1. Fantastic new interview with Gordon Lish at BOMBBLOG, on the occasion of his revision of his work for the Collected publication.
GL: The less I have in mind, the more my mind can be counted upon. Unhappily, for me, mind is scarcely the whole of what applies. Call it the art of the bricoleur—making do with less. Making much out of little, a mountain out of a molehill.
2. Edited manuscript, plus photo and brief audio excerpt of Harry Crews teaching in Florida in 1980, at This Long Century.
Compelling format from BookThug’s new literary journal, The Coming Envelope:
The Coming Envelope is BookThug’s new publication of experimental prose fiction edited and designed by Malcolm Sutton. Every issue features work from five writers. It accommodates hard-to-classify work by those already treading various precipices: uncomfortable here, courting the perverse, typographically observant, exposed to the elements, politically not unaware, falling alongside language.
Issue 1 features work by: Jacob Wren, Sheila Heti, Lily Hoang & Debra Di Blasi, John Goldbach, and Lee Henderson.
$10, on sale now.
In a year of many masters dead, today is Cormac McCarthy’s 78th birthday. Tyler Flynn Dorholt started a thread on FB for sharing some favorite lines in celebration. Really it could be most any of his lines in most any of his books. Add your favorites here?
“Friends row by row watched his passing and waved at him with their fingers and whispered among themselves. Who’d spoke of disorders of the soul and news of the night. When you asked for the shop of the heart’s apothecary we thought you mad. We saw you took down to the brainsurgeon’s keep, deep in the cellar, under the street. Where saws sang in stoven skulls and wet bonemeal blew from an airshaft in the alleyway. Out there in the blue moonlight a gray shecorpse being loaded into a truck. It pulled away into the night. Horned minstrels, small dancing dogs in harlequin garb followed after.” – Suttree
Happy bday, big dog.
Tony O’Neill’s new novel Sick City drops today, and in the wake of it he’s hitting the road. If you are in the trajectory, have a mark! Annotated dates after the break, including NYC, TX & CA…
The Paris Review is unaccepting previously accepted poems, citing change of editorship. Daniel Nester has the scoop.
“The real story, which we have grown unaccustomed to, is chemically free of explanation. . . . The story is always about something unexplainable. The art of narration declines as explanations are added.” -Cesar Aira
Sometimes I turn on one of the local Western Massachusetts channels and there is a commercial to promote the news. You see an anchor, then the anchor’s name, then the anchor talking in earnest about their roots in the area. “I’m Slop Slowdorf,” they might say. “I renewed my wedding vows at the Dr. Seuss Memorial. The Slowdorfs have lived in Springfield for six generations. How lucky am I to live and work in the same town where I grew up?” And watching this commercial I grow terrified and throw soup at the television. READ MORE >
I am currently finishing up what will be the final issue of Lamination Colony, at least in its current incarnation. Big machine, this last piece. In the spirit, I am opening submissions to anyone for the rest of today, until midnight east coast time. I will probably only take a couple pieces, as it’s already large and scary, but send me something totally ridiculous and terrifying, please. Responses will be sent if I have room, otherwise likely just thank you in advance. Send to: laminationcolony [at] gmail [dot] com.
