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Opium’s Network of Writers Experiment

The “Opium’s Network of Writers Experiment” is seeking quotes about writing one writer passes along to another. The latter writer is to submit the quote to Opium. (I don’t think either writer needs to be ‘famous,’ though I may be wrong.)

The Lost Generation had Paris, we have the internet. Short of any idealistic ‘organic’ ‘philosophizing over absinthe’ process, I think it would be most effective to streamline this son of a bitch by posting a comment about writing – as an open submission of sorts – for anyone to pick-off and relay to Opium if they wish. The deadline is March 3.

So, two things will be done: 1) leave a comment about writing (with full-name as you wish to be cited), and/or 2) pick a quote you like and submit it to Opium.

Here are examples provided by Opium (which seem a little stuffy and pedantic to me, so let’s show those kids how it’s really done):

“Writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint. Write around 700 words a day and then stop.” –Mieke Eerkens was told by Vikram Chandra.

“You shouldn’t write a novel unless you have an idea for one.” –Jamey Genna was told by Lewis Buzbee.

Submit appropriated quotes here: opiumwritersexperiment@gmail.com

In narcissistic delight, here’s my quote, if any of you want:

“No double-spaces or cramps after the period.”

God damn I’m subtle.

Contests & Web Hype / 232 Comments
February 26th, 2009 / 4:35 pm

Justin Taylor

CANTEEN magazine announces poetry & fiction contests; new issue

Read the post, and all will be explained.

I met the good people of Canteen Magazine during the last NYC LitCrawl, and they were swell. At the time, they had just put out issue #3, which featured words by Porochista Khakpour, Ben Kunkel, Dana Goodyear, Shellie Zacharia, and Lee Klein, just to name a few. You can see thumbnails of the covers on the Canteen website, but they don’t really convey the full story. Canteen is a 9 x 9 full-color magazine printed on heavy-stock paper. It’s filled with art and photography as well as literature. (My favorite thing in #3 was “Returning Thing,” a portfolio of photographs by Martin van de Griendt, from his book Smokin’ Boys Smokin’ Girls, which anyone who wants to should feel free to buy for me.)

Anyway, I just got an email from the Canteen folks, which mentioned among other things, the imminent release of issue #4 (which I have a story in- so full disclosure, or whatever), that they’re going to have a booth at the Armory Show (an NYC art gathering that runs from 3/4-3/7), and this thing about the contest, which is what I thought YOU PEOPLE might want to know about-

I am very tired.

Behind the Scenes / 8 Comments
February 26th, 2009 / 12:34 pm

Win Sam Pink’s book, I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF THEN KILL THE CLONE AND EAT IT!!!!

Htmlgiant and Paper Hero Press are sponsoring a contest to win Sam Pink’s I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF THEN KILL THE CLONE AND EAT IT!!!!!!! We are giving away THREE COPIES to the best entries! Here is the contest, people: Give us your best description of a fight that made you physically ill in 50 words or less. Enter in the comments section,(you can enter more than once and you can make shit up). Barry Graham, the publisher of Paper Hero Press, Sam Pink himself, and yours truly are the judges. Barf vomit blood and tears people. We love you.

Sam contemplates death, bones, violence and blood often in his book. That said, here’s a quote from the book that isn’t like that:

When You Are Happy Do A Handstand

When you are happy do a handstand and step into the sky. Go knee-deep. And push your feet through the depths. Start thinking about where the bottom is and what it feels like and if you’re not too stupid or scared to touch it.

(Full disclosure: I offered to cuddle naked with Sam Pink at the AWP in Chicago a week or so ago (even though I wasn’t there), but he declined. Then, it turned out it wasn’t Sam Pink. It was Mary Gaitskill.I was wicked drunk.)

Author News & Presses / 74 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 9:16 pm

“The Lover” by Damon Galgut, from The Paris Review (Winter 2008)

Damon Galgut

(Full disclosure: Once, I was at a party and got really drunk and offered to have intimate relations with Damon. He turned me down. Then, it turned out that he was not Damon Galgut, but Sam Pink. Go figure.)

I love the long short story. I like short ones, too, but I think the length of 7000 words and up may be my favorite length. “The Lover” by Damon Galgut in the Paris Review is 38 pages long. My guess is that it is approximately 10,ooo words. Galgut is the South African author of The Good Doctor, (very Graham Greenish, but with a flatter style) an accolade garnering novel I enjoyed so much I went onto Alibris and looked up his earlier work, work hard to find here at the time. I couldn’t get through a very harsh and violent book, Small Circle of Beings (I’m a pussy) and still have not picked up The Quarry, but I have enjoyed coming across his short stories in journals, (especially one that was in Zoetrope a few years ago.) “The Lover ” is classic Galgut, channelling a post-modern distance more Handke than DFW. His narrator, “Damon”, switches from primarily third person narration, to moments of first person narration. Galgut’s switching back and forth felt random to me at first, but with patience, a pattern and reason emerge. READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 8 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 8:09 pm

Matthew Simmons

Our Beloved 26th

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The last few years have seen two very good novels about office life, Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End and Ed Park’s Personal Days. (Also, one very good British television program and one occasionally very good, David Foster Wallace-admiring American knock-off television program have appeared, too.)

If you have felt that all of those things have been lacking in a thick coat of misanthropy and violence—besides the thick coat of misanthropy and violence that some see as inherent to capitalism in the first place—Future Tense Publishing has just released a little chapbook called Our Beloved 26th that should satisfy your desires quite nicely.

I saw Kevin Sampsell yesterday*, and he handed me a copy of the book, and told me the author, Riley Michael Parker, is quiet and shy and young. Apparently—happily, really—the young man has some issues.

‘Steve Reich Hears a Pentecostal Preacher’ by Adam Robinson, from ‘Adam Robison’

It’s not quite available for the masses yet, but to get you hype for the forthcoming release of Adam Robinson‘s debut book of poems, pleasantly titled ‘Adam Robison and Other Poems’ (and forthcoming in the next few months from Narrow House Press) we’ve got two special treats lined up.

The first is said book’s publisher’s new blog: Narrow House press blog, which is a pleasant introduction to the group and their releases, which span from records to full length poetry books.

Secondly, culled from what might be quite a length of dirty video recordings captured this weekend at the post-510 Reading Series bar assault (in which your current blogger and said ‘Adam Robison’ aka ‘Magic Acorn’ were asked to ‘stop wrestling in the bar or leave’), is Adam Robinson’s fine drunken performance of his poem ‘Steve Reich Hears a Pentecostal Preacher.’

Please enjoy (and thanks to Michael Kimball for the sweet capture).

You should have seen him breakdancing a few minutes later. It was a poem in itself. Though the guys at the pizza shop were less thrilled with Adam and some other weird dude screaming about dick and pouring water on each other in a beer haze. Poem video life.

Also, for your consumption, the brilliant introduction to ‘Adam Robison,’ published here at Otoliths, which contains the paragraph:

So what’s the story, Anne Carson? I mean, what’s my story? I’m riding my bike home with a video camera strapped to the handlebars, through the glittering downtown into the crumbling neighborhoods of Baltimore’s east side.

I, for one, am quite excited.

Author News / 11 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 4:14 pm

“Everybody is pink.” An Excerpt from The Journals of John Cheever

God bless Blake for putting up with the likes of me. He truly celebrates diversity of tastes and temperments with letting me be a contributor. I love Cheever. I might love his journals as much as his short fiction. (I like his novels a bit less). Here’s an excerpt, a random one, from near the end of his life, when the world starts changing so fast on us, it dizzies us. I often think about aging and dying and how chaos and destruction eventually win our bodies whole. (Thanks Mom and Dad.) This excerpt is one of many strange and heartbreaking sections from his journals that show his delight in language and confusion as to what our time here actually means: READ MORE >

Excerpts / 22 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 12:43 pm

Ryan Call

Shaman Drum

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From Dan Wickett:

Shaman Drum is not doing well these days. There have been articles in the Ann Arbor papers recently and owner, Karl Pohrt, just sent out an open letter trying to explain, to those questioning the articles, just how the store has fallen into financial difficulties.

Having had the pleasure of getting to know Karl a bit over the past year and a half, I can say that his open letter didn’t contain much surprising material – he’s known where things were headed and has been trying to combat it in various ways. He, along with his lawyer, financial team, and others in the Ann Arbor area are pretty desperately trying to figure out the means to make the store still be a viable part of Ann Arbor’s just off-campus business district.

This is to take up Karl Pohrt’s and Dan Wickett’s call for help. If you’re thinking of buying a book soon, why not skip Amazon and order from Shaman Drum? You’ll have to do it special order and their email system appears to be currently disabled, so that means maybe a little bit of time on the telephone. But that can’t hurt, right?

This reminds me also of the 5$ Powell’s Gift Card giveaway that I posted the other week. I’d like to award that gift card to Michael, who posted a story in the comments about finding a draft of the foreword to Djuna Barnes Ladies Almanac tucked inside his Harper&Bros first edition of the book, complete with revision marks allegedly by Barnes. Michael, if you’re still reading, please email your mailing address to htmlgiant [at] gmail [dot] com so I can send you this card.

And finally, take a look at this bookstore finder from Indie Bound to see if you can find any stores near you worth checking out.

Web Hype / 3 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 1:34 am

Blake Butler

Ken Baumann on Shane Jones’s LIGHT BOXES

lbfrontsmall A review submitted by national heartthrob Ken Baumann, for Shane Jones’s just released novel LIGHT BOXES from Publishing Genius Press.

I feel it’s hard today to find a work of art that is earnest, that is compassionate. (Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody comes to mind). I was startled by Shane Jones’s novel because it is so painfully both; it bleeds itself, and bleeds for others.

Light Boxes is a story about a community, about a man’s quest to rid his community of February, a bitter and long spell of cold that haunts the the town and its people. I don’t want to speak explicitly of the ‘narrative’ here, only because I think there is magic in discovery; it’s a sensual work. Many of the images affected me viscerally, and will stay with me for a long time. Dead bees pour from the sky, a broken father sits in the middle of a snow-covered street, a body surfaces in a river covered in text… I could list all the beautiful, and often tragic, images contained within for awhile.

READ MORE >

Uncategorized / 12 Comments
February 25th, 2009 / 1:00 am