Spencer Madsen on “Indie” and “Small Press”
Monkeybicycle: What does “indie” or “small press” mean to you? What do you think of such classifications and distinctions?
Spencer Madsen: I immediately think of Roxane Gay. I think of complaints about not enough people reading or not enough people buying books or too many books being published. I think about the word ‘writerly’ and the distinction of being ‘serious’ literature. I think these classifications serve to make reading books more insular and less exciting for people. The word ‘indie’ always evokes for me a kind of club that you have to join to engage with. I’d like to bypass that by avoiding adjectives or the temptation to define the press in a verbal way. I don’t want Sorry House to be At The Forefront of Independent Literature or The Home Of Avant-Garde Poetry. I want it to be a thing like any other thing. A glass of water doesn’t need an about page. It holds water.
– Spencer Madsen, from Monkeybicycle interview re his new press, Sorry House
5 hidden to lurk on the furky lake
11. Decent collection of James Thurber fables. Dude had a series of glass eyes he would change out at parties, each one for his drink level at the time, each a little bit more red-eyed. He also had an American flag glass eye. He would go to the bathroom, toss in the flag eye, reenter the party.
5. Holy shit! Jeff either snagged the shark, lost his best spoon, or this:
About two weeks ago I tried living as if I were an indie writer.
Oh, the writerly worries of “going indie.” Though it’s one of those things where genre writers think indie means genre. As if genre is subversive. Or indie. Or that they correlate. Or something. Some tidbits, though, or why would I even yawn it here?
14444. Aimee Bender interview in Guernica.
1. Avant-Garde time capsule found.
9. Is caffeine important to the writer? How much do you use?