Freaks Meeks 700 Sads
1. Excellent profile by Michael H. Miller on the excellent Meeks, by Julia Holmes, at the Observer.
2. This dude owns 700 copies of a book called Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana. What book do you own the most copies of? [via Electric Lit via Ron Silliman]
3. Brief but pleasant list of quality of Gary Lutz’s writing, blogged by Ryan Kamstra. “For all the self-referential wizardry and playfulness with the expectation of the sentence overpowering his work, his fiction is tempered by deep human concern. It is also very sad.”
DeWitt Dark Side Shoplifter eFuck eYourMachine Black Breath
1. Fantastic essay from Helen DeWitt on habit and death @ The Incongruous Quarterly [via Bookslut, who just posted their 99th issue, and includes my interview with Adam Robinson].
2. This dude remade Dark Side of the Moon as if it had been written 8-bit for the Nintendo.
3. A list of the most stolen books at McNally Jackson at the Awl.
4. I kind of love that certain coffee shops are banning eReaders from their premises.
5. Just in case you happen to be looking for some solid new satanic thrash, Black Breath’s Heavy Breathing is helping me get busy this week.
“Every word was once an animal. – Emerson” – Marcus
Today, at Community Thrift on 17th and Valencia, I bought these books for $2.50. The first page of Dear Mr. Capote says “Ed Seifert” in pencil. Wonder if he’s related to George, who won the Super Bowl. Jaroslav won the Nobel Prize. My family farmed the rim of the Dust Bowl and nearly made it stinking rich off a bunch of black sand but didn’t. It seems “Seifert” comes from “cipher.” Encoding words is a form of mathematics. “Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.” – Michael Marcus
Tomorrow I’m reading at Amnesia, at nine o’clock, with Lindsay Hunter, Amelia Gray, and Aaron Burch. Wearing a coonskin cap and a corduroy suit, I will read from my novel for the very first time. The novel is called A Dog On Onondaga. I vow to never finish writing it, but to self-publish new handbound editions whenever I feel like it. Maybe you think that’s vain. Sometimes I stare in the mirror for oceans of time, for no reason. Your opinion of me is so much sand on the beach of yesterday. Three days ago part of me did something immoral; the rest of me has only begun to feel bad. Another part of me wants desperately to be lost in the desert with a backpack full of books; but that can probably wait until the winter of my content. I plan to go to the community pool tomorrow, so that my body will remember what it was like when it was a word. READ MORE >
All made up
Today’s some made-up holiday, which means places are closed, so to celebrate, here‘s a new story by Nick Mamatas. It’s a weird little ditty with lols a-plenty, I mean, if you like that kind of stuff, laughing, I mean, out loud.
And here, Johannes Goransson says a metaphor to explain his vision of an ideal poem is an “infestation of language.” I like that.
And here, Michael Kimball says he likes pizza and ice cream. I like pizza and ice cream too.
And, just for holiday kicks, she got married yesterday, and seriously, the big story is about her dress.
And that’s all I have to say.
go upstairs gallimaufry 5
5. There is a new Hobart. It be quench, yo.
17. Seventeen Andy Warhol audio files (thanks, test)
33. Fascinating:
There’s crazy, avant-garde, weird, experimental novels going back almost to the very beginning.
7. The Independent asks: Is popular fiction getting more literary, wiser, good?
122. From flash to novel: Tarah Masih reviews Sherrie Flick.
whyouwannagimmetherunnaround?
Shteyngart & Cohen at Vox Tablet. Shteyngart, btw, also just got a mind-erasingly ecstatic review from Michiko Kakutani. Cohen, not to be outdone, is running for mayor of Annapolis, Maryland.
Snowden Wright loved Eugene Marten’s Firework.
Ed Champion did not love Richard Yates.
Did somebody say politics? Not bloody likely. But anyway, let’s meet Emily Henochowicz. I got turned onto her personal blog after reading about her in the New York Times. Seems the 21 year old artist / exchange student / demonstrator lost an eye after being shot in the face with a tear gas canister by Israeli police. But that news is almost two months old. The article I read, which went up on 7/27, is about how the Israeli Ministry of Defense is refusing to pay (and denying responsibility for) her hospital bills. Anyway, if you go over to her blog you can check out Emily’s art, including this pair of one-eye-favoring glasses that she designed herself.
The Economist had a great cover story this week (last week?) on the absolute fuckedness (my paraphrase) of the American prison system. The web version seems to be behind a paywall, but maybe you can find the issue at the story. Did you know that over 1 in 100 Americans is currently incarcerated, and that if you factor in people on parole and probation, the figure rises to 1 in 31* Americans under some form of corrective supervision. Related, this Nation piece about BP’s use of prison labor in Louisiana.
Also, the Economist apparently has an arts/books blog now. It is called Prospero, and here’s an interesting piece about arch-agent Andrew Wylie partnering directly with Amazon (and bypassing publishers entirely) to release e-book editions of Portnoy’s Complaint, Updike’s Rabbit books, and a suite of others.
Finally, Unsaid editor David McLendon announces on Facebook that Allison Titus is the 2010 recipient of the Transport of the Aim Poetry Prize. You might remember that Titus’s Sum of Every Lost Ship was one of five small press poetry titles to read this summer. I liked her book a whole bunch. So congrats, Allison! And a hearty cheers to Unsaid.
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*For a few days this read “1 in 3.” Thanks to Steven Augustine for catching the typo.
Seventh Mess Section
1. GIVE HER DRUGS / LET HER GO
2. “Watching porn’s usually like watching a melancholy documentary to me, a documentary about sex as a failed utopia or something, I don’t know.” –Dennis Cooper
3. Similarly, identity becomes fluid: Weems is Ellen is Caden is Weems etc. –an excellent sound-guided review of Synecdoche, NY in a great all-sound issue of Reverse Shot
4. They pierced the envelope of the earth. Or at least found some exit. –from Thy Son Liveth
6. What we call deflation, an earlier culture might have called, “God abandoning the world.” –Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein
lunar methodist 4
5. Willows Wept Review redux.
9.
Dear Darth Vader,
Vader, I love you & think you are a total badass, but when you lost Padme and yelled NOOO! Yah, that was super lame. You are supposed to be a person filled with anger & evil, not love and compassion. You really let me down with that NO. In fact, you did not only let me down, but you let all of us down, all of us Star Wars fans. Next time, be a little bit more of an evil badass, not a pretty princess.
Yours Truly, Simón Gutkin
4. An odd and lovely collection of facial expressions in literature.
Face had fallen like a waffle —Frank O’Hara
A gentle, cowlike expression passed over her face like a cloud –Colette
Had a face like a requiem —Honoré de Balzac