Word
1. Our own Adam Robinson has just been announced as Guest Editor for the next edition of Dzanc’s Best of the Web. If anyone can up the game they set with the latest edition, Adam is it. Editor nominations are now open.
2. @ Jacket Copy, they compare the voice of Allen Ginsberg reading “Howl” to the voice of James Franco reading “Howl.” I was too ehh to listen, but you can if you want.
3. Saw Catfish, or “the other Facebook movie that is a documentary instead of a stupid drama by a washed up director,” the other night, it was refreshing.
4. If you are in NYC, I am reading Tuesday night at 7:30 at the excellent Word Bookstore in Greenpoint for Indie Press Night with Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch (for Ugly Duckling), Rachel B. Glaser (for Publishing Genius), and Timothy Donnelly (for Wave Books). Should be real awesome, would be real awesome to see you out.
Le Scrap
I’m feeling scrapbook-y this fine Sunday morning.
1. Insanity 101:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW3Roqmfr94&feature=related
2. There’s a new issue of SpringGun out that includes an e-book and digital writing. I think this is one of the better new online lit mags.
Charles Bock reviews Richard Yates in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Here’s my top pick for a pull-quote: “[Lin] provides accurate, often filthy dispatches on what it is to be young and pushing against the world.”
… Also, in case you didn’t catch it when we bugged out about it the other day, TL’s self-profile in The Stranger is the best piece of satire of 2010 so far, and a strong favorite for best of the year.
I Like What The Hell Is Going On Over Here
The Birdsong Collective and Micropress is having a contest: $50 to the winner, plus some other junk for your trunk (publication in the zine, &c). Deadline is early next month so hurry the chop up! Only catch, I suppose, is you have to be in the city of New York for their reading in mid-December. Include me out, but guess what? No reader’s fee! That’s because it’s a contest, not a fundraiser! That’s good!
If you’re in Portland tonight, Future Tense is celebrating their 20th birthday! Special guests include Zachary Schomburg, Elizabeth Ellen, and Chelsea Martin! I wish I were there, Kevin Sampsell is a super-sweet dude.
You don’t need to make up a stupid name for yr witch house and/or chill wave band/book/film/mixtape, just let this thang do it for you, right? Duh. Don’t know what I’m talking about? That’s perfectly alright.
A bonus level for “Return of the Quack” (videogame based on Matt Furie’s arts) is available for to play online. And the full game is available in Giant Robot 67. Think I’m gonna wander over to the store today for to get mine own. $5 means the price is right.