Contests
Win Kate Zambreno’s O Fallen Angel
The wonderful Kate Zambreno has offered to give three copies of her book O Fallen Angel to HTMLGIANT readers. In our recent interview with her Kate said:
“I had these three characters haunting me—Maggie is in many ways a grotesque carciature of another character I had written before, Ruth in an unpublished novel Green Girl, a sort of postfeminist libertine who’s also quite passive and tragic, sort of like if a Jean Rhys heroine was alive now or Clarice Lispector’s Macabea.”
As such, we’d like to hear about your inspirations, or stealings. Comment with a brief confession of something you’ve manipulated or stolen, language-wise or other. Kate will pick three winners sometime late Wednesday.
[Also, this week a new limited edition and only briefly available piece from Kate has been published by Legacy Pictures: I AM SHARON TATE.]
Tags: kate zambreno, o fallen angel
Phrases — whether titles or lyrics — from songs I’m fond of have a way of drifting into my prose. The Fugazi song title “Last Chance for a Slow Dance” is permanently embedded in my subconscious, and I find myself writing phrases that echo it from time to time. There’s a novella I wrote ages ago in which there’s a reference to “a dress rehearsal for a religious revival” — for me, there’s a direct line from one to the other.
A few years ago, I was a copy boy at an insurance provider/medical malpractice law firm. I spent eight hours a day photocopying medical records and mailing them to doctors, lawyers, hospitals, expert witnesses–anyone who had any reason to see them. I became grossly fascinated with reading the files to find out just what had gone wrong in all of these cases.
Once, I opened the file of A– B–, a middle-aged women who had been destroyed under the knife. I don’t remember the details of the surgery, the doctor, or the legal outcome, but I vividly remember the attachment of 4 Polaroid photos of A– B– nude. They show the grim, twisted scars, the bruising and– most devastatingly–the face of a woman displaying simultaneous pain of recovery and embarrassment of her own nakedness.
I wanted to write a woman who felt what A– B–‘s face made plain. I took her name and wrote a novella with it for the heroine. That was three years ago, but I’ve noticed every since then that I use the initials A.B. to name almost all of my characters who are suffering some unspeakable, unknowable pain.
Pete,
I like this. I have started naming characters RF14 but I have no idea why. Your comment made me feel a little bit more normal.
Oh, also, as a former nurse, I once saw a patient inflated with oxygen (to better get into the surgical field–to get more room in her body) and then a spark from instruments touching and she exploded in the OR. Pure oxygen is flammable. Very.
So there’s my crazy negligence OR story.
Not a great thing to see. But. Well. A story.
When I was 16, I stole the sign from the yard of a bed-n-breakfast. There were words on it. We stashed it at my best friend’s brother’s house. The brother’s probation officer was on his way one day to check up on him, so we burned it in a pile of trash. The bed-n-breakfast closed down the next winter. I don’t remember what the name was or anything else on the sign, but they were words I promise.
I worked at a science museum. Every day I stole a package of astronaut ice cream.
In college, I stole just one line from The Broom of the System to use in workshop. “There are odors.” I’ve always loved what DFW can evoke through vagueness and ambiguity; however, my teacher disagreed. It was the one thing he singled-out from my writing as an example of what not to do.
It was the last workshop I took.
I stole somebody’s husband.
Phrases — whether titles or lyrics — from songs I’m fond of have a way of drifting into my prose. The Fugazi song title “Last Chance for a Slow Dance” is permanently embedded in my subconscious, and I find myself writing phrases that echo it from time to time. There’s a novella I wrote ages ago in which there’s a reference to “a dress rehearsal for a religious revival” — for me, there’s a direct line from one to the other.
A few years ago, I was a copy boy at an insurance provider/medical malpractice law firm. I spent eight hours a day photocopying medical records and mailing them to doctors, lawyers, hospitals, expert witnesses–anyone who had any reason to see them. I became grossly fascinated with reading the files to find out just what had gone wrong in all of these cases.
Once, I opened the file of A– B–, a middle-aged women who had been destroyed under the knife. I don’t remember the details of the surgery, the doctor, or the legal outcome, but I vividly remember the attachment of 4 Polaroid photos of A– B– nude. They show the grim, twisted scars, the bruising and– most devastatingly–the face of a woman displaying simultaneous pain of recovery and embarrassment of her own nakedness.
I wanted to write a woman who felt what A– B–‘s face made plain. I took her name and wrote a novella with it for the heroine. That was three years ago, but I’ve noticed every since then that I use the initials A.B. to name almost all of my characters who are suffering some unspeakable, unknowable pain.
WHEN I WAS 19 YEARS OLD I STOLE THE FOLLOWING FROM A NUMBER OF PARTIES WITHIN A 3 MILE RADIUS OF THE DORM:
-6X TOOTHBRUSHES
-2X LIGHTBULBS
-4X OVEN KNOBS
-1X FRYING PAN
-2X EASTER CARDS
-1X THERMOSTAT
-2X VINTAGE PLAYBOY MAGAZINES
-1X HANDLE OF CHEAP GIN
-5X SMALL GLASS BOTTLES
-1X MANIPULATED STUFFED ANIMAL
-3X SAFETY RAZORS
-1X NUTCRACKER
-4X JACKETS BELONGING TO THE JANITORIAL STAFF AT NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
-2X TRAFFIC CONES
WHEN I WAS 24 YEARS OLD I STOLE A LIST OF ITEMS MY FRIENDS HAD STOLEN FROM PARTIES WITHIN A 3 MILE RADIUS OF THE DORM WE LIVED IN AND COMBINED IT WITH MY OWN TO ENTER MYSELF INTO A CONTEST
Pete,
I like this. I have started naming characters RF14 but I have no idea why. Your comment made me feel a little bit more normal.
Oh, also, as a former nurse, I once saw a patient inflated with oxygen (to better get into the surgical field–to get more room in her body) and then a spark from instruments touching and she exploded in the OR. Pure oxygen is flammable. Very.
So there’s my crazy negligence OR story.
Not a great thing to see. But. Well. A story.
When I was in high school, I was perhaps too close to one of my teachers. One day, she gave me her keys because she wanted me to get something from her car for her; it was the lunch hour, but she was busy, and students could walk around then, so I wouldn’t get in trouble if I stepped outside for a moment. I got the thing (I forget what), but when I got back to her room I forgot to give her back her keys. They were on a chain, one of those long cloth ones you wear around your neck (it said something like “sometimes I hear voices”). When I walked out at the end of the period, I heard the keys before I felt them, and I stopped in the middle of the hallway to say, “Why am I jingling?”
When I was 16, I stole the sign from the yard of a bed-n-breakfast. There were words on it. We stashed it at my best friend’s brother’s house. The brother’s probation officer was on his way one day to check up on him, so we burned it in a pile of trash. The bed-n-breakfast closed down the next winter. I don’t remember what the name was or anything else on the sign, but they were words I promise.
some of this stuff is stuff that seems pretty obviously just stolen for the kicks, but some of it makes sense. like, light bulbs, that’s a good idea. if you’re going to steal, might as well be practical. plus if it’s like a ceiling fan with four bulbs you can pretty easily take one and no one will notice.
When I was in college, my friends and I would go to afterbar parties of people we didn’t know and steal all their food.
That is awesome.
I worked at a science museum. Every day I stole a package of astronaut ice cream.
Do tell.
In college, I stole just one line from The Broom of the System to use in workshop. “There are odors.” I’ve always loved what DFW can evoke through vagueness and ambiguity; however, my teacher disagreed. It was the one thing he singled-out from my writing as an example of what not to do.
It was the last workshop I took.
I stole somebody’s husband.
i was at a party in chicago once with some friends. we didn’t know most anyone there and people were staring at us, like they knew we were from ohio or something. i was on a lot of drugs so i may have been more paranoid than usual. anyway, i stole a button that says “I AM NEVER TOO POOPED TO POLKA” from the bathroom.
that’s really the only thing i’ve ever stolen from a residency.
If it is written down but not nailed down I will steal it. The permissions list will be impossible, should publication ever come to pass. Since there seems no imminent danger of that I steal from everywhere, including a sex-worker’s website offering advice to johns on “How to Treat a Date” and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. In non-textual thievery, when I was four I “stole” some little brown paper bags from a hardware store, the kind for holding bulk nails/screws. I thought they were cute—I always had that girlish obsession with the miniature, the tiny. I tried to hide them behind my back as we exited the store, and my father let me, then soberly upbraided me for taking them. It’s wrong to take things that don’t belong to you without asking, he told me, frowning. It was many years before I realized the little paper bags would have been free. Maybe there are more things that are free than we realize, we just are not aware that all we need to do is take them, with or without asking first.
WHEN I WAS 19 YEARS OLD I STOLE THE FOLLOWING FROM A NUMBER OF PARTIES WITHIN A 3 MILE RADIUS OF THE DORM:
-6X TOOTHBRUSHES
-2X LIGHTBULBS
-4X OVEN KNOBS
-1X FRYING PAN
-2X EASTER CARDS
-1X THERMOSTAT
-2X VINTAGE PLAYBOY MAGAZINES
-1X HANDLE OF CHEAP GIN
-5X SMALL GLASS BOTTLES
-1X MANIPULATED STUFFED ANIMAL
-3X SAFETY RAZORS
-1X NUTCRACKER
-4X JACKETS BELONGING TO THE JANITORIAL STAFF AT NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
-2X TRAFFIC CONES
WHEN I WAS 24 YEARS OLD I STOLE A LIST OF ITEMS MY FRIENDS HAD STOLEN FROM PARTIES WITHIN A 3 MILE RADIUS OF THE DORM WE LIVED IN AND COMBINED IT WITH MY OWN TO ENTER MYSELF INTO A CONTEST
I stole an Encyclopedia Brown story called “The Case of the Missing Garlic Bread” as a 4th or 5th grader and rewrote enough details “to make it my own”. My mother loved the story then and continues to cherish it. I don’t have the heart to tell her I plagiarized most of it. In my defense, it was the last blatant plagiarism I ever knowingly committed. Still, her lingering adulation for the work makes me pretty uncomfortable and more guilty than I ought to be.
When I was in high school, I was perhaps too close to one of my teachers. One day, she gave me her keys because she wanted me to get something from her car for her; it was the lunch hour, but she was busy, and students could walk around then, so I wouldn’t get in trouble if I stepped outside for a moment. I got the thing (I forget what), but when I got back to her room I forgot to give her back her keys. They were on a chain, one of those long cloth ones you wear around your neck (it said something like “sometimes I hear voices”). When I walked out at the end of the period, I heard the keys before I felt them, and I stopped in the middle of the hallway to say, “Why am I jingling?”
some of this stuff is stuff that seems pretty obviously just stolen for the kicks, but some of it makes sense. like, light bulbs, that’s a good idea. if you’re going to steal, might as well be practical. plus if it’s like a ceiling fan with four bulbs you can pretty easily take one and no one will notice.
When I was in college, my friends and I would go to afterbar parties of people we didn’t know and steal all their food.
That is awesome.
Do tell.
Candy from a baby.
When I was in High School myself and a couple of buddies decided we’d trip out to the nearest beach, which happened to be about a forty-five minute drive and a steep descent away. We proceeded to indulge in the normal juvenile activities, burning driftwood and drinking beer liberally (or what we considered liberal at the time) and everything was going just peachy – aside from being on an isolated beach in barren Northern California. At about 1 in the morning things got a little odd, as three members of the party had went to sleep, me and one of my good friends were left to tend the fire as two guys emerged from out of the darkness drunkenly requesting admittance to the fire. This unexpected event put both of us on edge, and, as awkward High School students we didn’t know how to answer their offerings of weed, instead nodding inattentively and waiting, hopefully, on their exit, which was fairly quick (thinking back, the paranoia was more than likely needless but that beach was sketchy and their appearance was off putting, to say the least).
Either that week or the week after, my English teacher decided that she’d make us right a story, I forget if it was fiction or non-fiction, either way I felt it would be a perfect venue for the recent experience. Not wanting to accidentally disclose anything self-incriminating, I wrote the story using the cartoon Doug as an overlay for the situation – making various friends into the Doug caricatures, including using the superhero he turns into, Quailman. I’m not even sure why I used Doug, I remember watching it as a kid but it wasn’t my favorite show – perhaps it was random. This, although silly sounding at the moment, worked well with the situation and spun itself into a pretty entertaining tale.
Later that year they found the bodies of a couple who’d been shot there. Oh, and I got a parking ticket for staying overnight, although I can’t really complain since they bumped it down from the much larger illegal camping ticket. I love beaches.
i was at a party in chicago once with some friends. we didn’t know most anyone there and people were staring at us, like they knew we were from ohio or something. i was on a lot of drugs so i may have been more paranoid than usual. anyway, i stole a button that says “I AM NEVER TOO POOPED TO POLKA” from the bathroom.
that’s really the only thing i’ve ever stolen from a residency.
If it is written down but not nailed down I will steal it. The permissions list will be impossible, should publication ever come to pass. Since there seems no imminent danger of that I steal from everywhere, including a sex-worker’s website offering advice to johns on “How to Treat a Date” and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. In non-textual thievery, when I was four I “stole” some little brown paper bags from a hardware store, the kind for holding bulk nails/screws. I thought they were cute—I always had that girlish obsession with the miniature, the tiny. I tried to hide them behind my back as we exited the store, and my father let me, then soberly upbraided me for taking them. It’s wrong to take things that don’t belong to you without asking, he told me, frowning. It was many years before I realized the little paper bags would have been free. Maybe there are more things that are free than we realize, we just are not aware that all we need to do is take them, with or without asking first.
I stole an Encyclopedia Brown story called “The Case of the Missing Garlic Bread” as a 4th or 5th grader and rewrote enough details “to make it my own”. My mother loved the story then and continues to cherish it. I don’t have the heart to tell her I plagiarized most of it. In my defense, it was the last blatant plagiarism I ever knowingly committed. Still, her lingering adulation for the work makes me pretty uncomfortable and more guilty than I ought to be.
Candy from a baby.
When I was in High School myself and a couple of buddies decided we’d trip out to the nearest beach, which happened to be about a forty-five minute drive and a steep descent away. We proceeded to indulge in the normal juvenile activities, burning driftwood and drinking beer liberally (or what we considered liberal at the time) and everything was going just peachy – aside from being on an isolated beach in barren Northern California. At about 1 in the morning things got a little odd, as three members of the party had went to sleep, me and one of my good friends were left to tend the fire as two guys emerged from out of the darkness drunkenly requesting admittance to the fire. This unexpected event put both of us on edge, and, as awkward High School students we didn’t know how to answer their offerings of weed, instead nodding inattentively and waiting, hopefully, on their exit, which was fairly quick (thinking back, the paranoia was more than likely needless but that beach was sketchy and their appearance was off putting, to say the least).
Either that week or the week after, my English teacher decided that she’d make us right a story, I forget if it was fiction or non-fiction, either way I felt it would be a perfect venue for the recent experience. Not wanting to accidentally disclose anything self-incriminating, I wrote the story using the cartoon Doug as an overlay for the situation – making various friends into the Doug caricatures, including using the superhero he turns into, Quailman. I’m not even sure why I used Doug, I remember watching it as a kid but it wasn’t my favorite show – perhaps it was random. This, although silly sounding at the moment, worked well with the situation and spun itself into a pretty entertaining tale.
Later that year they found the bodies of a couple who’d been shot there. Oh, and I got a parking ticket for staying overnight, although I can’t really complain since they bumped it down from the much larger illegal camping ticket. I love beaches.
similar to you: my first plagarism was a generous reworking of a mad magazine king kong reworking. was singled out for greatness by my 3rd grade teacher. i think i was more inspired by the work than consciously plagarizing, if that makes sense. spoofing the spoof. anyhow, it was dumb.
OK, but you choose the story:
A) She didn’t want him anyway.
B) It’s a helluva story, with thrills, spills, and action galore.
C) I gave him back.
D) We are now happily married with two cars, two kids, two dogs, a house, a mortgage, an awesome credit score.
E) It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Perhaps this confession will help to assuage my long-lingering feelings of sadness and shame.
F) I’m just kidding.
In the old Pearl Jam phase, circa ’93: in admiration of the album VS. we thieved a sheep whose fur we tried to mail to Eddie Vedder with ten pictures of the actual heist itself; then, since it was a stolen disposable camera that we used we also had to steal the developed film by quickly filing through the names in order to find our falsely given name as the clerk went back to manage something gone awry in the candy section. During this two-day event we also “acquired” 150 Mountain Dew pager points from beneath the bottle caps, leaving bottlecapless Dews all over the last aisles of three Super America’s and two Holiday’s within the three mile radius we on our skateboards were able to traverse. The next day we were caught five-finger-discounting a carton of Menthol cigarettes we tried to put inside the blanket of the stroller my friend used to pretend that he was carting around his baby sister and not Newports.
similar to you: my first plagarism was a generous reworking of a mad magazine king kong reworking. was singled out for greatness by my 3rd grade teacher. i think i was more inspired by the work than consciously plagarizing, if that makes sense. spoofing the spoof. anyhow, it was dumb.
G) You sold him to Hubby-Traffickers for a tidy sum
I stole a lunch tray from a tiny cafe in the center of the Pentagon.
OK, but you choose the story:
A) She didn’t want him anyway.
B) It’s a helluva story, with thrills, spills, and action galore.
C) I gave him back.
D) We are now happily married with two cars, two kids, two dogs, a house, a mortgage, an awesome credit score.
E) It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Perhaps this confession will help to assuage my long-lingering feelings of sadness and shame.
F) I’m just kidding.
In the old Pearl Jam phase, circa ’93: in admiration of the album VS. we thieved a sheep whose fur we tried to mail to Eddie Vedder with ten pictures of the actual heist itself; then, since it was a stolen disposable camera that we used we also had to steal the developed film by quickly filing through the names in order to find our falsely given name as the clerk went back to manage something gone awry in the candy section. During this two-day event we also “acquired” 150 Mountain Dew pager points from beneath the bottle caps, leaving bottlecapless Dews all over the last aisles of three Super America’s and two Holiday’s within the three mile radius we on our skateboards were able to traverse. The next day we were caught five-finger-discounting a carton of Menthol cigarettes we tried to put inside the blanket of the stroller my friend used to pretend that he was carting around his baby sister and not Newports.
<3 o fallen angel
Can I win a copy of the book by stealing a friend’s anecdote about stealing a plate from an Oscar Wilde restaurant by hiding it in a napkin in her purse because her apartment needed dishes and all I said as I watched her do this was, ooh, that’s steeealing.
G) You sold him to Hubby-Traffickers for a tidy sum
I stole a lunch tray from a tiny cafe in the center of the Pentagon.
And then I wrote a grossly embellished, lewd tell-all under a clever pseudonym and lived off the spoils for years.
<3 o fallen angel
Can I win a copy of the book by stealing a friend’s anecdote about stealing a plate from an Oscar Wilde restaurant by hiding it in a napkin in her purse because her apartment needed dishes and all I said as I watched her do this was, ooh, that’s steeealing.
I watched a friend of mine, once, steal a napkin receptacle from a McDonald’s. I drove the getaway car. It was quite an amusing sight, seeing this skinny girl running out with the shiny metal napkin receptacle clenched to her chest.
It wasn’t much of a getaway, considering that before I could leave the parking lot I had to stop and wait for a space in the traffic.
Confession time:
She wasn’t *actually* a friend of mine — it was her dorm roommate I was friends with — but I wanted to watch her do it. Perhaps it’s the voyeur in me.
This reminds me that, when we were in the same class together, one day when I wasn’t there, two cops showed up and spoke inaudibly with the teacher. My friend (not the napkin-receptacle thief but her dorm roommate) told me later that it’d crossed her mind that they were looking for me.
Why she though this? I don’t know. I swear I was a good boy. I’ve always been a good boy.
But this gets me to thinking that somebody — some other thief, perhaps — was fucking around with Time.
Another confession:
I don’t actually believe in Time. I think it’s all a lie. There. I said it. I feel better.
I’ve had these thoughts since I was 15/16. I’ve known all along it was a lie. Time is not a thing! I shouted, It’s a Concept!
Nobody believed me. I was just a kid, therefore it was clear I knew nothing. I would continue to know nothing until I turned 18, and thus inherited the legal right to form an opinion, which just happened to correspond with my reception of the right to vote.
But I still don’t believe in Time.
Is this bad?
I swear I’ve always been a good boy.
And then I wrote a grossly embellished, lewd tell-all under a clever pseudonym and lived off the spoils for years.
I watched a friend of mine, once, steal a napkin receptacle from a McDonald’s. I drove the getaway car. It was quite an amusing sight, seeing this skinny girl running out with the shiny metal napkin receptacle clenched to her chest.
It wasn’t much of a getaway, considering that before I could leave the parking lot I had to stop and wait for a space in the traffic.
Confession time:
She wasn’t *actually* a friend of mine — it was her dorm roommate I was friends with — but I wanted to watch her do it. Perhaps it’s the voyeur in me.
This reminds me that, when we were in the same class together, one day when I wasn’t there, two cops showed up and spoke inaudibly with the teacher. My friend (not the napkin-receptacle thief but her dorm roommate) told me later that it’d crossed her mind that they were looking for me.
Why she though this? I don’t know. I swear I was a good boy. I’ve always been a good boy.
But this gets me to thinking that somebody — some other thief, perhaps — was fucking around with Time.
Another confession:
I don’t actually believe in Time. I think it’s all a lie. There. I said it. I feel better.
I’ve had these thoughts since I was 15/16. I’ve known all along it was a lie. Time is not a thing! I shouted, It’s a Concept!
Nobody believed me. I was just a kid, therefore it was clear I knew nothing. I would continue to know nothing until I turned 18, and thus inherited the legal right to form an opinion, which just happened to correspond with my reception of the right to vote.
But I still don’t believe in Time.
Is this bad?
I swear I’ve always been a good boy.
hey – i’ve loved listening in on your confessions they were all so good and so many of them juicy. but i have to pick three, and so Unreliable Narrator, Pete Michael Smith, and Pemulis please send send on your address to francesfarmerismysister@gmail.com and I will post copies of O Fallen Angel this week!
hey – i’ve loved listening in on your confessions they were all so good and so many of them juicy. but i have to pick three, and so Unreliable Narrator, Pete Michael Smith, and Pemulis please send send on your address to francesfarmerismysister@gmail.com and I will post copies of O Fallen Angel this week!
Got addresses for UN and PMS,
Pemulis, if you are around, drop a line with your address so you can get Kate’s book…
Got addresses for UN and PMS,
Pemulis, if you are around, drop a line with your address so you can get Kate’s book…