A Night With Steve Katz
This Wednesday, October 12, 7–9pm, at the KGB Bar, NYC. Hosted by Louffa Press in celebration of Steve’s new fiction broadside:
The native New Yorker has threatened to bless us with his world of experimental fiction, flying all the way from Denver to woo his audience with tales of personal mishaps with traditional jazz legend Louis Armstrong, plants that grow human body-parts, cautionary tales of the electric fence, the unswerving wisdom of Italian prostitutes and old school New York City.
The broadside (Slave Husbandry) is a limited numbered edition of 50, handprinted on swarthy yet sophisticated recycled artisan paper, inked and pressed on the Vandercook Universal One letterpress. The large format broadsides (19″x12″) will be available at the event for your enjoyment and (italics) for your pleasure.
Also reading will be David Moscovich, Eileen Myles, Ted Pelton, and Mike Topp. It’s free and I wish I could be there. More info about Steve and the other readers after the jump…
Ken Baumann—
The 100th (!!!) issue of Mike Topp’s Stuyvesant Bee came out this weekend. Receiving the weird little pages in my email every week is a sustained thrill, and SB has an intensely lazy awkward traumatic aura that still somehow is funny. It hurts comedy, part by part. The always-ON Joyelle McSweeney wrote this essay about Dogtooth. She got all the right words out and together about this excellent movie. And Kenneth Goldsmith is rewriting The Arcades Project, setting it in 20th century NYC and calling it Capital, with his full overview here. Then: Goldman Sachs continues to ruin! This time: food.
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Hill of Beans, Can of Words
These are some books I bought or otherwise acquired recently. A hill of words.
& that is a can of beans.
Ben Mirov
Ghost Machine
(not pictured)
Caketrain
Pittsburgh, PA — 2010
I read most of this book at the park that is in the book on a pretty much perfect day and it was a hell of a pairing I have to say. It has the kind of restraint my own work lacks a lot. Makes me jells but not bad way. Read the rest at my ex’s apartment who is no longer my ex while she made me dinner, which I could not believe was happening and yet there it was happening. I often felt breathless and thought maybe that’s not such a dumb name for a movie after all. READ MORE >
Cambodia Fence Sasquatch Talk
1. Metazen is putting together an ebook that will then be sold for Christmas, with all proceeds going to an orphanage in Cambodia. Check it out, submit, and consider picking up a copy in support when it arrives.
2. Fence has just unveiled their 3 newest titles: Nick Demske by Nick Demske; The Network by Jena Osman; English Fragments: A Brief History of the Soul by Martin Corless-Smith; all of which look quite excellent and are available as a package now for $30.
3. Mike Topp’s Sasquatch Stories is out now from Publishing Genius, with cover art by Tao Lin.
Blake Butler—
29 Mini Essays by Joe Brainard [Thanks to Mike Topp for the heads up]
GIRL SCOUTS
Girl Scouts is more than selling cookies.
Interview with Mike Topp
Mike Topp is somebody else. He wrote, among many other things, Shorts Are Wrong, a small compendium of jokes, scenes, pictures, stories, one liners, musings, words, as well as Happy Ending, about which Jonathan Lethem said, “I’m sorry, Mike, you know I love your work, but I’m just not whoring myself out for anyone else’s jacket copy anymore.” You can read Mike’s work all over the place, including these here and here.
More like a Kaufman than a Kundera, but somehow a mix of both, Mike is somehow often both funny and fun, and mind-moving. He gets up in that noggin good. Last month or so I did some e-talking with Mike, throwing words back and forth about his moves, his mind, and his forthcoming book from Publishing Genius, among other things.
– – –
Q: Mike, I read an interview last year with Gary Lutz where he referred to you as, I believe it was, “A writer’s writer’s writer.” That seemed a nice way to say it.
A. Gary’s someone I admire, and I was really pleased when I heard he said that. Unfortunately, he’s a stutterer and you have to factor that in. But Nat, who lives downstairs, says I’m a writer’s writer, and that’s almost as good. Plus I know for sure he doesn’t have a speech impediment.
Q. So… how do words appear inside your head?
A. They don’t–they appear in my hall closet, which makes things easier for me.
Uncategorized / 42 Comments
February 16th, 2010 / 1:18 pm
February 16th, 2010 / 1:18 pm
MIKE TOPP TYPES WORDS THAT FORM PHRASES THAT APPEAL TO ME
yesterday i wrote about THE STUYVESANT BEE, a one page publication by MIKE TOPP. after i read the STUYVESANT BEE i researched MIKE TOPP using google and pure instinct. i really like mike topp’s writing. i read some poems at BALTIMORE IS READS. each one was really entertaining. he also has a blog that i visited and clicked through thoroughly. i like his style. he is funny and sad and the balance works well. he also has a book out from FUTURE TENSE PUBLISHING called HAPPY ENDING. i will buy it when i buy all the other books i am behind on because of FUCKING PAYPAL. chelsea martin has MIKE TOPP’S phone number. i want to call MIKE TOPP and then act embarrassed and talk to people in the background like when you were in eighth grade and girl who liked you would call. MIKE TOPP, i am an eighth grade girl who likes you.
here is mike topp sitting on a bed looking upset, most likely because he just fell into a puddle of ink and ruined his suit
THE STUYVESANT BEE
here is the issue to prove i am not lying
i have received another issue of THE STUYVESANT BEE. THE STUYVESANT BEE is a short publication that someone named MIKE TOPP emails to me once in a while. i read this issue the whole way through and i liked it. i didn’t read the first issue because i thought it was one of those contest promotions from some journal, with a famous judge, and an entrance fee that would feed me for two whole days. but now i will read THE STUYVESANT BEE whenever i get it. it is weird. if you want it, here is MIKE TOPP’S email:
toppmiketopp@gmail.com
thank you mike topp it was nice of you to make something and then give it to me for free.