Take Two: Firework
Firework by Eugene Marten has one of the most amazing endings I have ever eyed in literature. I read the ending 3 times. Just the ending. It made me feel like a dropped doll or a foghorn playing Tupac or a person who couldn’t draw freehand at all except for horses, could do excellent horses, etc. Amazing. Please buy this book. It is short fuse, independent, G-string, and prayerful–a word people keep using on Facebook. After I read Marten I prayed he will write a similar book and I’ll be alive to read the glow.
But this isn’t about Firework. Rather fireworks. Ah, Scorch Atlas, that ear trumpet. That brushed steel mobile home. A sign of a good book is you can’t kill the thing…but I am stoic and persistent and dumb to criticism, like any good American.
Enjoy:
ATTN NYC: Firework Release Party
[a guest heads-up for the NY set]
To the New York set of the HTMLGIANT clique,
Today is the official release of Firework by Eugene Marten, and
tonight is the reading/release party. It would be great to see all you
guys and girls. One, because I miss you all so much. Two, because it
would just be nice for you to come out and support the spirit of
independent presses and the release of what my biased ass thinks is
the best thing to run through a printing press for some time. I’m
making this wicked drink called a GARDEN SNAKE (secret ingredients)
and there will be stuff to nibble at for those of us who still pretend
to eat. And Eugene will be reading. The Mercantile Library is a nice
place and it should be a really warm and friendly event. Unless I get
drunk and ruin all of that (it happens). So, you know that guy or girl
that you finally got the nerve to ask out to dinner tonight and they
said YES (ahmagah) you think you might be in love and that they could
be the one? Stand him or her up. Or better yet, bring them along. And
if he or she doesn’t want to come, then that’s a huge red flag that he
or she doesn’t deserve you. You’re better than that and you know it.
And if you just needed someone to make out with, then I’ll be there
tonight for specifically that purpose, so just pull me in the bathroom
at any point and it’s on.
Firework by Eugene Marten Launch Party
7:00, June 25th 2010
upstairs at The Mercantile Library/The Center for Fiction
17 East 47th Street
NY, NY
Any problems finding it, just call me (917-539-3963).
Thanks. You guys are really great.
Damn.
Here’s something to read:
“The young ones called each other out from their cells. Set to set, block to block, nation to nation. They called each other soldier. Six pop, five drop, nines and gats and gauges. Greetings and threats indistinguishable in the voices of monster children.”
—Firework, Eugene Marten, Tyrant Books
So, this is from the galley, which arrived on my desk at work today. I read the first 20 or so pages in a doctor’s waiting room. The first pages take place in a jail.
When you get a galley, it reminds you—the reader—that it is an uncorrected proof, and that some small changes may be made, and that you should check with the publicity department or the finished book before quoting from it somewhere.
I didn’t do that. I’m not going to do that. Read that paragraph—what would you change?
Seriously, Gian. If you change anything in that paragraph, I’m coming for your ass.