Creative Writing 101
For people who are following this series, I’m starting to think that it will make the most sense to post 1 per week, on Friday, which will cover both meetings of the class during that week (on Tues & Thurs nights). To come home and do the Tuesday post that same night or the next day would be too much, besides which if the class is actually checking in here, it might feel a little too rapid-response. I’d rather let the whole week play out, then do the post-game and give everyone (me, them, you) the weekend to mull it over and/or forget it ever happened. So that’s the new plan, and here we are with the field reports from 9/15 (Schutt & Dickinson) and 9/17 (more Berman, Percy Shelley, and a writing exercise). And for people who are just coming to the series now, the first two installments are here (1) and here (2). Everyone else, I’ll see you after the jump.
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September 18th, 2009 / 1:30 pm
September 18th, 2009 / 1:30 pm
Creative Writing 101
For Thursday (9/10) we read “My Dog is a Little Obese” by Ellen Kennedy, “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie” by Junot Diaz, and “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. The theme was DIRECT ADDRESS and INSTRUCTION. As on Tuesday, we spent most of the time on the fiction piece. I think this is because fiction feels “easier” to talk about than poetry, like you’re not going to screw up the technical terms or something. And I think that having a teacher who is primarily a fiction writer contributes to this atmosphere, so I’m going to work harder in the future to check myself. But I think there’s a second reason as well, which is that a relatively straight prose narrative like the Diaz story (or Hemingway last week) yields itself to a kind of knee-jerk cultural studies reading, where the text is really just a pre-text for the themes and politics it evinces or brings to light. Especially with a piece like this one by Diaz, where the narrator is giving “you” instructions on how to re-arrange your apartment so you don’t look as poor as you are, and then impress the various girls you might have invited over, with particular race-based instructions for each one. I hate this way of reading.
Creative Writing 101
This semester I’m teaching an undergraduate survey of creative writing at Rutgers. We’re two class meetings in, the students are all excited and smart and engaged. They’re making it a real pleasure to show up to class, which anyone who has ever taught before can tell you is not always the case. Because it’s a survey class, the idea is that we’ll look at the major forms of creative writing–fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. Instead of doing “units” on each of these sections, my hope is to pair pieces from different forms, both oriented by a theme or element of craft, themselves relatable back to a writing exercise, and see what kind of glad serendipities result from the juxtapositions.
The Lifted Brow 5 has arrived
THANK YOU RONNIE & TEAM TLB FOR SHIPPING MY COPY TO HONG KONG!!!
Got in from the Hong Kong Bookfair this afternoon (more on this later/tomorrow) and found a package waiting for me. It was my contributor copy of The Lifted Brow, the badass “biannual attack journal” out of Brisbane and Melbourne, Australia. This issue includes Joe Wenderoth, Blake Butler, two short-shorts by Jennifer L. Knox, a massive piece by Tom Bissell, twelve poems by Tao Lin, Ellen Kennedy’s short story “Probably Going to Die Alone,” something by a dude named Glen David Gold called “Pornography Available for Download from the United Dairy Council,” and a whole lot more besides. Also, a CD insert on the inside cover, accompanied by a note from no less than Daniel Handler, who harangues all readers to not make the usual CD-in-a-litmag move of totally ignoring the CD forever. Apparently, what the CD contains is an “epic rhyming sci-fi audio drama” written by Thomas Benjamin Guerney, who also narrates. Finally, my copy also included a sticker announcing THIS IS NOT ART as well as a little white string. Why don’t you get linked through to their website and order yourself one?
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July 23rd, 2009 / 6:04 am
July 23rd, 2009 / 6:04 am
Blake Butler—
HTMLGiant gets kind props from Dennis Cooper’s Candidates for Best of 2009 Top 10 List: Internet. Many other Giant favorites are all mentioned including Ellen Kennedy, Brian Evenson, Vanessa Place, Dalkey Archive, and my gracious gracious self. Thanks Dennis! Check it out and share your own.
6
AN INTERVIEW WITH AUDREY ALLENDALE FROM MUUMUU HOUSE
this person from muumuu house emailed me today and asked to be interviewed. her name is audrey allendale. here are the answers she gave to my questions:
Happy Cobra Books
Our own Matthew Simmons’ Happy Cobra Books has just released their new website, featuring Matthew Savoca’s e-book TOUGH!!! with his poems accompanied by illustrations by Tao Lin, Greg Lytle, Mike Bushnell, Tracy Brannstrom, Gene Morgan, Chelsea Martin, among many others.
Editor’s note:
TOUGH! is a book of brief pieces, haiku of the apotheosis of rural American maledom. Very funny. Wonderful illustrations, too.
Downloadable pdfs featuring Chelsea Martin, Catherine Lacey, Ellen Kennedy, Justin Dobbs and Blake Butler coming soon.
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March 11th, 2009 / 1:12 pm
March 11th, 2009 / 1:12 pm
Muumuu House ‘Care’ Package and a Contest
not ryan call
I received today in the mail a ‘care’ package from Muumuu House and in that package were several books: you are a little bit happier than i am by Tao Lin and Distortions by Ann Beattie and three copies of Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy. Thank you, Muumuu House, for the ‘care’ package.
And last night a friend and I found a bar in Houston that has ping-pong tables, and we played ping-pong for three or four hours, and I defeated him twice. He did not defeat me. The rest of the time we just hit the ball back and forth and impressed ourselves with our amazing skills. I think I am very good at ping-pong. I think it is the one thing I’m allowed to be good at, maybe. That and washing dishes. I think there is something very satisfying about hitting a ping-pong ball just so, having it do exactly what you want it to do.
To celebrate our finding this bar with ping-pong tables, I would like to offer two copies of Sometimes My Heart Pushes Against My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy, which, sadly, has no poems/stories in it about ping-pong.
Please post your poems/stories about ping-pong in the comments section to be eligible for a copy of Sometimes My Heart Pushes Against My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy. Be sure to include a real email address in the field where it asks for an email address, so I can email you if your poem/story wins. If you are shy, you may also email a poem/story about ping-pong to htmlgiant [at] gmail [dot] com, but if I select your poem/story, then I will post it for everyone to see. This contest is open until 2:00pm CST, Saturday the 7th.
Good work, Muumuu House and Ellen Kennedy, on your first book. I enjoyed reading it.
UPDATE: Winners of the two Muumuu House books are Miles and Darby Larson. Miles and Darby please email your mailing addresses to HTMLGIANT so I can send you your prize.
Thank you to everyone who emailed and posted ping-pong stories/poems.
Updates
This post simply brings to your attention things worthy of attention, with extremely light commentary from me.
- Ellen Kennedy’s new book Sometimes my heart pushes my ribs is available from Muumuu house. This is probably widely known, but I wanted to officially note it here. Ellen Kennedy feels like a Dorothy Parker who doesn’t have enough energy to rhyme.
- Chelsea Martin’s new book Everything was fine until whatever will be released March 2009 by Future Tense Books. Watch her read this piece. The ingrown logic and breath-taking/sigh-inducing excess of each subsequent line reminds me of Tao Lin’s ‘the next night we ate whale,’ except each line is different.
- The prolific J.A. Tyler redesigned Mud Luscious archives and ML Press, and his entire site. He would scare me if he wasn’t so nice. His obscene publication list is prone to make one feel like a slacker.
- Juked No. 6 is out. Check out the contents and order. Juked is one of the oldest literary websites out there. It makes me feel good that they are so consistent and devoted.
- Robot Melon Issue Seven is live, including J.A. Tyler, Crispin Best, yours truly [gag], Ryan Manning’s ode to Sam Pink, and one of my personal favorite online writers, Krammer Abrahams. I really like the ‘head trauma at night in the woods’ design.
So those are my updates. I could not find a picture that embodied this post. [*UPDATE: Ryan Manning sent me a picture to post for this post. The 4 colors do not match the 5 updates. He was no doubt driven conceptually.] Thank you for supporting online literature.
Stalking Sessions Revealed
Shane Jones wrote a post on his blog about who he thought had a job, who he thought didn’t, and who he didn’t know. It interested me a good deal, because I think we all passively ‘stalk’ one another without actually contacting each other. Of course, there are bloggers who become friends, but for the most part, we only have an abstract idea of people—abstractions which are enabled by this ‘virtual’ internet medium.
I thought it would be fun to tell you what I think I know about certain characters’ personal lives in this nearing incestuous lit blogosphere. One disclaimer: in writing this post, I have not done any research (i.e. checking their blogger profile for stats, etc.). The following information is solely based on my perception of these people based on aggregated passive stalking sessions via blogspot, flickr, facebook, etc. Again, these are all conjectures, except for when I state a fact.
Ryan Manning
I have a feeling Ryan either ‘gets a lot of chicks,’ or is a weird virgin. His relationships with females seem like they would be intense. He lives in Virginia and has a lot of time.
Brandon Scott Gorrell
Brandon lives in Seattle, and used to be a dork. Now he’s a hipster (I use this word neutrally) because his hair is shaped funny. He recently got a girlfriend, who I think is ‘hot,’ because when a man is very talented, he increases his chance of getting hot females. Brandon uses a PC.
Shane Jones
Shane posted an mpeg touring his house, in upstate NY. There was a cat, which is not surprising because Shane is sensitive. His blogroll is female only, and I think he’s making a political point. I think he probably has a girlfriend, and that he’s a considerate lover. He has some politically progressive job because right before the election, he had to go somewhere.
Blake Butler
Blake lives in Atlanta Georgia, which he’s always bitching about (people in the south are very vocal that they don’t like it there). I think he has a girlfriend. I haven’t seen any pictures of his room or home, but I have a feeling it’s a total mess.
Tao Lin
A lot of this everyone knows, because Tao is so open with his life: he lives in Brooklyn, is vegan, and works at a vegan café, I think. He used to live in Florida. As for his personal life, I think a lot of strange women are severely attracted to him, but I think it’s hard to get into a relationship with Tao because he’s a) very busy, and b) very intense.
Justin Taylor
I think Justin and Tao were roommates, or still are. I don’t know much about Justin, because he doesn’t blog (except at HTMLgiant) and his website just lists his projects. He exudes ‘intellectual.’
Ken Baumann
Ken is an actor. I’ve youtubed the show he’s on, about a teenage girl. I’ve also seen him in Audi commercials. Ken is ‘young’ and his tone is mature. I think he’s loaded, like has a big swimming pool that no one goes into.
Mark Baumer
Mark, of everydayyeah, used to live in Minnesota, and moved to LA. He helps edit Thieves Jargon. I don’t know anything about him other than that.
Aaron Burch/Elizabeth Ellen
I think they are married, or at least going out. I don’t know where they live, but I think it’s either Ohio, Indiana, or Iowa—like not in a big city. I know that they really like Bourbon and poker. I group Barry Graham with them because they know each other.
Barry Graham
Barry Graham could totally kick your ass, not because he has any martial arts skills, but just because he’s really large. Barry isn’t ‘artsy’ the way most people here are, and I like that.
Claudia Smith & Lydia Coupland
I group these two together because I think they are friends. Also, they are ‘the moms.’ A lot of their fiction involves being a mom.
Mazie Louise Montgomery
I know for a fact that’s not her real name, and anyone who was involved in the online lit world pre-2004 will recognize her real name, which I’m not going to disclose out of respect.
Mazie is obviously depressed. I think she has strange affairs with older men. She works at a library.
Zachary German
Zachary used to live in Pennsylvania and moved to Brooklyn because the former state could not contain his hipsterness. He’s gay and obsessed with food. He takes glamour shots with Ellen Frances, who is a NYC Warhol type of person who calls people she likes ‘geniuses.’ She is beautiful and I am sexually attracted to her.
Ellen Kennedy
I thought Ellen Kennedy and Elizabeth Ellen were the same people for the longest time because of the shared ‘Ellen.’ Ellen Kennedy is depressed and recently went ‘crazy,’ like literally institutionalized (she talks about it on her blog, so I don’t think I’m stepping on any toes.) She took ‘major ass’ pictures of forests for awhile, so I think the mental facility was in thick woods.
Scott Garson
Scott Garson edits Wigleaf, and I think he’s a dad. I saw a picture of him with long hair (down to the butt) and it seems he used to be some Pynchon obsessed literary ‘freak,’ and now he’s more normal.
Mike Young
Mike used to live in Portland, and now lives in Massachusetts. He sings well and plays guitar, kinda of a Jeff Tweedy way. I think he’s an honest good guy who sometimes gets depressed. He likes taking road trips, in that Kerouac way.
Sam Pink
Sam Pink is not his real name. He mailed me a chapbook from Indiana, I think. I have a feeling he is older, maybe 32 or something. I think his fiction is ‘real’ in the sense that he is utterly alone and abandoned, but despite his 1st person narrator, he doesn’t act like an asshole. Sam Pink is probably a pervert.
Colin Bassett
Colin lives in Indiana I think. He takes a lot of pictures looking outside windows from inside, and I think that’s a concept for him. He’s very effeminate, but I think he’s straight. He’s very thin because he’s often too detached to eat. He goes to the library often. I think he’s single, but somehow not lonely. He seems mature.
Noah Cicero
Noah lives in Ohio, that is very apparent. Somehow he has a whole house to himself, where he just shouts into the camera all the time. I think Noah thinks he’s Dostoyevsky. He is into politics and speaks in a manner which is not consistent with his high intelligence.
Gene Morgan
Gene recently became a dad. I think he lives around Texas, only because he does the website for Nano, which is some university in Texas’ creative writing journal. Gene, Barry, and Noah are like the ‘men,’ in the sense that all the other males on this list are sort of effeminate, in a literary Rilke/Proust kind of way.
Matthew Savoca & Colin Bassett
I group these two because they are in Europe. Matthew is in Italy, and Colin is in UK—though Matthew is an American expatriate and Colin is actually English. They are both thin and talented. I suspect they both get chicks.
Molly Gaudry
Molly is ‘new’ to this scene. I think she’s either Asian, Hapa, or Southeast Asian (which is Asian I guess). For those who don’t know, Hapa is when you’re any percent Asian. Like if your great grand mother had sex with a man who was ¼ Thai, you’d be hapa.
Ryan Call
I haven’t really followed Ryan Call. I don’t know, it’s like ‘Call’ is a very boring last name and I unfairly assume that he’s boring. He publishes in great print journals and has an interesting sister. I wish his name was Ryan Louvet Mallester, then I would become obsessed.
Matthew Simmons
Matthew Simmons lives in Seattle, and I wonder if he knows Brandon. Matthew works at a bookstore and I imagine him having a lot of hair, especially on his face.
Catherine Lacey
I saw some footage of Catherine brushing her teeth in the subway (NYC), and I think it was either an ‘art project’ or she wanted to have interesting material to post on her blog. Her name is sexy. I think all the NYC people hang out, or at least go to readings together. I saw footage of their behavior ‘in public’ and felt that I would be irritated if I met them in person.
—
I hope nobody is offended, or thought that I was being sarcastic about them. I’ve just been a little obsessed about all of you.
There are still some who I am obsessed about, but I got too tired typing. If you weren’t included in this list, I’m not being elitist, I’m just tired and want you to know that I’m probably obsessed about you too.