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New from PGP: The Origin of Paranoia as a Heated Mole Suit

I have read The Origin of Paranoia as a Heated Mole Suit by Rupert Wondolowski. It is as good as the title would mandate being to warrant having such a bad ass title on the cover. The poems here are amazing and weird and funny, and for $9 you can’t really ask for much more. Get this quick.

If you don’t believe me just by believing, here is the first part of one of the poems in the book:

I wake up screaming.
I scream scratching the dog’s belly in bed,
scream seeing the third pillow has fallen to the dusty floor.
I scream during breakfast, wet bananas on lips.

Shaving, I scream. I scream cleaning up the bloody mess.
Scream when the neighbors pound, when the police
come knocking.
I scream on the walk to work, yard ladies gyrate
gardening shorts,
Arabbers hurl eggplant torpedos at me, their horses stomp, dogs bark.

I scream the news grotesque,
football game shooting in Anchorage,
Middle East imploding.

I scream under Manhattan like undigested pork.

The previous day, screaming, I crossed
a small lake in the countryside on a rowboat.
Screaming, I ate a picnic lunch, ants
forming a moustache above my screamhole.

I scream quietly during a polo-shirted
golf match, a drink umbrella catching
on my sore uvula.

The rest of the book is as fun and new as that. Adam at PGP just keeps poppin bottles. Check ‘er out.

Publishing Genius Press
December 2008

52 pages
5×7″
perfect bound

Cover design by Stephanie Barber, digitized by justin sirois.
Page design by Adam Robinson with thanks to Chris Toll.

Presses / 12 Comments
December 16th, 2008 / 2:28 am

Justin Taylor

new Lamination Colony

frontman Blake Butler might be too modest and decent to say something, but luckily for all of you I’m not obliged to follow suit. The new issue of Blake Butler’s exciting, excited, and excitable internet magazine LAMINATION COLONY is now up, and it’s loaded with dreams of a brighter never. It also features several HTMLGiant contributors, friends, frenemies, and people whose very existence is as of this writing still a mystery to me. See if you can guess which are which!

Mathias Svalina

Carol Novack

Ryan Manning

Didi Menendez

A SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: The Colonist Reading List, which features recommended reading lists from the likes of Robert Lopez, Peter Markus, Matt Kirkpatrick, uh me, Tao Lin, Lee Klein, etc etc etc

Elizabeth Ellen

Rauan Klassnik

David Peak

Gena Mohwish

and a whole lot more besides. So go check it out.

let the good times...

...roll!!!

Uncategorized / 39 Comments
December 15th, 2008 / 9:06 pm

Ryan Call

Fence Holiday Subscription Deals

In my email from Fence:

Dear Friend,

This year, give the gift of Fence.

Subscribe a friend (http://www.fence.fenceportal.org/subscribe.html) and we’ll send a gift-wrapped issue with a card indicating this is a present from you. We’ll even use your return address so they’ll never guess what’s in the package.

$17 = one year
$30 = two years
$300 = a lifetime of Fence

Make sure to write “gift” in the “Special Instructions” field of our merchant interface, in the Shipping Address section.

It’s fast, easy, and cheap, and we promise to get it there in time, if you subscribe by 5 pm on December 17th. (http://www.fence.fenceportal.org/subscribe.html)

Secret Santas, do work.

Uncategorized / 56 Comments
December 15th, 2008 / 5:33 pm

Blake Butler

Rain Taxi Benefit Auction

from Rain Taxi:

RAIN TAXI BENEFIT AUCTION!

Our benefit auction has returned, and this year it’s enormous! Held on eBay, the auction lets you support Rain Taxi while getting cool literary stuff. Most items were donated by authors or publishers to help Rain Taxi stay in gear: You’ll find signed first editions, gorgeous broadsides, rare chapbooks, seminal graphic novels, quirky collectible books, handcrafted items, and more! M.T. ANDERSON, John ASHBERY, Paul AUSTER, Charles BERNSTEIN, Robert BLY, Paul BOWLES, Stephen COLBERT, Samuel R. DELANY, Neil GAIMAN, Patricia HAMPL, Richard HELL, Jaime HERNANDEZ, Garrison KEILLOR, Jonathan LETHEM, David MARKSON, Henry MILLER, Rick MOODY, Barack OBAMA, Ron PADGETT, Jerome ROTHENBERG, Joe SACCO, Arthur SZE, Jeff VANDERMEER, Anne WALDMAN, Keith and Rosmarie WALDROP, and Marjorie WELISH are just some of the authors whose works you’ll find. To see the full listings, go to our online benefit auction now!

Web Hype / Comments Off
December 15th, 2008 / 2:32 pm

Jimmy Chen

Top 5 WILFs

A WILF is a ‘writer I’d like to fuck,’ our new enterprise conceived by contributor pr. Since I really like the idea of hypothetical fucking, I cannot contain myself and have posted a top 5 list:

1. VIRGINIA WOOLF

That Virginia Woolf was a lesbian may explain the impractical choices in women I still have which sustained my virginity to an embarrassing point which shall not be disclosed at this juncture. That she has been dead for seventy-some years does not implicate any penchant for necrophilia — for I don’t literally want to ‘fuck’ Virginia Woolf at this point in her decomposition — I simply would have wanted to, had I been more of a man in England at the break of the twentieth century; she at the ripe age of eighteen.

2. PAUL AUSTER

That Paul Auster is a man may explain the impractical choices in women which let to the aforementioned exasperated virginity. I’m straight, but fuck that guy is gorgeous. When I think of his New York Trilogy, I think of his dong and ballsack. I went to his reading once and every woman almost had an orgasm when he spoke. I quivered a little myself, though it was probably just gas from my burrito.

We are all winners

Results of the Blake Butler “Ever” mean giveaway are in. (Actually they have been in since Friday. Apathy is a motherfucker.)
Blake picked Ryan Bradley. It was a toss up between Barry and Darby for me. Barry was slightly meaner.

Barry and Ryan email me your addresses. I need to put the order in before I forget.

*No retards have been depicted in this post.

Contests / 30 Comments
December 15th, 2008 / 1:08 pm

Blake Butler

Eugene Lim’s Reading Diary

For those who often feel they’re having trouble figuring out what to read next, if you have any proclivity for experimentally-based fiction and so forth, the reading diary of Eugene Lim, editor of Ellipsis Press, is a really great database of some obscure to semi-obscure works that all seem worthy of greater attention.

Lim’s reviews are short and smart and to the point, and don’t spend more than enough time talking than to get you excited on the concept and execution of the book. Whereas other review sites can be burdensome or have too much to say, these are snippets, wise-minded ones, and there is quite a trove already online.

Recently posts by Lim include: The Changeling by Joy Williams, The Easy Chain by Evan Dara, Main Brides by Gail Scott, Liquidation by Irme Kirtesz, Marsupial by Derek White, and months and months more. A quick fix for your ‘what next’ troubles, for sure, and some great musings for books you might have already read.

And if you haven’t yet already, Lim’s own Fog and Car should be right at the top of your list. Here’s my prior post on that novel. Do a buy.

Author Spotlight / 5 Comments
December 14th, 2008 / 5:57 pm

Ryan Call

Matt Bell Interviews JW Wang of Juked

Matt Bell, who has a solid presence online and often points up cool things around the place, has an interview up with Juked founder JW Wang. It’s a pretty extensive interview and I haven’t yet read all of it, but I’ve learned a few things already, such as the fact that Juked started out as just an idea scribbled out on a napkin.

Other things that first began as something scribbled on a napkin? The Dick Rutan Voyager. The seat-belt adjuster for short people. Southwest Airlines. Etc.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview. JW Wang says:

When we started it wasn’t meant to be anything more than a hobby. I just figured I’d get a bunch of fun people together and we’d write for each other. So we started with a bunch of real-life friends, people who were spending a lot of time online and whom I thought were interesting and had fun things to say. Four of them went to my high school; a couple were friends of these friends. Very creative people. One of them works with film, now, one works for American Idol(haha), one wrote TV episodes for Dawson’s Creek and The Guardian. One’s a doctor, I think, one a university admin of some kind, a couple of them are designers (web, graphic). And then there’s me; I went from marketing to writing. No, my parents are still not happy with the decision.

Oh, here’s a little trivia: one of the people originally involved in that student start-up left the company and formed Rotten Tomatoes. Now he’s sitting on an island somewhere, under palm fronds, sipping mai tais.

Enjoy.

Uncategorized / 5 Comments
December 14th, 2008 / 5:06 pm

Tony O’Neill is a Writer I’d Like to Fuck

Sometimes, when I read a man’s book, it makes me have sexual fantasies about him. Now, Bukowski had full-on groupies, as did Mailer and -well, countless others — so I know I am not alone with these feelings. The most recent man who inspired “I want to fuck you” in me, was Tony O’Neill. Tony O’Neill has written two novels, Digging The Vein, which I mentioned in my Contemporary Press post, and the recently released, Down And Out On Murder Mile. Digging the Vein is about being a junkie in Los Angeles and Down and Out On Murder Mile is about being a junkie in London. Both books are extremely unsentimental accounts of Tony’s love affair with smack and love moments with cocaine. They are terrific reads. He also has poetry scattered throughout the internet that I like and has published a book of them with Social Disease Books. He just has this wonderful no bullshit quality to his writing that makes me think I’d like to get drunk with him and then fuck.

i really super-like MARTIN HEIDEGGER a lot

the book BEING AND TIME (SEIN UND ZEIT) is the most important book i have read. i feel confident saying that because i have thought “this is the most important book i have read” numerous times in the past and it keeps happening. i am pleased even when i just pass by the book in my room, and look at it. it is the only book of philosophy, along with the TRACTATUS, that i felt an immediate change in my life, not just like, “i am somewhat impressed by this” but a condition in which i keep thinking about the application of the book to basically everything that happens to me. when i think about the chapter that discusses something called the THEY-SELF, i feel terrified. sometimes i just look at the name MARTIN HEIDEGGER and start singing the theme song from MARTIN (the television show with MARTIN LAWRENCE), but i picture MARTIN HEIDEGGER walking into a room with a laughing audience.