Remembering AWP 2013 (Through Embedded Photos)
I took the Lucky Star bus to Boston with Andrew. A week or so earlier the Fung Wah bus, the bus I’d taken between Boston and New York for five years, had terminated operation by demand of federal government? (Did I read that wrong?) After a long, and delayed, transport, we made it to my parents’ house in Westborough, where we awoke the following morning to what would become 18 inches of snow.
We helped my parents shovel (my father worked the snowblower).
I’d had no intention of paying the registration fee, but things were kind of lax anyways? This is what the inside of the conference looked like.
My Experience Writing for Muumuu House
Wrote about Tao Lin for Hobart.
Exchanged emails with Tao about what I wrote.
Tao cut and pasted part I’d written about Zac Zellers and Marie Calloway and wrote beneath it “this seems funny to me.”
Replied with a paragraph in which I described Zac Zellers as the “Where’s Waldo” of Ann Arbor.
19 mins later got email from Tao saying “you should write something about this and send it to me.”
Official Word Made Flesh Book Trailer Now Officially Official (and Live!)
Uncategorized / 33 Comments
September 8th, 2010 / 11:37 am
September 8th, 2010 / 11:37 am
A Few Thoughts on Promotion
A few weeks ago Justin Taylor’s book, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, was threatening the NY Times bestseller list. It was, like, #1000 in sales at Amazon. My first thought was, HYPE. I thought, “Nah, it can’t be all that good, it’s just a book, who cares, he’s not my friend, I’ll buy it but whatever, HYPE.” I’d seen an ad for it on the back of Book Forum. HYPE.
BUT DAMN. READ MORE >
Worlds Collide!!!! aka “Justin Taylor is Cool”
You know what I love? Waking up to a Google alert that has a story in it called “Justin Taylor is Cool.” Who wouldn’t love that? So imagine my surprise when I clicked through and wound up at something called the Reformation21 blog. It’s a post about me and my doppelganger, Justin Taylor of Crossway Books, a preacher from Wheaton, Ill about whom I’ve blogged many times, and whose awareness of my existence I’ve frequently been given to speculate about. Well it seems all but certain that he knows about me now, and furthermore, this post by Stephen Nichols seems to make clear once and for all that he is not my doppelganger, but rather that I am his. Since it’s a short post it is reproduced in full, but you might as well see Ref21 for yourself.
So here I am thumbing through my latest copy of Paste catching up on the latest Indie and post funk metal ska offerings and there it is:
“Justin Taylor’s first short story collection” . . . “artfully captur[ing] the view of the 2000s.” Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever–great title, despite being riddled with theological problems.
Apparently our Justin, “Editorial Director at Crossway and follower of Christ” by day, is a Brooklyn-living professor of writing at Rutgers on the side.
I knew someday being Justin’s friend would raise my HQ (hip quotient for those not in the know).
Stephen, if you’re reading this- thanks for the shout! And yes, EHITBTE presents something of a theological problem–hardly beside the point, btw. You might think about it as an intentional release of the self-destructive powers of the exponential and the recursive onto Leibniz’s notion that “all is for the best in the best of all possible wolds.” Not that that solves anything- but solving problems is your homeboy’s line of work. Mine is causing them. Seems like we’ll work together splendidly. And Justin, if you’re out there, pleased to meet your acquaintance! I’m really sorry I keep putting out books that have titles that sound like they could be your books- The Apocalypse Reader, and the (forthcoming novel, provisionally entitled) The Gospel of Anarchy. We have things in common! I love GK Chesterton! And Kierkegaard! And I just got my copy of The Axioms of Religion by Hobbes and Mullins in the mail today and am very excited to read it. Let me know if you ever want to chat about the history of American Baptist thought and sectarianism.
Blake Butler—
Our boy Justin has a nice long podcast interview at Breakthru Radio, regarding mostly his on-fire Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever. He also reads a full story from the book for your listening pleasure. If you haven’t caught wind of Justin’s firestorms of praise, and by god, picked up a copy of this beautiful thing, well, you should think about it. It’s every inch the hype portends.
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Literary Dopplegangers
Justin Taylor and Priestess singer/guitarist Mikey Heppner
Gain some weight. Grow your hair out. Off you go.
(Jimmy Chen blackmailed me into putting this up. Sooooo:
Berobed Jimmy Chen and berobed rapping Buddhist monk Mr. Happiness
Gain some weight. Keep your hair short. Off you go.)
Additional material after the cut. READ MORE >
Matthew Simmons—
Justin is on Electric Literature and the story’s kinda badass. E.g.: “I don’t know dick about Latin but some things are just obvious and sometimes I think that’s what God is: the obvious, resplendent and intractable and dumb.” (Sorry I didn’t notice this sooner.)
Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever
Having heard Justin read a few of the stories from here, and having read others in New York Tyrant, Canteen, and elsewhere, I can say that even if I weren’t friends with Justin, and a labelmate, I’d be pretty fucking excited about his forthcoming book, Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever. You don’t have to listen to me though, here’s Padgett Powell: “Mr. Taylor has perfect touch, to frightening effect, does not presume, has power, and promises us new things. There is a debt paid to Donald Barthelme… and a strange undertow of Philip Roth, which makes for a new literary beast.”
You can preorder it now. It’s under $10 on Amazon. Or you can go direct to the publisher. Yes. Excited.
Who Is Justin Taylor?
I’m not about to tell you, except for this: Justin Taylor is very dear to me, and I to him. He even dedicated his–wait for it–chapbook to me. No joke. Some days, we are engaged to be married. We’ll have an early-morning wedding, family only, with a luncheon of cold meats and fowls following. But you don’t know me too well, either, so none of that info should really affect what I’m soliciting from you.
Knowing Justin heaps better than any one of you, I always love to read all the inaccurate insults hurled at him by HTMLGiant peeps. But there haven’t been nearly enough this Mean Week, for my liking. I would like to provide one place, right here, to collect all the wild misconceptions, ad-hominem attacks, and elaborate speculations. I’m especially interested in the latter. It seems that people here have especially detailed mental images of who this man is. Please share, right here, at the end of Mean Week. Don’t hold back. It’ll be more fun than hating on Tao Lin (are they really roommates!?!?!), I promise, because Mr. Taylor is more truly our own.