Events & Reviews

Q.E.D. – Part 2: WHAT MATTERS/WHAT’S MATTER

The MAK Center Schindler House, Los Angeles
9 May 2012

Context Note: In April, May, and June of this year, Les Figues Press hosted a short series of long conversations on queer art and literature. Titled Q.E.D., in honor of Gertrude Stein’s novel by the same name (and one of the earliest coming-out stories), each Q.E.D. event explored the constructions of speech, art, literature, materiality, and sex.  The conversations were  moderated by Vanessa Place at the historic MAK-Schindler House, L.A.’s original nod to green architecture.

Q.E.D. Part Two  featured Brian Teare, Michael du Plessis, and Lincoln Tobier.

***

Blocked off by thick and towering bamboo shoots, the hush of the Schindler House is a surprise even given its location on a quiet, residential West Hollywood street.  The House belongs to the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles; it was originally built in 1922 as a two-family home and workspace by Rudolph M. Schindler for himself, his wife, and another couple. The House’s then-innovative indoor/outdoor, open-plan design was the basis for the “California houses” that came to litter the landscape throughout the mid-twentieth century. It is hard to imagine anyone actually living in the House as it stands now: almost entirely empty, the structure and its surroundings feel more like a church or a yoga studio. Visitors speak quietly, and it is hard not to step lightly, as if any exuberant move might knock down the concrete walls and let the rest of the world into this sacred bohemia of careful art and right living.

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1 Comment
July 4th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
—

This isn’t a clever gimmick. It’s a terrible, unforgivable sin.

11

Well, there are two ways to look at having a career. One way to look at it is as though there’s a finite amount of attention and praise in this world to be earned and enjoyed, and thus look upon other writers as enemies or Darwinian competitors. The other way is to imagine you’re one of a bunch of lucky people riding a cosmic wave into the shore. Writing is hard. Writing out of anger and resentment is even harder. The best reason to help other writers is to remind yourself why you’re writing anything in the first place: to share something.

Tom Bissell

Power Quote / 5 Comments
July 2nd, 2012 / 2:17 pm

DeAtHbOoK rEvIeWs: Reviews of Books with Death in the Title that We’ve Never Read

The following are REVIEWS OF BOOKS WITH DEATH IN THE TITLE THAT WE’VE NEVER READ. We’ve done our best to highlight some of the best classic and contemporary books with death in the title that we’ve never read for your very own reading pleasure. Please enjoy (while you still can)!

THE DEATH OF PRINGLE by Justin Katko
The Death of Pringle is a journey through the infinitely depressing matrix of trying to eat less than 10 grams of carbs a day for the rest of your fucking life.

DEATH IN A BOX by Alta Ilfland
Who hasn’t dreamt, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of starting a tumblr? Tumblrs entice, but is it really all a golden road to viral? Alta Ilfland answers that question with wit, warmth and wicked candor in the chronicle of her own foray into tumblr. Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year’s Day with a divine idea, Ilfland sets the scene and pits her poetic sensibilities against tumblr. “I had talked about it / during the long gray winters / and the damp green summers…” she writes, “looked / with an addict’s longing / at film stills, dreamed / of waking up in the middle of the night / to reblog.” Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict when no one follows her. In verse that skips along lightly, Ilfland records the highlights of each month, from no followers in February to one follower in March to the loss of that follower at Christmas—all the while trading her irl existence for the glow of the screen.

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Random / 9 Comments
July 2nd, 2012 / 1:10 pm

Events & Reviews

Selection from Q.E.D. – Part 1, “Things Unsaid”

The MAK Center Schindler House, Los Angeles
11 April 2012
Compiled by Chris Hershey-Van Horn

Context Note: In April, May, and June of this year, Les Figues Press hosted a short series of long conversations on queer art and literature. Titled Q.E.D., in honor of Gertrude Stein’s novel by the same name (and one of the earliest coming-out stories), each Q.E.D. event explored the constructions of speech, art, literature, materiality, and sex.  The conversations were  moderated by Vanessa Place at the historic MAK-Schindler House, L.A.’s original nod to green architecture.

Q.E.D. Part One featured Melissa Buzzeo, Patrick Greaney, and Simon Leung.

***

“What happens in a work of art when it seems like the artist does nothing?”—(Patrick)

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2 Comments
July 2nd, 2012 / 12:00 pm

fetal 9

Robert grew a beard and long hair and grew a fetus in his girlfriend and grew tomatoes in the backyard and let his girlfriend grow flowers in little boxes and let his gut grow to fit the pants that had belonged to his father. (Catherine Lacy)

I don’t like too much social life anyway. It is gossip and bad white wine. It’s a waste. Writing is like carrying a fetus. I get up in the morning, have a cup of tea, and come into this room to work. (Edna O’Brien)

He breaks a watermelon over his knee to show somebody, a melon-red fetus curled up inside the rind. Don’t swallow them bones, Grandpa laughs, I don’t know what would happen if you swallowed them bones. (Micah Dean Hicks)

“This,” I think to myself, “Must be what vegans feel when they see a calf with no dancing room.” I think to myself, “This is what the Christians must feel when they see a fetus with no living womb.” (Steven Miller)

9kms    rips out the fetus with the fingernails of his hot fingers

13kms   lifts it up like a torch

1km      opening his mouth the soldier screams

(Juan Felipe Herrera)

 

By the fifth month, you will likely feel the fetus moving. (Bruce Holland Rogers)

He collects our broken pieces. He gathers our abusive fathers, our esophageal tears, our peanut fetuses. (Tia Prouhet)

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle, (Sylvia Plath)

They put people on the floor, each fetal-positioned in a three-foot cube, for money. (Nicolle Elizabeth)

Also, come to think of it, being pregnant. The fetus nestling against your intestines, bending her ear to the music of digestion…. (Kirstin Scott)

Craft Notes / 2 Comments
July 2nd, 2012 / 10:02 am

Catching up with comics and cartooning maestro Tom Eaton

Tom and I both attended Penn State in the mid-to-late 1990s. After graduation we became friends, then gradually lost touch in the circus that is life. I recently decided to catch up with him again by interviewing him. Read on to learn about his collaborations with Sufjan Stevens, Danielson, Shara Worden, and Rosie Thomas, as well as his work for Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and the Cartoon Network; and above all else to see many examples of his mighty cartooning art. —Adam

A D JAMESON: If I remember correctly, we met in 1998 or 1999. I had just graduated from Penn State, where I’d found some of your minicomics at Comic Swap. I enjoyed them tremendously!

TOM EATON: I’m so glad you enjoyed them. You must have been the target audience. I put them out at Comic Swap, and some of the record stores.

ADJ: I remember specifically finding the Valentine’s Day one, right around Valentine’s Day.

TE: Good! I was proud of that one…

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Author Spotlight / 4 Comments
July 2nd, 2012 / 8:01 am
—

“The bad word and the bad word and
The word which glamours me with some
Quick face it pulls to make me let
It leave me to go across
In roughly your direction, hates
To go out maybe so completely
On another silence not its own.”

from “Approaches to How They Behave” — W.S. Graham (thanks to Heather Christle for the spot)

Comments Off on “The words are mine. The thoughts are all / Yours”

Summer Semester Reading List: Gertrude Stein


For those of you who might be interested, click through for the reading list I’ve assigned the students taking my “Major Figures in American Literature: Gertrude Stein, The Mother of Invention” course this summer.

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Behind the Scenes / 57 Comments
July 1st, 2012 / 3:24 pm

Daniel Bailey on ‘The New Sincerity/Alt-Lit’

For those interested (and for those who haven’t already read it), Daniel Bailey has written a tiny bit of a response to the recent discussion of The New Sincerity/Alt-Lit at his Tumblr thingy. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 if you’d like.

Excerpt below from Part 2:

I think Alt Lit is mostly posturing. It’s attaching one’s self to something larger and riding along. Alt Lit is a great white shark and the myriad Alt Lit writers are remoras along for the ride. The only thing is that Alt Lit is not yet a large great white shark. It’s still small. Aside from Tao Lin, who predates Alt Lit and, imho is not Alt Lit because he has his own vision, and Steve Roggenbuck, no Alt Lit writer has created anything that will last beyond Alt Lit’s moment. The shark is not big enough to carry the weight of so many remoras. Steve Roggenbuck, at this point, IS Alt Lit. All others are simply followers. Steve Roggenbuck is to Alt Lit as Nirvana was to grunge.

 

Random / 55 Comments
June 29th, 2012 / 5:07 pm