Literary Doppelgangers
Both Peter Falk’s “Columbo” and Jacques Derrida underwent uncharacteristic measures to discover the truth, though the latter’s was so deconstructed and linguistically bloated it chased its own tale. “To pretend, I actually do the thing. I have therefore only pretended to pretend,” he once said. Pretend you’re hearing that in French, now find the nearest stale baguette and pretend to hit him.
Random Live Broadcast of Recent Books I Like
The random ass live reading is over. I will probably do it again, maybe once or twice a month when there are new books to talk about.
Here are the books I randomly read pages from this evening on uStream:
Collobert Orbital by Johan Jonson, translated by Johannes Goransson
How They Were Found by Matt Bell
The Black Eye by Brian Foley
Richard Yates by Tao Lin
Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! by Peter Davis
The Cow by Ariana Reines
Pilot by Johannes Goransson
“it had this varnish all over it / we got this varnish all over us”
Deeply excited to spread of word of Emily Toder’s Brushes With, which is a little book about meeting shapes that’s coming out from Tarpaulin Sky. Stop shaving your home bases and practicing the same three chords and have a look at this. Excerpt after the jump:
Coming Attractions
1. I love when authors I love leak a little information about what they’re working on, so I was basically salivating as I read this interview with Jeffrey Eugenides at FSG’s Work in Progress blog. Anyone else excited about this? I don’t think I have ever met anyone who doesn’t like Eugenides and surely his likability pisses someone here off.
2. Ever since I finished the Vicarious MFA series here, I have been trying to think of a new series and I finally did. It’s called 10 sentences and it’s something like an interview, something like a game, but not exactly either. The first one will be with John Jodzio & you can expect it Monday or Tuesday.
Memes Will Be Memes
In this here book, Richard Dawkins coined the term meme.
I heard he doesn’t believe in gawd or something. I dunno,
Blake Butler—
Everyone I’ve seen mention this has been told they write either like Stephen King or David Foster Wallace. Who do you write like?
157
“PAY FOR SOUP / BUILD A FORT / SET IT ON FIRE”
If one were so inclined, one could buy The Whole Livery Line, 1987, by “Jean-Michel-Basquiat [sic] faithfully recreated by hand using the finest art quality linen canvas and Winsor and Newton oil paints” for just $255 from either of these companies – judging from the templates, presumably run by the same “on the fringes of legality ethics” mo-fos. I wonder if people will openly sell forgeries of Rammellzee pieces in ten or fifteen years, when people realize, maybe, that he was, like, really important, and dead. Probably not.
Nothing New
Robert Lopez has started putting up guest posts on his blog for Kamby Bolongo Mean River. All posts are titled ‘No News Today.’ Seems like more will be forthcoming. I’ve added it to my google reader & you should add it to yours. It is one of the only blogs that guarantees to be newsless, unless you are somehow still reading Gawker. Here is the first one from Sam Ligon:
There are reports of startling news from the recent or distant past. Something about oil or a flood somewhere. Something about a military leader being dismissed or named emperor. Something biblical, maybe, involving slaughter and men lying with beasts. Nothing has been confirmed by reliable sources. It’s all very unclear, people, and shaded by gossip, rumor, innuendo. Therefore, and as always, there is no news today.
Tentacles Are Hair You Wear On Your Spleen, Ideally
“You might define the general trend in my work as a synthesis of aesthetics and psychology. Traditionally, in Japan, these are not two different things. Neither is aesthetics in conflict with realism. I believe this is unique to Japan.” – Yukio Mishima
