Shelf Unbound — “Unbound” being a play on bindings online
Anybody got the skinny on Shelf Unbound?
A few months ago I started receiving press releases from them. They’re a new electronic magazine that promise to “feature the best of small press, university press, and self-published books.” Okay, cool, I was excited that a group I had never heard of was doing something that could be so monumental for indie lit, which is like my main deal. And they’re thinking big, I noted from the first of the three points they said would interest me, which was that they’re offering a free copy of the first issue to the first 10,000 people who request them.
To break that down, the two things that impressed me are READ MORE >
Literary Doppelgangers
WOODY ALLEN & JOYCE CAROL OATES
There’s a Woody Allen joke where he and a woman mutually undress in a hotel room, until he, without his glasses on, realizes he’s standing before a mirror. That woman, if there ever were one, would be Joyce Carol Oates, also near-sighted and pensive, self-conscious with dour eyebrows. Of the life-size bronze statue of him in Oviedo, Spain (a town he featured in Vicky Cristina Barcelona), let us hope he doesn’t undress before it. He also said “Don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love,” which Joyce read as a rejection that fateful night in that hotel room, leaving her with nothing but time, and that chest-sinking task of writing too many novels to count.
Stunning new issue: LIES/ISLE
Issue 4 of the now-outdoing-its-own-beauty LIES/ISLE is live and full of local names and weird & warping prose. The contributors: Kimberly Keith, Thomas Kendall, Christof Pryor, Nikolina Nedeljkov, Shome Dasgupta, Merzmench, S.J. Christmass, Arkava Das, Emily Walden, Brenna Murphy, Mitch Patrick, Richard Ferber, Michael Leong. Curated, designed & published by J. Tian and Mike Kitchell, who does astounding work.
SUPERMACHINE #2 Release Party
Ben Fama emailed the Pioneer Valley Division of HTMLGIANT to let us know that SUPERMACHINE is having a release party on Friday in New York for its second issue. It looks pretty epic. Here are the specs:
Friday, Sept. 10, 7:30pm
The Schoolhouse330 Ellery St. #3 (between Broadway and Beaver)
Brooklyn, NY
Readings! Music! Your Autumn Crush!
with:
…
Macgregor Card
Chris Cheney
Lonely Christopher
Corina Copp
Jon Cotner
Joanna Penn Cooper
Brandon Downing
Anne Cecelia Holmes
Lauren Ireland
Simone Kearney
Dorothea Lasky
Paul Legault
Emily Pettit
Christie Ann Reynolds
Matvei Yankelevich
Matthew YeagerWith Music by FORMA
Are You Fucking Kidding Me ?!
The Books of Kier Cooke Sandvik
More incredible work at Kier’s blog.
On Chaplin on Kafka on Red Dead Redemption on
“The Wish to be a Red Indian”
by Franz Kafka
Trans. by Willa and Edwin MuirIf one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering jerkily over the quivering ground, until one shed one’s spurs, for there needed no spurs, threw away the reins, for there needed no reins, and hardly saw that the land before one was smoothly shorn heath when horse’s neck and head would be already gone.
Directions to forever
The top ten list just released [left] is almost identical as last year’s [right], except University of Massachusetts Amherst was dropped, replaced by Syracuse University. If you care about your future, the drive will take you approximately 4 hours and 23 minutes. If you have to cry in the car, please roll down the windows, as your tears will evaporate quicker. A good place to hide acid tabs should you be pulled over is under your eyelids. A good place to blow someone is America. The best way to get there:
Behind the Scenes at the “Word Made Flesh” Book Trailer Shoot
On Sunday, August 15, 2010 Eva Talmadge and I shot a book trailer for our forthcoming photo-anthology, The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. First we spent a couple of hours with our videographer, Dev, at Eva’s apartment. We answered some questions, tried not to cut each other off too much, and did an impromptu scrounge of Eva’s library for books that inspired tattoos included in our book. I guess we found about two dozen. Then it was off to the legendary Fineline Tattoo on 1st Street and 1st Avenue. Fineline is the longest continually running tattoo shop in New York City, with a history that goes back into the underground days when tattooing was still illegal in Manhattan. Eva and our agent, Brandi Bowles, got themselves some literary tattoos from Mehai Bakaty, the son of Fineline founder Mike Bakaty and a worldclass tattooist in his own right. (I had initially promised to get inked, too. Needless to say, I bailed.) The trailer itself should be available sometime in the next couple weeks, but in the meantime I offer the following photo gallery- a preview of the preview, if you will (please do).
Salvatore Pane on Earthbound
An awesome appreciation of one of my three favorite video games & media experiences. (others: Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy VI (or III on the version I had))
Alternative Magazine Covers
As Jonathan Franzen solemnly graces the cover of TIME magazine, we got to thinking who of his peers were also deserving of a cover on other magazines, and what those magazines might be. Here are our top picks:
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August 17th, 2010 / 4:17 pm
August 17th, 2010 / 4:17 pm