I MUST BEAT TAO!
This is not the Carles Tao Lin but some other Tao Lin. Or maybe this is Carles.
The Stranger books editor asked if I would participate. I said sure. He asked what sort of writerly service I could provide. I said I would be happy to spend an hour with the winner of whatever writerly package I was a part of discussing the proper use of white space in a piece of fiction. And then I said I would also be happy to tell the person why they shouldn’t write a story in the second person.
My contribution to this charity prize package—which is called “The DIY MFA, Semester Two” and includes Maria Semple and James Morrow offering advice on one of your stories and a graduation dinner with Ryan Boudinot—is listed on auction website as: “…a beer or two with Matthew Simmons…” Pressed for space, they have summarized my contribution. This is okay. I have some observations, though. READ MORE >
David Lynch in Conversation
[Thanks to Dan Wickett for the head up!]
Around the Web
Jeff Parker on Padgett Powell’s The Interrogative Mood at The Rumpus.
Mary Gaitskill’s got some new fiction at New York Magazine.
Carolyn See on a life of Mithradates, “The Poison King,” at the Washington Post Book World.”He wasn’t a very savory person, unless, perhaps, you hated the Roman Empire with all your heart.” Hmm.
New Raleigh Quarterly features poems by Paige Taggart, Mathias Svalina, Claire Donato, Farrah Field, and then some. Also, I guess, the fiction and nonfiction.
Dennis Cooper’s got the Spotlight on Bataille’s Blue of Noon.
Also, over at Jezebel, they’re having a discussion nearly as contentious as our recent ones on racism, over some people in the audience at an Ariana Reines reading who laughed in the wrong place, or in the wrong way, or something. But don’t worry, this debacle seems to have an element of potential racism in it, too. Scroll down to the comments for a particularly vitriolic screed by Eileen Myles. To be honest, I can’t really get a bead on what’s at stake here, to have drawn this much of her ire, but my immense respect for her coupled with the apparent depth of her rage has caught my attention. I’m inclined to believe I’m missing something, maybe since I wasn’t there. Also, at the top of the post, they’ve got actual audio from the event–not the questionable laughing itself, sadly, but about a minute of the Q&A.
Free Glass
Speaking of musics…looks like Amazon is giving away for free The Orange Mountain Music Philip Glass Sampler Vol.I.
If this wets your appetite, I’ll be posting a link to a free download of Glass’s Dracula played by the Kronos Quartet — along with links to other free musics, and art, as I do every Wednesday — tomorrow over at my spot.
The Lifted Brow 6 at MBV Music
Art by S. britt
There’s a new issue of the unstoppable Australian biannual, The Lifted Brow, packed tight with music, words, and art. We are in talks with lead brow-lifter Ronnie Scott about doing some excerpting here, but in the meantime, here are some extractions from the issue that were posted over the course of last week at MBV Music. Cheers, Brow!
Day 1: Jana Hunter song; Ben Kunkel excerpt; art by S. britt
Day 2: Diamonds song; Ruby Murray excerpt; art by Josie Morway
Day 3: Fulton Lights song; Rachel Haley Himmelheber excerpt; art by Ian Dingman
Day 4: Little Wings song; Krissy Kneen excerpt; art by Michelle Blade
Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides
A retrospective documentary on one of my heroes. Showing just for this week at Pitchfork (follow that link for the full film, the embedded video has been removed). [via Caketrain’s twitter feed]
[I got to bump heads with Wesley once before he died. I bought a piece of his art at a show and he had me bump heads and growl with him. I miss Wesley.]
Ricky Gervais interviews Larry David
A rare behind-the-scenes conversation with Larry David about his creative becoming and processes, in 6 parts (takes a minute to get going, you can skip to around 5:00 in part 1 to get to the meat of it, and then parts 2-5 follow in links from there…
A second opinion on time
Fred Lebain (via Designboom) takes pictures of scenes, then takes pictures of those scenes super-imposed on the same scene. The nod to Magritte’s “La Condition Humaine” (1933) goes without saying, but what really struck me was how similar the light was in both scenes, the shadows aligning perfectly with each other. We will assume Lebain took note of the exact time of day for both initial and ultimate scene, reminding me of Monet’s cathedral series, for which the painter kept tedious log entries tracking the seasons and times of days for each particular scene, as each painting took him a cycle of years to complete. In painting, the challenge is to preserve time, to box it in one moment.
CONTEST
To celebrate the release of his book, “Sex Dungeon for Sale!”, Patrick Wensink is holding a coloring contest. He had a series of illustrations created based on some of the book’s stories, including a Kindergartener who thinks he’s French, a puddle of ketchup shaped like Elvis and something called, “Chicken Soup for the Kidnapper’s Soul.”
To raise the stakes a little, he is also offering an autographed stack of some of his favorite books of 2009 to the winner.
Fool- By Christopher Moore
AM/PM – By Amelia Gray
Tales Designed to Thrizzle – by Michael Kupperman
Help! A Bear is Eating Me! – By Mykle Hansen
The contest ends December 14.
For all the details visit www.patrickwensink.com/randomness
Orchestrating Flarf
Drew Gardner conducts Mel Nichols, Elisabeth Workman, and Nada Gordon in an improvised poetics orchestra at the Zinc Bar, November 22, 2009
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z72_xXC7Wvk’