ToBS R1: trolling for spelling errors in blog posts vs. changing your facebook picture daily
[Matchup #27 in Tournament of Bookshit]
I don’t know.
I’ve never had a blog.
I haven’t been on Facebook in almost a year.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this, what the fuck “Trolling for spelling errors in your blog vs. changing your Facebook profile pic daily” means.
This would be so much easier if I’d been given something easy, like:
Jimmy Chen vs. every woman on HTMLGIANT.
Or HTMLGIANT 2009 vs. HTMLGIANT 2011.
Or being Matt Bell vs. not being Matt Bell.
Or telling Blake no vs. telling him yes.
(Is it possible for the gender with the vagina to tell Blake Butler no?)
Fuck Blake Butler. Fuck HTMLGIANT. Fuck “mean week.” READ MORE >
ToBS R1: work at Best Buy vs. undergrad Lit 101 adjunct
[Matchup #6 in Tournament of Bookshit]
BECAUSE OF DIRECT HORROR: THESE THOUGHTS CRIPPLE A FLAG AT THE SIGHT OF MONEY, THE WILL TO EXPLAIN, TO FLAP A SALE – I MEAN NIHILISM STANDS ABOVE THE FEELING ATHEISM TOO CLOSE TO ANY BELIEF I MEAN ALL GROUPS DON’T EXIST OUTSIDE THEIR DOOKIE NOTHING IS WORTH BUILDING A COMMUNITY ABOUT BECAUSE WE CAN’T STOP BEING PEOPLE SOME DISEASES ROCK YOU TOW THE LINE SKIPPING POPES DO THEIR FLEAS I AM SO FAR BELOW I AM THE SCALE CHAFED BY ASKING GREAT WRITERS I WILL FURTHER YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH MURDER HOLOCAUST WHATEVER SAYS ‘I AM’ SMOTHER YOUR SPERM BEFORE THEY EXIT SWIPE THE SLIT REAL WAG CONDUCT THE BABIES FROM YOUR ANUS DIP THEIR MUSIC PLEASE HUGS I ONLY WORSHIP ACCIDENTS AND CRACKROCK ANY ADULT WANTS TO CONVINCE YOUR MONIES HIS LACK OF DANCE MEANS WINNING ALL PHILOSOPHY IS CASTRATION ANYONE BORN IS A POSSIBLE RHETORICIAN AND MUST THEREFORE BE SHRED INSIDE THEIR CRIB PLEASE EMAIL ME (TANGOROBOT@GMAIL.COM) A LOCATION TO MEET THERE AND DISCUSS I AM WEAK AND ALWAYS ARMED MOTHERFUCK HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY?
– – – READ MORE >
TYRANT 9 PRE-ORDER/POST-OP
A year’s passed since the last issue of the Tyrant came out. That’s fucked up. This is unacceptable for a magazine that is supposed to be a bi-, or even tri-, quarterly, and my sole excuse is that I don’t have an excuse. I want to blame it all on Luke (co-editor, friend, part-time lover) in full, for moving to Texas, but I won’t, because I really can’t. Whatever took it so long (and come on, who noticed or really cares that much?), to try to make up for the time you’ve had to wait, I thought I would expose/humiliate/shame myself for you all to have a good cringe or laugh at. Hopefully maybe both. My idea for the cover was to have me in drag on it because I thought it would be really like, self-absorbed-seeming. I wanted to try to get ultra-vanity press on it, even though that doesn’t even mean that.
I’ve always thought drag queens were exceptionally brave people, but personally, I’ve never been “into” wearing women’s clothes or looking like a woman. However, I have done it twice in the past year so who knows what’s up with that. Drag is such an odd experience. For me, it was strangely intoxicating. While I was dressed up, and even for a couple of hours after, I felt like I’d been drugged, but in a good way. Probably best we don’t get into all that here though. READ MORE >
Mud Luscious Acquires Blue Square Press
This week, J. A. Tyler’s Mud Luscious Press announced that they were taking over/buying out/merging with Blue Square Press, run by David Peak and Ben Spivey, as an addition to their imprint series. As Tyler says in the brief interview below, the deal gets BSP in on MLP’s distro (and more), while MLP gets to participate in the publication of more great books.
To celebrate the union, they are offering Jack Boettcher’s Theatre State and Ben Spivey’s own Flowing in the Gossamer Fold at a reduced price, here.
I asked the parties involved some questions, starting with J. A. Tyler:
When did you first start paying attention to Blue Square Press? READ MORE >
Saturday Afternoon Links Because Rain Threatens
Robert Lipsyte wrote for the New York Times that boys aren’t reading. The Rejectionist neatly sums up everything that’s troubling about Lipsyte’s piece.
At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Emily Green writes about how her work was plagiarized.
Anna Clark wrote a lovely essay about writing, necessity, heat, performing the role of writer and more.
That essay was inspired by this week’s Dear Sugar which is also well worth the read. That column is always worth reading.
White Readers Meet Black Authors has a list of fall releases including Percival Everett.
Maud Newton offers a really interesting take on how DFW has stylistically influenced the way we argue on the Internet, and not for the better.
Fuckscapes by Sean Kilpatrick is available for pre-order from Blue Square Press.
My favorite new Tumblr is Fashion It So which takes a close look at the beautiful fashions of Star Trek: TNG.
I asked a bunch of writers to write down everything they know about Glimmer Train magazine w/o research
i know it is called glimmer train. i picked one up in a barnes and noble once. i never read a story in it except for if it was republished in an anthology maybe. i submitted to glimmer train once i think a long time ago. i never got interested in glimmer train for some reason.
– Darby Larson
What is Experimental Literature? {Five Questions: Johannes Göransson}
Johannes Göransson is the author of four books – Dear Ra, A New Quarantine Will Take My Place, Pilot (“Johann the Carousel Horse”), and Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate – and the translator of several more – most recently Johan Jönson’s Collobert Orbital and Aase Berg’s With Deer. He teaches at the University of Notre Dame and edits Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes, and he blogs at montevidayo.com.
Dethcicle
I worked with Sean Kilpatrick to make Dethcicle. I hope it looks okay in your browser, and I hope you enjoy it. It probably looks like shit on your Windows computer at work, and I can’t wait for you to tell me.
Our first publication is a Blake Butler story titled RICKY’S SPINE.
I feel like the piece-of-shit week between our two most fucked holidays, when we’re pretending to answer important emails and pouring schnapps into drinks we shouldn’t be pouring schnapps into, is a good time to “edit some spreadsheets” and read online lit journals. Maybe suggest some good online publications/issues in the comment section? I like sharing.
Happy piece-of-shit week between holidays!
I Knew That There Was Nothing Beyond It: An Interview with Ben Spivey
Earlier this summer, Blue Square Press released their first title, Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold. Told in a series of mostly short, alternatingly Lutz-real and dreamlike passages, the book contains an interior logic and realm of imagery somewhere on the cusp of no realm, fresh and familiar at the same time. Over the past week or so, I asked Ben about the book’s creation, his influence, and more about the future of this new press over email.
Let’s start at the beginning: How did Gossamer begin in you as an idea?
It began as a drowning feeling. When I was first thinking about Gossamer I knew I wanted to tell a story about a man losing everything he was comfortable with. I knew how I wanted it to end, in fact I had the last sentence written in the first draft, the line was never changed.
So your writing the novel was all movement toward that last sentence? How did the moves reveal themselves? Over what time?
I started writing the novel in February of 2009 and I finished it sometime around March of this year. The moves revealed themselves as pieces to a puzzle. I kept a Moleskine journal with me at all times, jotting down ideas. For that year I never stopped thinking about Malcolm. A lot of the time I put into the novel was spent arranging the scenes and the moments, moving and cutting chapters, paragraphs, sentences. The beginning was originally the middle. I was working toward that last sentence; I knew that there was nothing beyond it.
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November 17th, 2010 / 2:08 pm
November 17th, 2010 / 2:08 pm
{LMC}: What We Talked About This Week in LMC (And Last Week Too)
Patricia Lockwood created an illustration of one line from Sean Kilpatrick’s The All Encompassed Drowned.
James McGirk wrote a reflection on Czar Gutierrez’s Bombardier.
Mike Meginnis wrote a comprehensive analysis of the assembly of New York Tyrant 3.2.
We had a live chat with New York Tyrant editor Giancarlo DiTrapano. Sorry you missed it. Drinking was involved, as was music by The Smiths, and many unsolved mysteries were solved.
Alex V. Cook wrote a reaction to the letter Breece D’J Pancake wrote but did not send to his mother before his 1979 suicide.
On the Google Group, we’ve been talking about matters of gender, women’s writing, why women don’t submit, how to read experimental work and Matt Bell’s An Index of How Our Family Was Killed. There’s more, but you have to join to know.
Speaking of Matt Bell, next we are reading the November issue of The Collagist, which debuts on 11/15. At the end of the month, we’ll do a live chat with Matt and who knows what will happen.