Contest Insanity

480skitoiletAside from the Keyhole bidding war ($405 at the time of this post) that has broken out recently, there are other insane contests around the internet that I wanted to link to.

First, I present to you a number of spambot contests running over at PH Madore’s blog and at Blake Butler’s blog. These two contests involve spreading word of the contest in as many other places as possible and then commenting in the respective blogs comment sections to link to where entrants have spread word of the contests. Jason Jordan is another blogger in the habit of running these sorts of contests over at his blog, which require entrants to comment on the post as much as possible in order to win free stuff, like issues of Ninth Letter and Annalemma. So keep an eye on him.

Tim Jones-Yelvington, frequent HTMLGIANT reader, is running a contest at his blog that asks entrants to describe in <1,000 words what their dinner with Lydia Davis might be like. Winner of the “My Dinner with Lydia Davis” contest will receive a one-year subscription to the lit journal of their choice. Wasn’t Lydia Davis married to Paul Auster at some point?

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Contests / 35 Comments
April 16th, 2009 / 1:15 am

Three Things I’ve Found Interesting Within the Sphere of ‘Booklyfe’, or: Booklyfe 3

This is what all talent/literary/federal agents look like. Its code.

This is what all talent/literary/federal agents look like. It's code.

1.  Literary agent Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown, Ltd. is offering readers the chance to play Literary Agent for a Day over at his blog. It’s pretty simple:  Read the posted queries, pick the queries you think belong to books about to actually be published, win ______ (he hasn’t specified the prize).

2.  Via Matt Briggs, an essay from Frederick Barthelme published in 1988. I’m sure quite a few of you have read this already, but I hadn’t.  I think the essay is definitely worth talking about, still.

3.  Interview Magazine writes about Five Dials, a .pdf/email distributed literary journal.  Hey, who knew this interweb thing could be used for like, literature and stuff?

I’ve already blabbed about this stuff elsewhere, if you’d like a quicker river.

Contests & Random / 71 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 7:04 pm

Crispin Best Needs Stuff about 1492

columbus2Crispin Best is editing a great project called For Every Year. Here’s a bit from his first post in October of 2008, in which he introduces the site:

A story for every year since 1400.

The story just has to be in honour of that year, it doesn’t have to be set then.

So. For example. Chaucer died in 1400, so that explains that. And. The first written record of whiskey appears in 1405, so that explains that.

Pick a year since 1400.

Write a story dedicated to that year.

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Uncategorized / 20 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 5:22 pm

Youtube teaches me something about writing.

I think maybe this has something to say about how significantly tone can shape a story.

We have something familiar—the opening to a sitcom. We haven’t changed a single visual element. We have instead changed the music. And we’ve gone from the fun-loving antics of a rich man and his adopted African American kids, to the disturbing story of a predator clearly intent on abusing and possibly ritually sacrificing two boys he has convinced to get into his limo.

(Is it just me, or does the car seem to be moving slower than it did in the original version with the upbeat music?)

Maybe tonight we should all spend some time trying to retell an old story with a completely inappropriate tone. See what happens.

Random / 9 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 4:53 pm

Open letter to the underemployed

harper

Graduate school is fun huh? Or are you just ‘in between’ ‘real’ jobs with the economy n’ all? Or maybe you have 12 roommates, sleep in the pantry, and can afford this HTMLGIANT lifestyle. Coming here everyday and refreshing the browser every 20 seconds and gravitating towards arguments is not going to get you on the road to self-sufficiency. Maybe I’m gettin’ old, but sometimes I just want to scream get a real job, like the one I’m at right now, refreshing the browser every 20 seconds and gravitating towards arguments. Let’s just say I’m neglecting my work and boss is not happy. When HR/payroll pulls the rug, can that pantry fit two? I always feel like somebody’s watching me. Yah, my boss. Chapbooks are nice, but health insurance is better. Get a job jerkfaces.

Mean / 28 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 4:21 pm

Malcolm Lowry’s Letters

Malcolm Lowry’s letters interest me more than his fiction (I don’t have this edition linked here, I have an earlier one). I’m not sure why that is, but hey, it’s just how it is. Here’s one of them:

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Excerpts / 8 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 3:11 pm

Keyhole Lifetime Subscription on Ebay

Um, wow… here’s a rad one:

Keyhole Lifetime Subscription

The starting bid is 99¢

*U.S. bidders only*

Subscription includes all past releases that are still in print and everything we release in the future.


What you’ll get now:


Keyhole 5 (handwritten issue)


Keyhole 6

Questionstruck by William Walsh



Spill by Curtis Crisler


Later this year you’ll get:

  • Phantasmagoria by Thomas Cooper (May)
  • One of These Things Is Not Like the Others by Stephanie Johnson (June)
  • Now Playing by Shellie Zacharia (September)
  • How to Predict the Weather by Aaron Burch (December)
  • Plus 3 new issues of Keyhole, a quarterly, perfect bound journal (May, August, November)

That’s 11 books this year alone

We’re lining up some good stuff for next year too, including William Walsh’s collection of stories, Ampersand, Mass.

And we’ll throw in a free one-year subscription for a friend



I think you’re going to have to fight me for this. Let’s go.

Web Hype / 46 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 2:11 pm

NewVillager + Fantastic Information

newvillagerNY by way of CA strange-pop band NewVillager, self-proclaimed into the “Chinese Pop | Dutch Pop | Spanish Pop” markets, is a music for the meat inside your hair. Consisiting of super pal Ross Simonini, plus the magic brother in Ben Bromley, these lads are making post-Peter Gabriel past-Animal Collective way-past-Beck wildness.

As a man quite tired of most new music, the sounds here are nice in that they are both new sounding in their layers and yet not so gone that they need to appear only on hipster iPods stuffed next to Sunn O)))) snore. Sounds new, and they can actually sing? Dang.

Anyway, you can do a listen to their first two tracks, ‘Rich Doors’ and ‘Genghis On’ for free on the myspace. Go peek. If you dig, tracks are available for download from iTunes, and on vinyl, both findable through the myspace profile.

Even more germane to the forum is the band’s vast repertoire of profile and press information, including band history, reviews, and other, supplied by a motley crew of sources, which I will excerpt after the break: READ MORE >

Web Hype / 32 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 11:40 am

INTERVIEW WITH ANDY RIVERBED

i interviewed andy riverbed.  he does translations and he wrote the book DAMAGED. he has an e-book coming out through EVERYDAY YEAH on friday.  interview after break.  there is mention made of mc hammer.

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Author Spotlight / 14 Comments
April 15th, 2009 / 3:07 am

“Inherent Vice” by Thomas Pynchon

inherent-vice

Is Thomas Pynchon not cool anymore? Is literary relevance chronologically sensitive — meaning, certain things lose their importance depending on when they are published? Do interesting things become boring over time, or is the reading public simply fickle? I ask these questions because nobody seems that interested in Pynchon’s forthcoming (August 2009) Inherent Vice — kinda has a loopy-hippie Vineland feel to it. I must admit I fanned through his latest novel Against the Day like a telephone book with no one to call, sighed, and put it down; and Pynchon is one of my all time favorites.

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Author News / 49 Comments
April 14th, 2009 / 10:12 pm