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occupation of New School flagship building continues!

This isn’t strictly literary, but I thought people would be interested to hear that the New School occupation is now into its 20-somethingth hour and as near as I can tell, going strong. After reading some snarks about the protesters on Gawker this afternoon, I decided to stop what I was doing, head into Manhattan and check things out for myself. I did my MFA at New School (see? not totally irrelevant to literature!) and so was able to get into the building. They have a list of demands, which you can read on their frequently-updated website, but the top item on the list is the removal of president Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic governor of and senator from Nebraska.

Everyone at New School–teachers and students alike–has basically known Bob Kerrey is a joke, at least as far back as my starting the MFA program (Fall 2005). After he brought both John McCain and Newt Gingrich to speak at the school, it became clear what his real agenda was: collect a big fat fucking paycheck while using the school to set the stage for his next political campaign. Thanks but no thanks you center-right impostor. Good riddance to neo-liberal rubbish. The sooner the better.

I sat and listened to the direct democracy at work for about an hour and snapped some pictures from the center of the occupation, which you’ll find after the jump.

Random / 49 Comments
December 18th, 2008 / 6:34 pm

Excerpt: Dimitry Morgachev: My Life

Here is an excerpt from Memoirs of Peasant Tolstoyans In Soviet Russia (Indiana University Press):

In our village of Burdino there were fistfights three times a year- in December and January, on Shrove Tuesday in February, and at Easter, in April. The village was divided in half, and on Shrove Tuesday village fought village–Burdino and Terbuny. I also took part in those fights. Our priests said that fistfights were not bad: men got training from them and would be bolder and more active in war. The fights began with boys, then with teenagers, then grown men, and after that even bearded old men. Once the old men gathered close together like a wall and pushed me up against one of the strongest old men from the other side. I knocked him down, and from that time on they considered me a strong man. They said, “How he knocked over that big granddad!” It was the rule that you should never beat a man who was lying down, whether he was knocked down or whether he fell by himself, but sometimes they would agree to hold the very strongest men up by the armpits, and other strong men would not let them fall down and would keep beating them. Sometimes the outcome was fatal. Once a wealthy shopkeeper offered two buckets of vodka to the side that won. No fewer than three thousand men got together for the brawl. Our village won that time.

Excerpts / 14 Comments
December 18th, 2008 / 5:15 pm

Jimmy Chen

I like existentialism a lot

walking_alone I think when people talk about existentialism, they are talking about one of two things: the actual philosophy, and—more generically—books that ‘feel’ and are labeled as being existentialist.

Existentialism, since like Jr. year in highschool, has always been ‘cool,’ like the Smiths or the Cure, for smart and depressed people. I’m not saying I was or am smart or depressed, just that certain books made me feel less lonely, which is weird because those books and authors seemed really lonely. I guess it’s the whole ‘read to know you’re not alone thing.’

Academic existentialism is dry, difficult to understand, and makes me feel more lonely. I tried reading Being and Time, and Being and Nothingness by Heidegger [see Pink’s] and Sartre, respectively, but it was sort of like math. Every time they said a sentence, they tried to prove it using other sentences which they then had to prove. I lost track of what they were arguing (at me) about. It’s like arguing with a girlfriend, without the boobs. Most philosophy is this way: noble and boring.

The existentialism I like are the books that people call existentialism. I will name them and talk about them briefly after the break.

I Like __ A Lot / 49 Comments
December 18th, 2008 / 3:18 pm

Justin Taylor

Power Quote: Beckett

Thus the sixpence worth of sky changed again, from the poem that he alone of all the living could write to the poem that he alone of all the born could have written.

– Murphy, p. 83

Excerpts / 73 Comments
December 18th, 2008 / 10:03 am

Jereme Dean

I like Miyazawa Kenji a lot.

Miyazawa Kenji began existence in 1896 and stopped existing in 1933. He wrote chldren’s stories and poetry. I am not going to elaborate why I like him or why I think you should read him.

This is a favorite poem from Miyazawa:

Strong in the Wind

Strong in the rain
Strong in the wind
Strong against the summer heat and snow
He is healthy and robust
Unselfish
He never loses his temper
Nor the quiet smile on his lips
He eats four go of unpolished rice
Miso and a few vegetables a day
He does not consider himself
In whatever occurs…his understanding
Comes from observation and experience
And he never loses sight of things
He lives in a little thatched-roof hut
In a field in the shadows of a pine tree grove
If there is a sick child in the east
He goes there to nurse the child
If there’s a tired mother in the west
He goes to her and carries her sheaves
If someone is near death in the south
He goes and says, “Don’t be afraid”
If there’s strife and lawsuits in the north
He demands that the people put an end to their pettiness
He weeps at the time of drought
He plods about at a loss during the cold summer
Everyone calls him “Blockhead”
No one sings his praises
Or takes him to heart…

That is the sort of person
I want to be

I Like __ A Lot / 17 Comments
December 17th, 2008 / 7:59 pm

Ryan Call

Paper Egg Books

eggshells

Featherproof has a ‘new baby’ and it’s called Paper Egg Books.

From the website:

Ladies and gentlemen, we humbly welcome you all to the future of publishing. Just kidding.

Actually, welcome to this new thing we’re doing. The “we” is featherproof books, and the “thing” is a subscription-only series of books. Here’s the idea: You subscribe to paper egg for just $20 a year, and we send you two beautiful, limited-edition books by some of the most exciting authors working today, writing in disciplines often disregarded by that big, ugly marketplace (we’re talking little, beautiful forms like the novella and the short-story collection). More soon, as we get hatching.

I don’t know much else about the project as the site is still unfurnished, but the idea sounds cool. Keep an eye on this; they say more to come in early 2009.

(Thanks to Tobias Carroll for the link)

Presses / 23 Comments
December 17th, 2008 / 5:01 pm

Give and Take By Stona Fitch

I received Give and Take by Stona Fitch for free from Concord Free Press, which is doing this wacky experiment on “publishing and community” as they explain on their website. Now, part of the deal is I then HAVE to give the book to someone else, which is fine, as my htmlgiant secret santa will be getting it. Also you HAVE to give money away, which again is fine; this time of year I give money away anyway. But in a more general sense, my problem with all this is- I hate people telling me what to do. Nearly always, when someone tells me what to do, my eyes blur a bit and some weird rage lets lose in my brain. Once, I went to a Bikram Yoga class and it was in this heated room and the teacher started the class by saying, “even if you get really hot and feel faint and like you may barf or die and so you want to leave the room, YOU MAY NOT. You cannot leave the room! You can lay down for awhile, but you can’t leave.” Now, people, what happened was, eventually, I felt hot and shitty and I left the room! If someone says do this or you can’t do that- six and half times out of ten, I’m going to do the opposite. Every time my husband says “let’s just split desert” after we’ve had some insanely enormous dinner and we can barely move, I then order three. (One good thing is, he no longer says this for the most part. So now I mostly order two.)

But I digress. Give and Take is a book that chews on issues, a novel of ideas, and something I normally wouldn’t read. I like to read books I normally wouldn’t read, as long as I don’t have to do that twice a week, like when I worked in publishing. And Finch has a good mind, a clean prose style and moves the book along very nicely.

Web Hype / 70 Comments
December 17th, 2008 / 3:15 pm

Blake Butler

Win Diana George’s DISCIPLINES

george-cover I have an extra copy of Diana George’s DISCIPLINES, an amazing fiction chapbook from Noemi Press, who continues to do more and more amazing things.

I read this chapbook and couldn’t shake the verbiage from my head, still haven’t really. It is in the Lish-mind (the chapbook has a Gary Lutz blurb), and is about rooms and weird ritualistic behavior, and modes of study. The stories are kind of hard to describe, but they are amazing, have appeared in 3rd Bed and Denver Quarterly etc. A really amazing little book that reminds me in certain ways of Evenson’s ‘The Wavering Knife’ and maybe some Ben Marcus thrown in there, but really of a whole new mode all its own.

To win the chapbook all you have to do is read the new issue of Lamination Colony, pick one piece on the site, and say something about it in the comments here. A response, a review, a comment (though more than ‘I liked this.’ please, show yr work), something that shows you thought about the piece in some way. A response can be a few words or a longer thought or words it jarred from you in another mode, whatever you want. Don’t forget to include which you are responding to.

I will choose a winner Friday. The winner will get the Diana George chapbook. The author whose piece is reviewed by the winner will receive a gift too, also from Noemi Press: Joanna Howard’s In the Colorless Round, which is an insanely cool large-format chapbook of connected prose and drawings by Rikki Ducornet.

While you are thinking, go check out the rest of the work from Noemi Press. They are putting out important texts worthy of vast attention.

Contests / 38 Comments
December 17th, 2008 / 2:06 pm

Ryan Call

Word Spaces(2): Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson writes about things like dead sisters and screaming babies and sexual relationships between cousins. He also has published a few entries from his series ‘Tommy Explained,’ one of which you can see at the new Lamination Colony. I don’t want you to think that’s all he writes about, though, so visit his website or his blog. Also, you should know this: Kevin Wilson has a book coming out. It’s called Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. I bet it’s going to be funny.

Kevin was kind enough to send us a pic and a few words for today.

kwroom01

Okay, above is a picture of Kevin Wilson’s word space. Here’s what he had to say about it:

When our son, Griffith Fodder-wing Wilson, was born in January, he took my study. There was little debate about the matter. The baby needed a room. I had not considered the situation, our tiny cabin and where we would store our kid, before we decided to have a baby. I should have thought about it a little more.

So my dad (who is the most capable person I know and loves, Jesus Christ, loves to use his wet saw and nail gun and his esoteric knowledge of wiring) and I turned the unfinished basement into a study where I could hide for a few hours and get some work done. It’s also where I keep my comic books and figurines. Oh, and I keep my regular books down here as well. I have a desk, but sitting at the desk feels like I’m still at my 9 to 5 job, so I sit on the floor and write with the computer in my lap. I keep the space heater running no matter the season because I have terrible circulation and get cold easily. There’s a view of the pond, and stray cats like to lounge on the porch. There was a bat but I sprayed enough tea tree oil in the rafters that I either killed him or he got the message and left.

I felt very disconnected from the space for a few months. I could hear my wife and baby overhead, which made me feel like I’d died and they were learning to live without me. I kept finding cave crickets in the corners of the room. The baby kept us up most nights and so I found myself falling asleep on the floor, an hour having passed, no writing accomplished. The near-constant presence of the bat was, frankly, unsettling. The baby had kicked me out of my house. I was in the basement. What the fuck had happened?

Word Spaces / 11 Comments
December 17th, 2008 / 1:05 pm

Justin Taylor