Gods, Men and Howard Cosell
In the summer of 1962, Howard Cosell found himself lying on his back at the side of the road, the joe-pye weed squaring off in the sun above him as he woke from his stupor. “That’s when I knew I had to make changes,” Cosell says, “those weeds bending over me like God’s many heads. It was my high, purple clarion call.”
Cosell rushed home then—a place he spent precious little time in—kissed his four children on the head as they sat on the floor watching TV, and went straight up to the bathroom. Taped to the underside of the sink was his stash, 6 brown cubes of the sweetest chat Eritrea had to offer. READ MORE >
Constrain my writing.
From Rick Strassman’s book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. This is the way a DMT test subject named “Willow” described her experience on the psychedelic. I’ve added emphasis to the sentence that struck me:
The other side is very, very different. There are no words, body, or sounds there to limit things. I first saw deep space, white with stars. Then there was this multidimensional experience starting. It was alive. It was the aliveness that I heard.
And here, a quote from Terence McKenna recently reTumbled by Tao Lin: READ MORE >
A Book Prescription For Your Reading Pleasure
I often stumble across unique ways of exposing readers to new books. Chin Music Press (which I’ve discussed before here and here), has a pretty cool new program, BooksRx, where each quarter, a writer or artist curates a selection of independently published books and/or magazines around a theme. Their third installment, the Mardi Gras collection, will be available on the 21st and looking ahead, they want to incorporate titles from other presses. One installment is $40 and a yearly subscription is $100.
This seems like a great idea for indie publishers, who could band together and sell their books in curated, thematic packages. It will be interesting to see if this idea succeeds.What presses would you like to see participating in a venture like this?
Blake Butler—
The Top 13 lists Top 13 novels about drugs, including our pal Tony O’Neill. I’ll personally take The Wild Boys over Junky any day. What else are they missing?
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Drugs (a guest post from the Tyrant, Giancarlo DiTrapano)
The Tyrant‘s got some questions:
You write, man? You do drugs, man? You do drugs and write, man? I don’t want to count drinking as drugs but I guess I will if you’re going to fucking make me. Man, those drinkers sure knew how to write, didn’t they? You know who they are. What happened to that? Did anything happen to that? I’ve tried to drink and write but I always want to talk once I’ve had a drink so I end up at my computer facing a blank word doc, but then I’m fast on the phone with a childhood friend or someone else I usually wouldn’t want to talk to. But (some) drugs are different. They make you think faster or slower or better. Maybe they allow you to think of things from your past that you can’t bear to think of sober. Some say they give you “Ass Power” and now I bet you want to know what that is. I heard an interview with Tony Robbins (that giant-mouthed guy) talking with Quincy Jones about Michael Jackson recording Thriller and all the “Ass Power” Michael Jackson had. “Ass Power” is the power to keep your ass seated and get some fucking work done. Do drugs give you “Ass Power” or “Word Power” or “Story Power” or whatever the fuck you think you have or had when you wrote that story that you think is so good but no one will publish? Let’s hear it. You get high and write? Snap tubes, brah? Pop Xannies? Bumpsters? What do you drink, smoke, snort, run when you write? Or maybe you do nothing at all. Let’s hear it, cokeheads.
P.S a) The Tony Robbins story is true.
b) What’s your guy’s number?